Re-evaluating our resources - natural and human - is the future for Australia

This combination of external pressures and internal forces has created considerable insecurity and nervousness. As Geoffrey Blainey noted in a recent article, 2002 ended with a severe bout of the jitters.

So I perceive my country now to be a bit lost; still not managing change equitably, searching for its place in the world and looking sometimes for simple truths and solutions which no longer exist.

Therefore it seems sensible to look to the bedrock of our nation, the things that give us stability. In my view they are our land and waters and the nature of our relationships with each other.

Unless we use natural resources in a sustainable way, we are mining the future. Unless the relationships between our citizens are respectful and inclusive, we are a divided and diminished society.

By any measure, we are not caring properly for our natural resources.

We imported European systems of agriculture unsuited to our fragile soils and rainfall patterns. Australia's wealth depended on agriculture and mining for a long time and we lacked sufficient knowledge about the long-term results.

The results are evident today. By 2050, 17 million hectares of land will be at risk from salinity. Acid soils are likely to affect an even greater area. About 50,000km of streams are degraded. Australia's rate of land clearing is exceeded only by Brazil, Indonesia, the Congo and Bolivia. Weeds cost over $3.3 billion per year in lost production. There is not enough water in some of our river systems now to meet the combined demands of agriculture, human consumption and environmental flows.

Additionally, no one is certain of the impact of global warming, but the best scientific modelling predicts drier weather patterns will become the norm for most of Australia.

The tasks before us obviously are enormous. Farming systems will have to change; further adjustment in the farm sector is likely; rehabilitation will take decades and will be impossible in some areas; public and private costs will be huge; new regulatory systems will have to be introduced and a vast amount of political and social capital will need to be invested.

But unless we do it, in my view we will limit our future as a nation and as a society.

The first step is to give proper prominence to these issues. A much wider public debate is needed to generate community understanding about how to care properly for country and the things that are at risk. Government already has a pretty fair idea, but is gridlocked by the scale of the problems.

The issues have already provided some impetus. The impact of drought last year certainly registered on the national radar screen. So did Richard Pratt's initiative to reduce loss of water by piping it on farms instead of using open channels.