WeRise · Pillar 7
Planet & Future
A future worth having.
Every decision made in this generation will be felt by the next three.
What Planet & Future covers
Planet & Future is about the decisions that outlast us: how we power the country, how we care for water, land and farming, how we protect the living world and the animals we share it with, and how Australia acts as a neighbour and a citizen of the world.
You can fix a tax system. You can rebuild a hospital. You cannot bring back an extinct species. That is what makes this pillar different: here, getting it wrong can be permanent.
This is the one pillar with no second chances.
How Australia has seen the planet and its future
Australia's environmental story is one of early warnings and hard-won protections. In 1975 the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park was created. In 1983 a long campaign and a High Court decision stopped the Franklin Dam in Tasmania. Landcare spread nationally from 1989, and in 1999 the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act became the main national environment law.
Climate policy has been more turbulent. A carbon price began in 2012 and was repealed in 2014. In 2022 Parliament legislated targets of a 43 per cent cut in emissions below 2005 levels by 2030, and net zero by 2050. Beyond our shores, Australia was a founding member of the United Nations in 1945.
How it is seen now
Today the questions are about pace and fairness. How quickly can the country move to clean energy, and who pays along the way? How do we share water between farms, towns and rivers? Can national environment laws, found wanting by an independent review in 2020, protect what is left?
Animal welfare and foreign policy have joined the conversation. How we treat other creatures, and how we act in a region facing rising seas and rising tension, both say something about the kind of country we want to be.
Why these policies belong together
Climate, water and land, nature, animals and Australia's role in the world share one idea: the economy sits inside the environment, not beside it. Every dollar of activity depends on a stable climate, clean water, healthy soil and working ecosystems, and on a peaceful world to trade with.
These policies think in generations rather than election cycles. They ask what we are handing on, not only what we can use now.
The cheapest time to act was thirty years ago. The second cheapest is now.
The policies in this pillar
Five ideas, one inheritance. Pick the one you care about.
Climate & Energy
Better Than We Found It
What would it take to leave the country better than we found it?
Read the Climate & Energy policy →Water, Land & Farming
Stewards of Soil, Sea and Sky
Who speaks for the soil, the sea and the sky?
Read the Water, Land & Farming policy →Nature and Biodiversity
The Living Earth Project
What is a species worth once it is gone?
Read the Nature and Biodiversity policy →Animal Welfare
Our Fellow Travellers
What does the way we treat animals say about us?
Read the Animal Welfare policy →Foreign Policy
A Global Role Worth Playing
What kind of neighbour does Australia want to be?
Read the Foreign Policy policy →
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Last reviewed 9 October 2026 · Published by Atlas Media