A national policy framework on sustainable settlement would be capable of addressing sustainability challenges not only in relation to urban and suburban development, but also within the context of the broader spectrum of impacts and expressions of human settlement across the nation.
In sustainability terms, human settlement is about activity and effect, not just about towns and people. The way we extract and manage natural resources, conduct business, agriculture and tourism, protect or damage carbon sinks, live with the bush, the desert and the forests - all of these and more are characteristics of human settlement which impact across local, national and international scales.
At the most fundamental level, a national policy on Sustainable Settlement should be designed to accommodate the complex interactions, complementarities and conflicts which occur between individual sustainability parameters (such as energy, water, population growth, transport, infrastructure, climate, natural resources etc.), and their subsequent impact on the patterns and effects of human settlement at local, regional and national scales - and to enable rigorous analysis and optimization of necessary ‘tradeoffs’ in decision-making to support broader national sustainability goals.
The National Sustainable Settlement policy directions should leverage and build on existing policy development and delivery mechanisms - e.g. collaborative, co-operative and integrated strategies between local, state and federal governments such as COAG, within a strong community and stakeholder consultation process.