The world's addiction to economic growth has pushed our social, environmental and governance structures to new levels of stress never seen before at this scale.

So where is the release valve? how do we relieve pressure from these systems to a more sustainable level?

We need to redefine our understanding of growth.

What is growth? It can be scale or depth, yet on an economic level we chose scale as the model of success as its easily measured and it benefits the people that make the decisions, usually at the expense of the ones who don't. We monopolize our industry for economy of scale and mass produce with little concerns over waste or circularity. We drive for the continued scale of output and GDP believing that this form of growth will lift the entire economic landscape, but the cure to the problems of mass production can not be mass production.

Everything in nature follows an S curve of growth. The subject is conceived and begins to grow, which then becomes exponential growth until it reaches a maturity where its outward appearance slows to a stop. This is only the subjects size and scale, what continues to grow is its strength, its resilience and its depth of interconnection.

Our economy has reached its maturity and to be sustainable, we need to change our understanding of growth to reflect strength, resilience, and depth of interconnection, and implement it across our economic landscape.

Australia is in an extremely privileged position on the world stage. We are a first-world nation with a rich economy, a rugged environment, and are the jewel of western culture deep in the heart of the Asian-Pacific region. Now, at the beginning of the Asian century, we are in a prime position to be an example to the world on environmental, social and governance policy, though this will not be achieved with our current business as usual approach.