Australia is having the wrong conversation about its future.
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We talk about population growth.
We talk about artificial intelligence.
We talk about energy transition, government spending, and immigration.
But before all those debates should come a much simpler question - Can Australia produce what it needs?
Can we feed ourselves affordably?
Can we keep regional industries operating?
Can we create enough productive jobs?
Can we build an economy capable of supporting a larger population without continually borrowing against the prosperity of the next generation?
Those are questions of national capacity.
And in Australia, national capacity begins with something very basic.
Water
Australia desperately needs higher productivity, a broader tax base, more jobs and a more secure food supply.
That means investing in water storage and infrastructure and recognising the extraordinary productive capacity of irrigated agriculture.
Ultimately, growth is how we pay down debt, which requires production.
The numbers should concern every Australian
Treasury's 2026 Intergenerational Report attempts to look 40 years into Australia's future.
By 2065-66, our population is projected to approach 40 million.
Our economy is projected to be much larger.
Australians are expected to live longer.
Technology will transform industries.
But the federal budget is still projected to be in deficit in 2065-66
Gross Commonwealth debt has already surpassed $1 trillion.
Treasury projects gross debt declining to 22.2 per cent of GDP in the mid-2050s before turning upwards again and reaching 27.4 per cent by 2065-66.
Three decades of growth to reduce the debt burden, and then the trajectory turns upwards again.
That should trouble us.
A nation's strength cannot be measured simply by how many people it accommodates.
It must be measured by its capacity to house them, feed them, employ them, power their industries and care for them.
Population is not capacity.
Production is capacity.
Productivity is the whole game
That is another warning in Treasury's projections.Productivity.
Small differences in productivity growth, compounded over decades, produce enormous differences in Australia's future prosperity and fiscal position.
That matters because Australia's debt problem cannot be separated from Australia's productivity problem.
Government can increase taxes.
It can cut services.
It can borrow more.
But none of those choices substitutes for creating more economic output from the resources, capital and people we already have.
Australia must produce more.
And few combinations demonstrate productivity more clearly than reliable water, productive soil, capital and skilled farmers.
Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) figures demonstrate the extraordinary economics of irrigation.
In 2009-10, less than one per cent of Australia's agricultural land was irrigated, yet that land generated 29 per cent of the gross value of agricultural production.
Earlier years produced similarly striking results.
That is not a marginal industry.
That is concentrated productive capacity.
This is where Canberra consistently underestimates agriculture:
A megalitre is more than water
A megalitre of water does not stop generating economic activity when it reaches a paddock.
That is where the economic journey begins.
First, we need to grow.
• David Farley is One Nation’s Federal Member for Farrer