Interesting responses...and my take..

On reduction or limiting population growth: Reality - no government in the current climate will ever bring a policy in the foreseeable future that will try to limit population growth. In fact, the opposite is happening with the encouragement of population either by immigration or child births. Either way, we are an aging population that requires the stimulation of population growth in order to sustain our economy.

On sustainability: Reality - we have no choice but to find a sustainable solution to the current shortage of water without further endangering the environment. I tend to agree that we are being taught a lesson by mother nature for our wasteful ways but what needs to be set in place are policies that will stop the public from reverting back to "let's all have English gardens" when the next downpour happens and big business in the mentality of "its available at the moment lets use as much as we can"...it was once thought fossil fuels were sustainable?

In any case, we are able to create synthetic products and even clone sheep yet, in this so called technological age, we have still yet to find a viable way to create drinking water. Desalination is a solution but l feel all the water recycling efforts are being bogged down by big business and their rhetorical chant of "we can't afford it" - this is where this current government (or the future one) has to step in and force change....seems households are curbing water usage - is big business?

“no government in the current climate will ever bring a policy in the foreseeable future that will try to limit population growth.”

Quite right… within the current political climate. So that is what we have got to work on changing.

The last thing we should be doing is resigning ourselves to the whacko future-destroying phenomenon of continuous expansion at all costs.

More and more people, who have realized that recycling and all manner of other improved and alternative technologies are essential for our future wellbeing, are now realizing that they cannot ignore the other side of the supply/demand equation, and simply must address the need to stabilize the whole scale of our operations.

Mr.OMG, can’t you see the paradox between your first and second paragraphs?

You are resigned to the continued momentum strongly away from sustainability, but then you say that we have no choice but to address it!

Listen to the few high-profile enlightened people in this country (most notably Tim Flannery) in regard to population / sustainability issues, and join the groundswell of concern pushing for the paradigm shift away from continuous growth and towards stability in the magnitude of our impact on this continent.

Check out Sustainable Population Australia http://www.population.org.au/

Whatever you do, for goodness sake don’t just sit back and accept the Howard and Costello dogma surrounding their insane continued unending maximized expansionism.

Ludwig, l quite agree, the point l was making is that both are paradoxical yet both need to be address as whole rather than part there of! If anything a balance needs to be sort on population growth and achievable sustainability but, and here l go again, you cannot just halt growth - we as a race got ourselves in this mess by over capitalizing this land, its time we make amends.
I wholeheartedly agree with what Tim Flannery and SPA(cheers for that) say. Unfortunately, I'm a realist and highlighting the problem is one thing, acting upon it is another. The biggest problem that we have now is a government that just focuses on political points scoring at any means, a PM that is driven to be marked in history as great as his hero Menzies. Also, primary production is still our main export..the same industry that utilizes more water and has cause more salinity issues in the pursuit of maximizing it's yield.
The public needs to start to put pressure on this government and demand that the economic surplus start being spent on finding solutions to our water crisis, forget cotton and rice farming (all given startup grants by governments) and at least stick to an agriculture industry that Australia can sustain - then again, come the polls, how many Australians will not remember Howard saying that climate change isn't happening yet he is all about being our Saviour because of climate change - ha!
$10b over 10 years for this so called water scheme, thats a $1b a year...ummm I'm sure we spend more on defense? Wonder if you replanted $1b worth of trees a year do to the environment? Maybe spend $1b a year re-piping all those terracotta water pipes in many suburbs? Or maybe, spend $1b a year covering water channels that are left to open to evaporation? Or just maybe, spend $1b a year on water recycling and desalination plants....hmmm
I wonder if common sense ever plays a part in politics?
Oh it's all too hard...lets just nuke ourselves and end the pain :P

Ludwig, really I do agree with you in principle on the ideal population/sustainability issue. It does impact on water, I know. However, population growth, while not being entirely separate is larger than the original recycling vs desalination question.

Anyway, since you appear not willing to start a thread on it, population growth control is a can of worms that you will find very difficult even in other political climates...

What you will find is that under the unclear "sustainability" goal, you will also find conflicting goals that are quite contradictory. While you don't think that draconian measures will need to be enforced for population control, I think that you will find that they will. Many measures will infringe on many rights (liberty, reproductive etc) that people take for granted at present. Any policy that doesn't even explicitly state these things will often be accused of infringing on these rights by stealth. Just the demographics of an aging population alone will give any politician the willies, especially when Tim Flannery says an "ideal" population is 12 million! Negative population growth? That will play havoc with any number of things including quality of life issues for the aged and take a long time to implement (more than a lifetime). And how do you think you will control those sectors of our community who have policies of little to no birth control (guess who they are) will react to your policies? What you may find is a much more violent reaction than you would expect. All in the name of "sustainability". So, the most obvious course of action for many is to try and increase the resources available, through technology and attempting to lessen demand (without being tyrannical on peoples rights). CountryGal may right and a crash may come, but willfully letting it happen in the hope of a better future afterwards is not a policy to be pursued by the sane.

Spendocrat: I'm somewhat sceptical of the arguments against recycled water myself, though I'd be much more certain if you can direct me to something to back that up.

I've trawled through London's drinking water inspectorate here:

http://www.dwi.gov.uk/

I didn't see any mention of recycled water.

If what you say is accurate, then I'm fine with recycled water.
But everybody seems to just keep parrotting the line that london recycles their water - yet nobody's backing it up.
That's what bothers me - if there is no precedent for using recycled water from a stagnant supply, I think we ought to be told.

Richmond and Windsor on the outskirts of Sydney use recycled water.