The future Australia wants depends on the environment, society, and the economy. They are tightly connected and it’s not helpful to elevate one completely or deny another altogether. Frustratingly, some loud voices do just that, and it’s a favourite high-school debating tactic of those involved in the culture wars. It’s prevalent on the left and the right.
It is useful, however, to acknowledge some simple logic. You can’t have a society (let alone a thriving one) for very long without a functioning environment. You can’t have a functioning economy for very long without a healthy environment. And – often lost in the fog of incessant coverage of the stock market, the exchange rate, and GDP data – an economy is largely a human invention and only worth having if it serves society as a whole. On the flip side, you can have an environment without society or an economy. And you can have (a form of) society without an (elaborate) economy.
Faced with the coronavirus pandemic, by enforcing social distancing and increasing social welfare, decision-makers in Australia chose to prioritise social outcomes over the economy while noting how interwoven they are. Faced with a surging China, by allocating $270,000,000,000 over ten years to the military, they chose to prioritise long-term defence of Australian society over short-term “budget repair”.
Two things stand out. First, these were active choices, not foregone conclusions. Australia’s leaders were not forced down these paths. On the pandemic, leaders in other countries chose differently, with different outcomes. Second, when confronting major challenges, Australia does not always prioritise society over the economy, or the long-term over the short-term. Consider obesity, affordable housing, climate change, tax reform, and childcare.
That might all sound a bit abstract. Let’s couch it in terms of what Australians want and what they feel they have. Here’s a glance at what we know.
Research for the Australian Futures Project showed that the top six things Australians want for the country are that it cares for the elderly and disadvantaged, provides affordable housing, employment opportunities, effective healthcare, and holds people accountable for their actions. Economic growth came tenth.
When it comes to more immediate concerns, both our own The Perfect Candidate and the ABC’s Australia Talks revealed similar pictures. Australians are most concerned about climate change, saving enough for retirement, their own or a family member’s health, affording a home, and having enough money to get by. Clearly, Australians want an economy, but they want it to serve society, not the other way around.
However, our research has found there’s an almost complete mismatch between Australians’ desires and concerns on the one hand and their day-to-day experience on the other. When asked to describe life in Australia, the top six things Australians say are bureaucracy, wasted resources, uncertainty about the future, freedom of speech (the only positive in this list), blame, and corruption.
So, why, in a country as wealthy as Australia do the gaps persist? Why, in a country that can make and accept radical decisions when it comes to COVID-19 with far-reaching social and economic impacts and can allocate hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to defence just as a once-in-a-generation recession takes hold, doesn’t Australia take the steps necessary to move to the country Australia wants?
We’ve been asking these questions since we began the Australian Futures Project nine years ago. Agreement is widespread among leaders, experts and the public that the way Australia makes its future is not working.
From our conversations with hundreds of leaders and experts from all walks of life, analysis of our own and other publicly-available polling and data, and a review of the research, we know that there are four key underlying drivers: a lack of vision, a lack of leadership, a lack of capability for the 21st Century, and a lack of trust.
If this were a road trip, you could think of it as heading out without a destination in mind, without a driver, without knowing how to drive a car, and without any confidence that anyone would follow the road rules or that the traffic police would be fair. You probably wouldn’t get very far, if you bothered heading out at all.
But concrete, evidence-backed ideas to solve this fundamental challenge are few and far between. And no one is building consensus among those with insights and power to effect positive change. Despite a world-ranked public service, top-rated cities, and decades of economic growth, as a nation we are failing to maximise and share our successes across current and future generations.
Even before the first recession in three decades, 14% of Australians were expecting their lives in three to four years to get worse, not better and almost two-thirds felt the next generation will be worse off than their parents. With trust in government at a record low, wage growth stagnating, and extinction rates increasing, can you blame them?
In response, we have created Recoding the Future, a solutions-focussed research program that will deeply engage stakeholders over the next three years to collectively understand, and then work together to identify and implement solutions that improve, how Australia makes its future. Australia cannot achieve what the public wants for the future until we improve how Australia makes its future.
We’ll be keeping you up to date as we progress. Meanwhile, please join the conversation on Twitter and Facebook. Please keep it curious, optimistic, and constructive. How would you describe how Australia makes its future? How much say do you feel you have? Where are the biggest opportunities for improving how Australia makes its future and increasing your say?
Together, we can understand and improve how Australia makes its future. Together, we can make the future Australia wants.