Consider this before retiring interstate

The place where you pay most tax may not be the place where you demand most services. Picture: Glenn Campbell

I have built a career around interpreting demographic trends likely to shape the future business environment. Some of these trends are self-evident, like ageing, like the falling fertility rate, like the sunbelt drift largely to Queensland in the case of Australia but also to places like Florida in the US and the Costa Brava in Spain.

I have come to learn that it isn’t so much the trend that engages the community as it is the interpretation. For example, an ageing community raises questions about healthcare and pension support. Falling fertility rates have typically prompted a discussion around the need for a skilled migration program to deliver the necessary workforce and to support an otherwise ailing tax base.

The concept of working and paying local taxes in one community (say Melbourne) and then retiring “up north” and rightfully demanding access to, say, healthcare services was not an issue one or two generations ago because most workers retired close to home. I would argue that this is an issue today because we’re a more mobile society. And so the place where you pay most tax may not be the place where you demand most services.

Of course, the idea of macro trends shaping a future agenda isn’t restricted to the world of demographics. Any assessment of Australia at 2030 will include chapters on climate change, renewable energy, technology or – and this is a recent (popular) concern – the rise of AI.

Also of concern is the topic of geopolitical shifts. There is angst that the global settings established after WWII are being challenged on several fronts. It prompts the question of how this might play out, and whether alliances and supply chains should be reconsidered.

Over 30 years of engaging with the business community on future trends, including risks, I can’t recall anyone citing the word “pandemic”. This raises an interesting question. Had we known 10 years ago how a pandemic might play out, what preventative and/or ameliorative actions might we have taken? One might have been to develop a local vaccine manufacturing facility. Another might be to bring more of our manufacturing requirements “back home” – although without the prompt of a pandemic I doubt that idea would have been accepted.

I would also argue that completion of the NBN just prior to the pandemic was critical. It enabled up to 40 per cent of the workforce (based on census data) to work from home using optic fibre cable as opposed to possibly overloading the telephone network.

The point I am making is that consideration of future trends and risks requires a measure of boldness, a capacity for lateral thinking. It also requires a “safe space” for non-conventional ideas to be publicly explored.

Maybe future thinking should step beyond the technical, geopolitical and demographic worlds into the fraught space of interpreting social change. It is time for bold thinking about the common values we hold and the kind of society we want to bequeath to the next generation – but we will need to create a safe environment to talk through the kind of Australia we can all get behind and project into the 21st century.

Now that is the kind of discussion we need to have about the future!