What would the Australians of 1925 think of our country today?

In the hundred years since 1925, church-going has lost favour and divorce has been made easier. Indigenous Australians are better recognised. Women remain in the workforce after marriage. Much has changed – but would past generations be critical?

A city called the Gold Coast would be news to someone from 1925. Picture: Getty

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It’s a question that no one reading this column will live to answer: what will Australia look like 100 years hence? What new cities will emerge? What will work look like? Is prosperity assured?

Imagine going back to 1925 and advising the locals about what the future holds. Some might see it as exciting and confronting. Others might be critical of the century ahead: after all, it’s an era that kicked off with a Great Depression and was followed by a world war. But after those calamities, Australia prospered socially and economically. Women would return to the workforce after marriage. A city called the Gold Coast would emerge. We would grow rich by selling resources to China. Church-going would lose favour and divorce would be made easier. And Indigenous Australians would be better recognised.

These days, church-going has lost favour. Picture: istock

According to the UN, over the coming century world population will peak at just over 10 billion – up two billion from today – and then subside. The driving force behind this megatrend is controlled fertility. Fewer people means reduced demand for our resources; but prior to peak world population in around 2075 it means increased demand for our resources. So, prosperity prevails for the next half-century.

By 2071 Australia is projected to have a population of 39 million. This will rise further to around the mid-40s mark by century’s end, and may rise further to 50 million by 2125 if Australia still presents as a place of opportunity for young, skilled immigrants. And if this is the outlook, our biggest cities must expand further and new cities must emerge.

By 2071, Australia is projected to have a population of 39 million. Picture: istock

Demographic bubbles like the Baby Boomers and Millennials will have long since departed by 2125. By that time families will likely be smaller and life expectancy longer (perhaps into the nineties). Work will be less muscular. Output per worker or productivity will be greater. Spending on those in need will be regarded as an investment in civic justice.

Many workers will decide how and from where they deliver workplace value. Less constrained by the need to regularly commute, Australians will more densely settle the seachange zones that abut our major cities.

But what is missing from this future vision of Australia is the personal, the intimate, the everyday way of life. Smaller families over generations diminish the idea of cousins, uncles, aunties. And longer-living grandparents will likely play a greater role in child care, in passing on knowledge, in transferring wealth.

This future Australia will be a place of opportunity for many, but for others there is something missing: the support of an engaged extended family – the wider tribe from which family members emerge. It provides a sense of place, a kinship of shared stories, a pool of traits and of personalities that coalesce to form who you are. I’m not quite sure what a world disconnected from extended family, from tribe, ultimately looks like.

Does it matter? I think ultimately it does matter. Family shapes and anchors people and behaviour. Without that base there is, at scale, a greater sense of disconnection, of aloneness.

Perhaps this is something we can start working on now – creating better connected communities to strengthen Australia now and across the coming century.