Bernard Salt to deliver speech at Future Tasmania event

Demographer Bernard Salt is urging Tasmanians to seize the moment, think boldly and with ambition as the state heads toward 2050. DETAILS >

Picture: Tim Carrafa

DEMOGRAPHER Bernard Salt is urging Tasmanians to seize the moment, think boldly and with ambition as the state heads towards 2050.

Mr Salt will be the keynote speaker at the Mercury’s Future Tasmania lunch event on Friday, March 31 and will deliver an address on what Tasmania could look like in 2050 and beyond if the community takes advantage of the lead it holds in the renewable energy space.

“I think that we will look back in 2040 and see that the world shifted with Covid,” Mr Salt told the Mercury.

“Covid is effectively a three-plus-year event at the same scale as a war. The first world war was four years, the Covid effect has been three years if you look at tourism and skills and the like.”

He said an event of that scale changes people, the nature of the economy, and it changes attitudes.

Demographer Bernard Salt is coming to Tasmania on March 31 as part of Future Tasmania. Picture: Tim Carrafa

He believes that coming out of the pandemic there was a generational shift.

“The Baby Boomers move on, and Millennials start to move into their late-30s and 40s and start taking the reins fully,” Mr Salt said.

“In other words, there’s a new generation, there’s a sense of a new beginning, there’s a sense that we are pressing the reset button.

“There’s been a Ctrl, Alt, Delete moment.”

He said along with that change there had been a shift in attitudes towards climate and energy, a sector where Tasmania was not only leading the nation, but the world.

“What we’re looking at, I think, is a shift towards renewables, not by a component of the population that has always been supportive of this, but I think it’s shifting mainstream,” he said.

“There is a younger generation with, frankly, younger perspectives of what is important. And a determination coming out of the three-plus years of adversity to recast Australia and the state in a different direction, in a way that we feel is a better quality and a better form of prosperity, and that is through energy efficiency.”

Mr Salt believes that change started before the pandemic with the bushfires, and more recently with the floods in Queensland and Northern NSW.

“There’s a sense of coming out the other side, and we’re determined to not waste this opportunity and to create a better way of generating sustainable energy in the future,” Mr Salt said.

The Gordon Dam taken by Phil Harris

“From my perspective, from a demographic perspective, I say now the timing is right.

“After adversity ... after the Second World War, there was a determination to create a better version of society.

“We haven’t quite had a war, but it’s been the same lasting galvanising period of time.”

Mr Salt also revealed that during the pandemic another curious thing happened to Tasmania’s population.

“In addition to all that, there is this sort of re-energisation of Tassie that the ABS has found 25,000 extra people in Tasmania,” Mr Salt said.

“That could well be mainlanders escaping the ring of steel or it could be Tasmanians coming back home from the mainland or from overseas, or wherever.

“Or it could be people simply attracted to the safety and the security of Tasmania.

“But that injects a five percentage-point increase into the population base, with skills, with experience, with connections, with perhaps capital raising capacity, who knows.

“There’s been a demographic injection into Tasmania. And it’s a question of how we can actually foster the entrepreneurship and the energy and the capabilities of those people coming home or seeking refuge in our state.

Bernard Salt

“But, again, it comes down to this idea that this is a unique opportunity – we need to seize the moment, we need to think boldly, and with ambition.”

Mr Salt said in the three hours from midday to 3pm at the lunch event on March 31, he wanted to see and hear bold and ambitious ideas.

“I want people to think of metrics for how we can take this state forward and make Australia a better place by 2040,” he said.

“If you want to be part of it, jump on board, come to lunch.”

Tickets for the event are $150, which includes a lunch and beverage package, or $135 each for tables of 10.

To be part of the think-tank, tickets are available at futuretasmania2023.splashthat.com.

Future tasmania art