What Australia might be like in 40 years
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is a Squiz Podcast. We're your shortcut to being informed.
Good morning, I'm Andrew Williams.
And I'm Anna Paikett.
It's Monday the 21st of September in your Squiz Today. Looking forward to what Australia might be like in 2066. The US and Greenland have reached a deal. The AFL has a contender for its best game of all time and paying tribute to John Farnham. This is your Squiz Today. Treasurer Jim Chalmers is set to release the Albanese government's latest intergenerational report today. This is a document from the Treasury Department that basically tries to predict what current government policies mean Aussie life will be like 40 years from now. It's sort of like a long range economic weather forecast. And Chalmers sounded a bit like a meteorologist with bad news yesterday when he was talking about what might be in it.
He did. He said the report is a confronting one that lays out some serious economic challenges to come in the years ahead. The big one over the coming decades will be our ageing population. So come 2066, women born in Australia are expected to live until around 90 and men to 86. That's about four years more on average. And while Chalmers said that's a tick for our approach to health, it is putting pressure on the budget. So more pensions, more stress on our health and aged care systems, things like that.
All of those things will cost money. And the report also reckons our population will grow more slowly than the last prediction we had in the last intergenerational report back in 2023, according to this one. We'll have 1.8 million fewer people than we thought. Now, that means fewer working age people paying tax to keep the budget afloat and more people who will be drawing pensions from it. That creates an economic problem. It'll cost us more money. And that brings us to another big talking point that's going to come out of all of this, which is debt.
You might expect all of that to put more pressure on our debt, which recently cracked $1 trillion, but not according to this report, which reckons it'll be about $500 billion lower than the 2023 report predicted. Now, that's based on an assumption that our growth in productivity, which is how much we produce in each hour we work, will rise to 1.2%. The catch is, to get to that number, this report has switched to using the average for the last 30 years, but that doesn't reflect more recent stats.
What does the new Intergenerational Report say about Australia’s future in 2066?
So, it's been 0.3% for the last 10 and 0.8% for the last 20.
And if you were to use that 20-year average instead, like the last report did, then that whole $500 billion improvement evaporates. So, Coalition Treasury spokesman Tim Wilson has called foul on that. He says the government is cooking the books to make the numbers look a bit better. Now, the reason we cast forward about all of this is to work out what government policies we should have in place now. That's why it's relevant at the moment. And the big variable in all of this is artificial intelligence, which the report says could push productivity up. But how far and how much we adopt it is an open question. So we'll see plenty of discussion around all of these topics over the course of the day when the report is officially tabled.
We'll move over to New South Wales now, where three women have been killed in what police say are separate domestic violence incidents involving men they knew over the weekend. Officers say a 90-year-old from Bondi Beach, a 23-year-old from Wagga Wagga, and a 70-year-old in Mull River, which is in the northern Tablelands, were allegedly murdered all on Saturday.
These incidents took place within hours of one another and three suspects have been charged and are being held by police. We've heard from the state's leaders. New South Wales Premier Chris Minns said the crimes were shocking and state coalition leader Kelly Sloan said Australia was failing women across the country. We've also heard from Federal Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek, who said society and governments owe these women more than our sorrow. According to the latest figures, one woman is killed by a current or former partner every 11 days on average in Australia.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–2:21
2
What does the new Intergenerational Report say about Australia’s future in 2066?
2:21–5:03
3
How are ageing demographics expected to impact Australia’s budget and pensions?
5:03–7:26
4
What are the main criticisms of the Treasury’s productivity assumptions?
7:26–9:49
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from Squiz Today
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