In any discussion about managing the future, it is critically important to articulate, as I just did, what you want from it. My question appears straightforward enough but it is surely loaded with presumptions. Most obviously, I'm presuming that the improving of future Australians' quality of life is a task for the community as a whole, acting collectively, and not just one for individuals acting independently. I have to declare my somewhat more visible hand here. I am a meliorist.
Meliorism is the optimistic doctrine that the world can be made better by human effort.
I believe in the ability of societies, acting through the agency of government, to both envisage a better world and to change the world. This in no way means I am convinced that tomorrow's world will be a good place to arrive at. Tomorrow's world may be a bugger of a place which we can do little to avoid, but, if we try to make it better, it's unlikely to be worse than if we hadn't tried. For us, the four horsemen of the Apocalypse are world war, pandemic disease, a global climate shift, and global economic collapse. All are plausible possibilities.