As a futurist, I read a lot of reports about the future of work, society, tech, and so on. My latest light bedtime reading was the recent 2026 Intergenerational Report, from the Australian Treasury. It’s been published since 2002, and is now in its seventh edition.
It’s a 300+ page report, so you could be forgiven for not reading it all! After all, that’s my job, right? Yep, so let’s dive in – and I’ll show you how to make it useful to you as a leader.
First, the report is very useful, because it gives us a glimpse into the next 40 years for Australia – tackling areas like demographic shifts, tech impact, and more.
You don’t need to read it in detail, but skim it with three questions in mind.
1. What’s almost certain?
Some of the future has already happened or is highly predictable.
For example, everybody who will turn 65 in the next 40 years has already been born, so demographic trends move slowly and predictably. The number of Australians aged 85 and over will triple in the next 40 years, and pass a million within ten years. This is significant, and we’ve known this for a long time. But are you including this in your projections for your ideal customer, your employee mix, and the political landscape?
You can plan for trends like these with confidence.
2. What’s truly uncertain?
AI will have a profound impact, but that impact depends on how it grows, where it grows, and how widely and deeply we adopt it. Geopolitics is even harder to call: Conflicts between countries rose from two in 2023 to eight in 2025.
The report doesn’t pretend to predict how these play out, so it models higher and lower scenarios. That’s a good habit for you and other leaders – consider these questions:
- What if this trend accelerated?
- What if this trend stalled (or disappeared)?
- What if this trend reversed?
3. What does this mean for us this year?
Obviously, for the near-certainties, ask what you need to start now, because these trends won’t wait. For the uncertainties, ask which early signs to watch and monitor so you can change direction early.
4. Practise future scenarios thinking.
(Yes, I said three questions, but this is not a question, ha ha!)
The Intergenerational Report is useful, but don’t wait for reports before you act, and don’t rely only on these reports. We all have a one-way ticket to the future, so you should be looking into the future regularly.
Here are some examples of organisations acting on a long-term view:
- In Japan, the town of Yahaba invited residents to don ceremonial robes and play the role of people living in 2060. As a result, they supported higher water charges to maintain ageing infrastructure, and the town raised them.
- In Denmark, DONG Energy set a goal in 2009 to flip its energy production from 85% fossil fuels to 85% renewables by 2040. It reached that goal in 2019 and renamed itself Ørsted.
- In Singapore, the public service has used scenario planning since the late 1980s, and its Centre for Strategic Futures builds foresight skills across government.
- In Wales, a 2015 law requires public bodies to consider the long-term impact of their decisions, and a Future Generations Commissioner holds them to account.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll share some specific things from the report you might find useful.
In the meantime, which of the report’s near-certainties will reach your organisation in the next five years – and what are you doing about it now?
