Austrlin Futures Project AUSTRALIAN FUTURES PROJECT ANNUAL REPORT 2019-20: A TALE OF TWO HALVES CONTENTS Letters ................................................ 03 Advisory Board ........................................ 05 Team ................................................. 07 AUSTRALIAN FUTURES PROJECT: MAKING THE FIRST HALF: THE FUTURE AUSTRALIA WANTS OUR WORK JUL-DEC 2019 Our country is not maximising and Parliamentary Leaders Program ......................... sharing its success across current and 09 future generations. The longer this continues the worse the long-term Consulting. 12 prospects for Australia become. So, we are dedicated to understanding Thought Leadership .................................... 13 and improving how Australia makes its future. Through rigorous analysis of what experts and the public tell us, we THE SECOND HALF: paint a clear picture of the future Australians want and track Australia’s OUR WORK JAN-JUN 2020 progress. We focus on the decision- making system not the decisions Strategy ............................................... 15 themselves – we call this the ‘how’. And it hasn’t kept pace with a rapidly Communications ....................................... 16 changing world. ............................................. The result has been poor outcomes Program X 17 on almost all of the big issues – these issues are the ‘what’. We believe that Recoding the Future .................................... 18 if we improve how we make decisions in this country it will act as a turbo- Parliamentary Leaders Program ......................... 19 charger for everyone focused on what those decisions need to be. This is a big task. It requires courage, resolve and humility. Courage to The Numbers .......................................... 20 enable difficult conversations, resolve to persist and humility to embrace the Our Supporters ........................................ 21 reality that the best thinking can come from anywhere. Contact ............................................... 22 We are optimistic and believe this can, and will, be achieved by 2030. Together, we can make the future Australia wants. AUSTRALIAN FUTURES PROJECT ANNUAL REPORT 2019/20 | 02 LETTERS FROM OUR CHAIRS Letter from the former Chair, Ivan Wheen As I write this note to you, it is the 10th I am extremely proud of the superb efforts August 2020, at least five months into a by Ralph Aston and his excellent team new COVID-19 reality. Time has slowed in identifying issues and developing and a day feels like a week, a week is a solutions that are useful and instructive to month, and a month is now a year of old. Australians on many levels. Our economy was slowing early in 2020 This is truly important work. and is now in recession. The health crisis has created an economic crisis and we We are in a period of rapid and profound are at a point where decisions have to be change, it’s a time to be creative, decisive made often and quickly on limited and and bold. opposing snippets of intelligence. Our I would like to thank all of our supporters, leaders require clarity, common sense, donors, my friends on the Advisory Board an ability to gather imperfect information, and our superb staff. make quick decisions and communicate effectively and compassionately. Also, I am extremely pleased to report to you that Alexandra Burt has succeeded Changes in retail, education, healthcare, me as chair of our Advisory Board. I could transport, food, communications and not ask for a more energetic, able and commercial real estate have been so wise person to help Ralph steer Australian rapid and profound that we will likely Ivan Wheen Futures Project in these challenging times. Former Chair resurface into a new world that will be quite different to the old world. I do hope that you can join us to create traction as Australia faces such critical This is a time when leadership can times, because the more of us caring galvanise a nation or a lack of leadership Australians that can put their shoulder to could pull Australia apart. This is a the wheel the better. perfect time for our leaders to step up to the challenge, be they in government or the opposition. Similarly, for leaders in business, healthcare, first responders and education, it is a time to focus on important long-term objectives whilst solving near-term problems. Australian Futures Project is driven by the mantra of helping Australians focus on building a stronger, fairer and more open nation over the longer term. Never has our work been more relevant than it is today. AUSTRALIAN FUTURES PROJECT ANNUAL REPORT 2019/20 | 03 LETTERS FROM OUR CHAIRS Letter from the current Chair, Alexandra Burt I have been guilty at times of feeling is efficient, smart and ambitious. Ralph overwhelmed by the issues facing Ashton, his extraordinary team, and the Australia in the 21st century. They are talent that surrounds them achieve all of numerous, complex, interwoven and this with a grace and efficacy that is truly challenging. They can feel heavy, weighing admirable. It is giving me, and so many us down and holding us back from doing others, the luxury of hope in this complex and being our best; holding us back from and challenging world. feeling positive about the future. My thanks go to my fellow Advisory Tackling issues individually, though noble, Board members for their time, energy and is flawed. For me, and for everyone at support and for the transition and growth Australian Futures Project, the big prize is ahead. I would particularly like to pay a tackling the totality of the future-making vote of thanks to Ivan Wheen, whose calm system. Recognising the drawbacks of and steady hand has guided Australian the current system – that it is out of date Futures Project to its current position and and serves an older paradigm – is only to its current state of readiness which, part of the work. What we also need to as you will see from Ralph’s letter, is a do is to create and enable a frictionless, pretty exciting place to be. It is humbling self-propelling eco-system that is also to be stepping into Ivan’s shoes at this self-healing when damaged and has the auspicious time. Alexandra Burt ability to evolve. Such systems are the Current Chair norm in the natural world and can be an Finally, on behalf of the entire team, I most inspiration to us now. sincerely thank our donors, partners and supporters, without whom the work we do It is important to highlight that what would not be possible. That sounds like distinguishes Australian Futures Project a common refrain, but it is, quite simply, from other organisations that seem similar true. Thank you. is its balanced focus on both research (passive) and solutions (active). To deliver effective and lasting change, we need to have expertise and strategies in both. Coming into the Chair role in 2020, I am both honoured and proud to be working alongside the gifted minds that sit on the Advisory Board and in the team. Together, we perform alternating roles of masters and pupils as we explore, understand, and imagine better ways of making Australia’s future. The collaborative and dynamic culture that is the beating heart of the organisation is driving the necessary analysis, insight and creativity to come up with solutions. As an organisation it AUSTRALIAN FUTURES PROJECT ANNUAL REPORT 2019/20 | 04 ADVISORY BOARD Alexandra Burt Co-Founder, Nigel Andrade Partner and Member of Kate Chaney Director, Innovation and The Landsmith Collection the Board of Directors, Kearney Strategy, Anglicare WA Lisa Cotton CEO, Ideology Group Professor John Dewar Vice-Chancellor, Jono Gourlay Head of Investment, Retired from Advisory Board La Trobe University Advisory, Mutual Trust during the financial year Alan Oakley Former Editor, News Corp Rachel Peck Principal, Peck Von Ivan Wheen Principal, Nanuk Australia and Fairfax Media Hartel Architects Asset Management Retired from Advisory Board during the financial year AUSTRALIAN FUTURES PROJECT ANNUAL REPORT 2019/20 | 05 LETTER FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR better system of politics, building more streamlining our strategy, and building the constructive bridges between politicians size and capabilities of our team. and the media, and equipping influential leaders in Australia with insights and calls As a start-up charity with no endowed to action from our research and analysis. institutional backing, funding has always been a challenge. Ironically for We continued our history of working an organisation focussed on long-term with universities by supporting UNSW’s outcomes, financial insecurity has kept Grand Challenge on trust, we ran our us focussed on week-by-week survival, most successful Parliamentary Leaders hampering our own ability to plan for the Program ever also in partnership with long term. In what I hope serves as a role UNSW, we hosted a roundtable with model for other philanthropists across politicians and journalists and editors on Australia, we were unleashed from this constructive journalism, we made our survival mentality by a forward-thinking debut on ABC TV’s Q&A program, and gesture from Alexandra and Julian Burt. we gave boardroom presentations to the Already major supporters, they also incoming partners at KMPG and the board extended a half-a-million-dollar overdraft and editorial board of The Conversation. facility to give us cashflow certainty over 2020 and 2021. Without this, we INWARD: LAYING STRONG would not have been able to get to this FOUNDATIONS FOR THE moment of clarity and transformation. But, DECADE AHEAD before you close your own chequebooks, As we began the new year, we turned our this is not a donation and we still need Ralph Ashton efforts to setting ourselves up for success your support to fund the ambitious and Executive Director over the coming decade. This included important work we have ahead of us! addressing weaknesses identified in a SWOT analysis and moving from a Thank you to Alexandra and Julian and founder-based organisation to a mature all our generous funders and in-kind organisation with responsibility and supporters, most of whom have been with The past financial year has been a tale control distributed more widely across us since the very early days.