Welcome to Australia's first national community-based futures planning process
We have it in our power to create the world anew
Welcome to Australia Together - a long term plan for Australia by Australians
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Australia Together is a plan for a better Australia currently in draft form.
It is a plan that canvasses aspects of various Visions developed in the last decade by diverse communities of Australians who have worked together to think about the longer term and imagine the future they want for our next generations.
Australia Together organises these Visions to form a coherent picture of a preferred future by 2050. By assembling our diverse aspirations in one place it enables Australians to work together to select the Directions we want to take towards that Vision and the routes we would prefer to avoid. It then enables us to map out and integrate our Targets and Strategies to make our Vision a reality. Because it has an inbuilt monitoring and reporting system, Australia Together also allows us to check whether we are moving towards or away from the Vision and adjust course if necessary.
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A key principle of Australia Together is inclusion. It is founded on a conviction that one of Australia's greatest strengths is our diversity and that if we wish to realise our Vision we will need to work together on a plan which enables all Australians to feel that their future can be assured. It assumes we will succeed by capitalising on our diversity.
Australia Together is in its "starting draft" phase
ACFP is currently developing the what we call the "starting draft" of Australia Together for consideration and discussion by all Australians. The draft is based on extensive research about the current health and wellbeing of the nation, conducted by ACFP's founder, Bronwyn Kelly. This research is published in full in By 2050: Planning a better future for our children in 21st century democratic Australia. Her research in this book focused on two things:
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the state of Australia's society, environment, economy and democracy in the early 2020s, and
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development of a community driven planning methodology to map out acceptable paths to a better future by 2050.
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Drafting of Australia Together is being done by ACFP in a completely transparent process. You can follow the drafts of the plan as they develop and make suggestions. ACFP publishes the incomplete drafts and revisions, additions and deletions. This process commenced in 2020 and is expected to continue through to 2025.
Australia Together includes:
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a Vision Statement which collates expressed opinions about the preferred future of the nation - where everyone can be assured of a place in that future;
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a set of Directions which by which Australians can travel safely to that future, knowing what we will become as a nation and knowing that we can all belong;
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a set of Targets and Strategies that have been optimised and integrated to ensure that we can travel toward our Vision via the preferred routes; and
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Australia's first consolidated National Wellbeing Index complete with:
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baseline data about our quality of life, our social cohesion, our environmental health, our economic strength, the health and strength of our democracy and our standing in international citizenry in the early 2020s, and
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connections between the baseline data points and Targets and Strategies necessary to enable Australians to reach their preferred vision for a better life via the safe routes.
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With the plan and the baseline data for the National Wellbeing Index developed to this level, ACFP was able by 2022 to deliver a report on progress towards the draft Vision for Australia Together. This report is The State of Australia 2022.
Click here to check whether Australia is moving towards or away from the draft
Vision for Australia Together
Current estimate of completion of
Australia Together
Approximately 65%
Australia Together
is being released as a series of drafts.
It is a live planning space that any and all Australians can become involved in.
The idea is to draw people in to refine it – like ‘crowd writing’ but within an organised framework that is flexible enough to help everyone build some confidence about their future.
ACFP is always scanning information about Australian values and preferences for the future to keep the Vision for Australia Together up to date. Significant new research on Australian values is available in a book by ACFP's Founder Bronwyn Kelly, The People's Constitution.
Read The People's Constitution here.
For more information on the sources of the
Vision for Australia Together read our blog article about where the Vision came from here,
or read By 2050.​
The current Vision for Australia Together
The current Vision for Australia Together is a draft for purposes of discussion by Australians.
It has been developed by analysing a range of Vision statements that have been put together already by Australians in an array of community engagement and survey programs conducted in various parts of Australia in the decade to 2020. These include:
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Visions developed by local councils across Australia in consultation with their communities;
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Visions (or approximations of visions) developed by some state governments for the future of their states;
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a Vision for “Australia reMADE”, developed via a wide-ranging community engagement program in 2017 by a group of civil society and environmental organisations in association with the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples;
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a vision of the aspirations of Australians developed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in association with its Measures of Australia's Progress (MAP) program in 2013;
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an “outlook vision” developed by member organisations of the Australian National Outlook 2019 (National Australia Bank, business leaders, universities, non-profits and the CSIRO); and
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a range of other sources including the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the Centre for Policy Development's 2017 Survey "What do Australians Want?"
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The Vision for Australia Together
takes elements of all these visions and puts them together.
It organises them so that for the first time we have a good chance of making them a reality.