The Future Of Australia

On a stormy Monday morning not too far from now, 38-year-old Sarah Smith wakes alone and activates the wafer-thin organic LED screen that covers an entire wall in her pokey inner-city high-rise apartment. The monitor flickers to life, and Sarah surfs through her diary, emails and favourite news programs before checking in via video link to the office.



Afterwards, Sarah sips on a cup of fair trade coffee, slips into a sustainable-cotton frock and flicks the switch on her robot vacuum cleaner. Next, she glides to the street in the solar-powered lift and jumps into her electric car – essential now that petrol is $3 a litre.

Like many of her friends, Sarah's an executive, but, since she works flexible hours, today she's meeting girlfriends for a book club breakfast. All singles like her, they're Sarah's surrogate family because the majority of men her age are either married, working overseas or in remote mining towns.

But Sarah's not fussed about the man drought. She has more pressing concerns: should she book a voluntourism holiday to a space station dedicated to organic horticulture, or join her friends on a scuba-diving getaway to help preserve a coral reef in Tahiti? Welcome to the year 2020. Here's what we might expect...

Nine-to-five no more
Women will account for 46 per cent of the workforce (from 45.3 per cent* today), but more Australians will work part time (33 per cent compared to 28.4 per cent now**). While the median age will be 38 (up from 36.9 today#) more of our colleagues will be over 65 due to growth in "grey power". Women will hold more management roles, and forecasters expect a change in leadership style to one that is more collaborative, motivational and engaged. Though the gender pay gap will have narrowed, male dominance in high-risk areas, such as mining, mean it won't have disappeared.

Marriage is no longer forever
Trend forecaster Bernard Salt puts divorce on average at the nine-year mark. Because of the man drought and the higher efficiency of IVF over natural conception, we'll rely more on artificial fertilisation, with sex simply a leisure activity.

On the road
Some estimates say the price of petrol will double by 2020, which will drive motoring innovations to new heights. While quality and comfort will remain paramount, "zero emissions" will be the ultimate status symbol. So Designer Nicolas Stone's concept car for Hyundai - powered by electricity created by photosynthesis - could be the cult car de jour.

It's a woman's world
Today, there are more men than women in Australia - but only up to the age of 35, when the ratio reverses due to higher male mortality rates. Bernard Salt says in 10 years time, this will be an even stronger norm. "The man drought is very real," he warns. "By 2020, the average 49-year-old woman is likely to have as much chance of meeting a man her age as a 79-year-old woman does." The answer? "Younger men, ladies," says Salt. Whatever age our partner is, we'll wait longer to tie the knot. The average first-time bride in 2020 will be 29, compared to 27 now.

Food of choice
Fast food will give way to a "slow food" boom, predicts David Carruthers of SlowDown!@Harley Court restaurant in Melbourne. "We've got to the point where kids think vegetables come from the supermarket," he says. "That's going to change. There will be more knowledge about food and choices made based on that."

Population overload
Australia's population will have swollen to around 25 million. Due to the continued decline in the birthrate and increased life expectancy, the median age will be around 38, older than the current 36.9.

Kid-free zones
The average age of motherhood will drop from around 31* today to the late 20s as women make more definite choices about parenthood. But as the birthrate continues to decline, the demographic story will be complex. "There'll be more non-parents in the young adult population than ever before and we'll have moved even further towards more over-parenting," says demographer Hugh Mackay, who adds that society will become less child-friendly. "By 2020, there will be more child-free restaurants, apartment blocks and resorts. There might even be child-free zones on international flights," he adds.

Vacation, vacation, vacation
International travel has doubled in the past 10 years and is forecast to reach nearly 10 million trips a year by 2020 - a growth of four per cent every year over the next decade. But what is also going to change is the way that we travel. "We will move away from looking, observing and sightseeing to really experiencing things - not just visiting archaeological sites, but actually digging there," says the Tourism and Transport Forum's Evan Hall. Holidays in outer space won't be out of the question, either, explains Leon van Schaik, professor of architecture at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. The utopian designs of today's architecture graduates are of space stations with lifestyle - not just life-support - aspects to them. "Who'd have thought 10 years ago that there would be more than 10 different companies offering to take you on private space travel?" he says.

Inspecting gadgets
The brand-new MXP4 music format will let us add effects to files, making recordings interactive. "You'll get whatever you want when you want it - at a price,” says Graham Thorburn of the Australian Film, Television and Radio School. "TV, cinema and portable devices will all become part of the same continuum." 3D will be commonplace and TV remotes will be loaded with features for switching between applications. Organic LED will replace the plasma TVs. "These are very thin and they're different to the existing technology because they don't have any backlighting," says Gordon Gay of NEC Australia. "You'll be able to make a whole wall of them, or clad an entire building. They'll enable you to change room colour, and watch TV concurrently with other applications."

Celebrity status
Our celebrity obsession will continue, but with a difference. "A lot more people have the ability to put up videos of themselves on the internet. That will change the types of people who become famous," says Professor Catharine Lumby of UNSW's Journalism and Media Research Centre.

Home, sweet home
Nearly one in three households will be one-person units, while another 30 per cent will have just two people. "It doesn't mean there will be a lot of Australians wanting to live solitary lives, it just means that more people will be undergoing episodes of living solo because of a higher divorce rate," says Mackay. Inner-city density will explode in 2020, with Hong Kong's high-rise model the worst-case scenario. "We have a choice. We could go the Barcelona way," explains Professor van Schaik. It has a higher population density than Hong Kong, yet few of its buildings are taller than 12 storeys. Professor Van Schaik says we'll see growth in "exurbia", with "a lot of rich people living on big blocks in big houses in formerly strictly rural areas".