Welcome to Australia's first national community-based futures planning process

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Learn about National Integrated Planning & Reporting - National IP&R

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Why plan Australia's future?

All Australians have their own dreams about what a better future should look like in our democratic country. But we don't organise ourselves to make that future a reality. Instead we tend to rely on our governments to lead us to an ever better world with an ever improving quality of life.

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Unfortunately, our state and federal governments are also not organised to lead us efficiently to this better world. Leadership requires planning, and in 2020 our governments at the state and federal level are doing little if any of that. Some governments work on the assumption that planning is pointless and impractical and that our prosperity is better left to the invisible hand of unregulated markets. But this is not working well for Australians in the early 2020s.

Despite what our governments and politicians may claim, Australia in 2021 has:

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• no plans in place to put together the strongest components of a new and resilient economy or to smooth the peaks and troughs of economic development,

• no genuine coordinated plans to seize the extraordinary opportunities in shifting to a decarbonised economy,

• no plans to reduce growing inequality, 

• few if any plans that properly protect the environment and climate on which we and our economy depend,

• no plans to protect or strengthen our democracy and rights as citizens, and

• no plans to involve Australians in discussing the nation that we want to become.

Nor will our governments develop these plans until we the people provide them with a vital missing piece of information - a clear idea of:

• where we want to go in our future,

• what we want to be as a nation,

• the world we want to leave our children and grandchildren, and

• how we prefer to get there.

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Australian Community Futures Planning has been established to provide a space and an efficient, orderly process that Australians can use together to specify our preferred future and tell governments how we want to get there.

Without that we can't expect to arrive at better future by 2050,

no matter how much we might dream of it.

Australia Together

is shaping up to be an exciting plan about what we can become as a nation, if we work together.

​Any and all Australians can become involved in building the plan. 

The origins of Australian Community Futures Planning

ACFP is focused on helping Australians plan for the long term, for our safety, security, wellbeing and prosperity and for the preservation of the environment on which all of that depends. It fosters planning by the community for the community.

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Australians may not necessarily realise they can do this. But they can.

With National IP&R,

Australians have it in their power to make the world anew.

This is an entirely new opportunity. To ensure we do it well, ACFP has been established following the publication of By 2050 by its author Dr Bronwyn Kelly.  This book sets out for the first time a process and set of techniques that any and all Australians can use together to:

• design a plan for the future we want to share,

• monitor its progress, and

• hold governments and all other players to account for their reasonable part in making the vision of our plan a reality.

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The process and techniques are called National Integrated Planning & Reporting or National IP&R. Integrated Planning & Reporting has been operating for over a decade in Australia in many local communities but has never yet been used to plan for an entire nation. In By 2050, Dr Kelly has lifted IP&R to a national level to substantially enhance its capacity to help Australians develop an exciting plan for the future they want to seize.

National IP&R can not only help Australians plan for a better society, environment and democracy, it can also help plan an entire national economy - a strong economy that is for people. The intention of National IP&R and ACFP is to help Australians identify the most efficient and least painful paths towards greater prosperity and wellbeing for all. 

ACFP hopes that excitement will grow among Australians about the possibilities of national community futures planning.

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We are just starting up but we have a good foundation from By 2050 and we welcome any and all Australians to take the opportunity of becoming involved in building our first national plan:

Australia Together

Click here

for more information on

By 2050

or you can read excerpts from

By 2050 on the ACFP blog here.

Click here for more information on National IP&R

Click here for more information on Australia's first national community futures plan,

Australia Together.

The State of Australia in 2020

By 2050 contains two main strands of research:

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• One strand is about how to establish an efficient and inclusive democracy in Australia.

• The second strand is about the issues and challenges Australia is facing at the outset of the 2020s and our current capacity as a nation to deal with those challenges.

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By 2050 connects up over 800 statistical data points and observations of researchers, journalists, historians, economists, and policy commentators. Because it puts all this in one place, it functions as a consolidated issues paper on the State of Australia, marking a point in time – the beginning of the 2020s.

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By 2050 sets up a clear picture of where we are starting from in 2020 as we design a plan for what we want to achieve and become as a nation by 2050 or sooner.

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Sadly Australia is not in a good state. Click here to find out more about the State of Australia in 2020.

By 2050

Two strands of research

Click here to find out about the

State of Australia in 2020