Building Together: Turning Momentum into Lasting Reform
From Tasmania to Western Australia, advocates, academics, and political champions are rallying behind policy innovation that combats the short-term thinking that is undermining the wellbeing of both current and future generations of Australians.
To turn this energy into lasting transformation, we at Foundations for Tomorrow have identified some essential considerations to guide our next steps.
Two Powerful Shifts Define Our Political Opportunity
The growing support for Future Generations Policy. Australians are demanding leadership beyond the next election, civil society advocacy is building momentum, and political champions are stepping up across parties. However, follow-through into transformational reform agendas is proving challenging.
There is a growing appetite for generational reform. Although it is still too often framed narrowly. At present, "generational reform" is most often used in economic or fiscal terms. That framing matters, but it risks shrinking a transformative agenda into another budget exercise. Our challenge is to expand this lens, ensuring that economic resilience connects to environmental sustainability, cultural renewal, and social fairness.
These shifts create real political opportunity. But capitalising on them requires navigating the challenges ahead with precision.
1. Terminology and Coherence
Language is never neutral. At the federal level, our political champions speak of "the wellbeing of current and future generations." States are experimenting with "intergenerational wellbeing", and discussions of "wellbeing economy" continue based on decades of sustained advocacy. With growing traction in the space, intergenerational fairness and equity, intergenerational, long-term and future generations thinking are all entering the popularised lexicon of Australian policy enthusiasts. However, this language breeds inconsistency and a lack of accessibility.
Risks:
Fragmentation of language: Different jurisdictions and actors using inconsistent terminology (e.g. “future generations”, “intergenerational wellbeing”, “wellbeing economy”) can confuse stakeholders, dilute messaging, and undermine national coherence.
Narrow economic framing: Framing future generations policy primarily as an economic project risks sidelining environmental, cultural, and social dimensions. It may limit ambition and exclude critical perspectives.
Policy-heavy jargon: Overly academic or policy-heavy language risks alienating the public. Without plain, relatable framing, the agenda may struggle to resonate or build widespread support.
Opportunities and considerations:
Local innovation, national coherence: Support states and territories in their efforts to localise and embed nuance in their implementation whilst maintaining strong national connections for knowledge sharing and maintaining a cohesive national narrative.
Bridge to the wellbeing economy: Position future generations policy and the wellbeing economy as overlayed agendas. The former provides the institutional guardrails, the latter defines a strategic pathway and economic purpose.
Meet leaders where they are: Engage with terms like generational reform that already resonate with political champions, while carefully broadening them to encompass social, cultural, and environmental dimensions, not just economic ones.
Accessibility matters: Translate abstract or technical concepts (intergenerational equity, long-termism, etc.) into plain, relatable language so that everyday Australians can see themselves in the story.
2. Sequencing and Political Appetite
Momentum is building, but timing and order matter. Reforms must be sequenced to build legitimacy, align with political appetite, and avoid common traps that leave investment, progress and/or reform vulnerable to backsliding. Early, visible wins can lay the groundwork for deeper, lasting change, and champions for this agenda should be cautious of over extending political or resource investment into strategies such as index or dashboard creation without adequate political will or civic engagement.
Risks:
Dashboards trap: Creating dashboards or wellbeing indicators without embedding them in legislation, institutional reform, or broader civic engagement efforts can stall genuine progress. Without sustained political will, institutional safeguarding or deep community ownership, there is a high risk of reform stalling when leadership changes, priorities shift, or the initial enthusiasm fades.
Overstretching appetite: Moving too far, too fast, particularly in politically volatile environments, can provoke backlash. Overreaching can drain political capital, alienate potential allies, and cause reform fatigue among civil society or key bureaucratic champions. In addition, advocates should remain cautious of over-committing to ‘interim solutions’ as they can risk trapping the agenda into a ‘waiting game’ for the interim solutions to demonstrate their impact.
Opportunities and considerations: A Wellbeing of Future Generations Act should remain the gold standard for institutionalising long-term thinking. While interim actions, such as the introduction of a Commissioner with limited powers, within an existing agency, can deliver early wins, they must not be mistaken as substitutes for legislative reform. These steps should instead serve as complementary building blocks, not endpoints.
Advancing concurrent reforms across jurisdictions can help entrench cultural and policy shifts, broaden the support base for generational reform, and strengthen the eventual mandate for federal legislation. A national conversation, in particular, offers a powerful tool to build civic buy-in, clarify shared purpose, and surface the intergenerational values needed to underpin durable reform.
3. Complementary and Overlaid Agendas
Future Generations Policy can’t exist in a silo. it is ghd governance architecture that makes serves as a circuit-breaker to short-terimsm in climate, housing, economic, wellbeing, and youth policies.
Despite the deeply complementary nature of Future Generations Policy and child and youth policy, we must also maintain a clear distinction. Child and youth policy concerns today's young Australians. Future generations policy institutionalises responsibility to the long-term wellbeing of both current and future generations. They are complementary but distinct. Conflating them risks reducing this agenda to youth programming, rather than systemic reform.
Risks:
Turf wars with portfolios: Climate, housing, economic, wellbeing, and youth policy leads may view this agenda as duplicating their work, creating bureaucratic resistance
Conceptual confusion: Without clarity, the public may not see why future generations policy is distinct or necessary
Public scepticism: Poor positioning risks this being dismissed as "another layer of government bureaucracy”.
Opportunities and considerations:
Position Future Generations Policy as the connective governance infrastructure, not in competition with portfolios, but the framework that enables them to work coherently and endure
Highlight complementarities without conflation: child and youth policy gives voice to the present generation, Future Generations Policy safeguards the long-term interests of current and future generations.
Building coalitions across reform agendas (climate, housing, economy, youth, wellbeing) to show that Future Generations Policy reform is an accelerator for their goals, not a rival
Successfully positioning future generations policy within the broader reform landscape is crucial for institutional success. Yet even the most strategically positioned reforms will struggle without addressing the deeper cultural barriers that make long-term thinking so difficult in Australia.
4. Superficial Adoptions Without Structural Change
As intergenerational fairness and long-term thinking gain traction, there is a growing risk of superficial adoption: where language shifts but systems do not. Terms like “wellbeing” or “future generations” may be adopted rhetorically, but without corresponding structural change, the result can be hollow.
Risks:
False sense of progress: Symbolic gestures—such as publishing indicators or strategies—may create the illusion of action while delaying deeper reform.
Dilution of ambition: Key principles (like equity, sustainability, and stewardship) may be watered down or selectively interpreted to suit political cycles or departmental agendas.
Public disillusionment: Communities may disengage if reforms fail to deliver visible outcomes, undermining long-term legitimacy.
Crowding out of deeper reform: Interim actions may be wrongly perceived as endpoints, weakening momentum for legislative or institutional change.
Opportunities & Considerations:
Use early wins to build mandate: Reforms like impact assessments, pilot programs, or commissioner roles can generate tangible results—but only if framed as building blocks, not substitutes for a future Act.
Embed accountability: Pair rhetoric with structures that endure beyond electoral terms, such as independent oversight, statutory obligations, or citizen-led processes.
Design for depth, not just visibility: Ensure that tools, frameworks, and reforms are connected to a broader theory of change that prioritises long-term governance capacity.
Anchor in a public mandate: A National Conversation can ground reforms in community values and build a stronger constituency for sustained, authentic implementation.
5. The Essential Role of Clarity of Vision
In the absence of a cohesive national vision beyond electoral cycles, reform remains fragmented, reactive, and vulnerable to reversal. Without clarity of direction, even well-intentioned initiatives risk pulling in different directions or stalling under competing pressures.
This is why a clear, future-oriented national vision is essential. It gives meaning to reforms, coherence to strategy, and legitimacy to bold action. It connects intergenerational thinking with practical implementation, helping leaders act not just for now, but for what we want to become.
Risks:
Confusion and drift as disconnected reforms emerge without a guiding narrative
Reform fatigue from initiatives that feel aimless or contradictory
Policy fragility in the absence of a long-term anchor
Disconnection from the public if citizens can’t see how reforms contribute to a shared future
Opportunities and Considerations:
Use a National Conversation to co-create a forward-looking vision with diverse Australians
A National Conversation can create a strategic compass that transcends political cycles and enables long-term stewardship
Empower leaders and communities with a unifying narrative to drive change, build trust, and sustain momentum
Moving Forward Together
To translate momentum into structural reform, we must act deliberately:
Break silos: Share intelligence across jurisdictions to build coherence
Pilot strategically: Drive local innovation, but scale towards national alignment
Integrate agendas: Position future generations policy as a lever for wellbeing, economic resilience, and systems reform
Name tensions: Clarify language, centre truth-telling, and ground reforms in civic legitimacy
Sequence strategically: Act with urgency, but stage reforms to build credibility and avoid backlash
Build the coalition: No single actor, government, sector, or party, can deliver this alone
Secure the mandate: Embed reforms in a national Futures Dialogue to legitimise bold, long-term policymaking
This is not about one reform or one report. It’s a generational shift in how Australia governs for the long term.
Author: Taylor Hawkins