The Cook, the Thief, his Wife, and her Lover, Peter Greenaway 1990
It’s early January.
Deep in the bowels of ABC HQ there’s a balancing act in play. Nothing much happens in January except sports, so most non-sports real journalists are told to head off and freshen up for the coming season.
Between Christmas and Australia Day, we have celebrations, sports, weather and climate pieces and maybe shark reports, leavened with occasional entrees of aspiring political and cultural commentators.
These latter tend to come out like restaurant reviews – self-important, form-driven, careful not to offend, and prone to punching down on those not likely to punch up with assertions and unquestioned assumptions: advertorials wrapped in plausible deniability and public demand.
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On January 4, just such a piece is brought to the table. Luke Cooper. Data journalist, Brisbane, ex Huffington Post, Nine in Sydney and London. Doesn’t say how many hats the places he worked in had.
The menu says
‘3 Sumptuous fillets of char grilled future view expert, with honey glazed factoids, bok choy and nuts du jour, on a bed of haunted failure and denied expectations, sprinkled with a zesty or tangy jus’ d existence to taste…..’
It comes out on a large white dish presented to a white table dressed with modern cutlery and barely audible synth jazz.
On a nice day, it would go OK with a cold beer, but it can accompany a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc or Sancerre if going upmarket, or Coonawarra or Margaret River cabernet, or Lethbridge Shiraz, if wanting something more overtly robust. It would pass muster with a Bundy on ice in the tropics too.
The world in 2025 is growing faster, innovating more, and is more conflicted than ever — but signs suggest Australia is being left behind, according to social experts.
The reality of life in 2025 is far broader, insecure and fragmented when compared to the first quarter of the last century, they say.
Luke opens up with two large dollops of the blindingly and unquestionably obvious drowned out in meaningless platitude:
The 20th century’s opening decades were dominated by a world war, groundbreaking inventions and social revolutions that fundamentally altered the way people lived.
By 1925, Australia was a newly-federated nation, decorated war hero Stanley Bruce was prime minister and the country’s GDP had spiked by 6.5 per cent.
Twenty-five years into the new millennium, demographers use “mega trends” to try to determine drivers of change that could impact people’s lives in the future.
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Why Luke references the start of the last century is anyone’s guess. Presumably simply because it was a hundred years ago—and it was the cheapest 100-year timeframe he could grab.
Could he, should he, would he reference the start of any other century any differently? Would could or should anyone give a rats toss?
Has there ever been a society not thinking about social and cultural trends, geopolitical phenomena, or even technological change? Is there any real evidence we think more or better about it? Could we simply be the freshest carcasses on the history conveyor of life?
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The form is there but it is bland and uncooked; he could just as easily deep fry and add chips. For the history buffs, Stanley Bruce served in the British military.
The very next plunge of the fork brings up a succulent morsel of futurist filet.
Futurist Anders Sorman-Nilsson told the ABC that three major areas of focus are population changes, technological advancements, and global geopolitical shifts, as part of a “STEEP framework“, which also monitors economic and environmental factors.
Those three key drivers show the world is rapidly progressing, Mr Sorman-Nilsson said, but other experts say there is evidence major global powers could be repeating the turmoils of the past.
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……Waiter, waiter!
Could you ask the chef if there has ever been a time when population, technological, geopolitical, economic and environmental change aren’t a focus of future change?
And doesn’t the menu of life say ‘those who will not learn from history are doomed to repeat it’?
So, how far do these experts think we have come?
The world is bigger than ever before
Over the course of the last century, the world grew in size more than ever before. In 1900, the global population was about 1.67 billion people and Australia was home to 3.8 million.
In 2025, the world’s population is almost 8.2 billion and Australia has grown to more than 26.8 million people
What is that herb being used in this dish? Dill? Coriander? Cinnamon?
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No.
It is population Ponzi blame apportionment. If you were thinking Australia has a population Ponzi problem, that is a few twists of the ‘world population has grown far more so we shouldn’t stress about our measly uptick’ shaker.
It is tangy!
Demographer Mark McCrindle told the ABC that while most of the developed world was grappling with population contraction due to a collapse in birth rates, Australia had “never added more people to our population as we have in the last two years”.
“In the last two decades, migration increased to be about 60 per cent of growth in an average year and natural increases was the other proportion — about 40 per cent,” he said.
“Migration is now up to 83 per cent of our growth … so, record population increases in Australia.”
It was supposed to be a filet of expert, but one suspects a few chunks of population Ponzi stir fry mix was added to round it out. The expert babbles ‘most of the world’, the diner gets a mouth full of 83% proof undeniable deep fried population Ponzi.
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No need to ask why when we can assert ‘how good is this!’
Mr McCrindle said that the big difference in 2025 when compared to the start of the last century was that much of Asia now saw Australia as a desirable location to live and visit, and the country had been increasing its population mostly with skilled migrant workers and international students.
That trend could result in Australia’s population increasing to 50 million people by the 2050s, he said.
At the start of the 20th century, Australia’s migration was mostly from the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth nations.
That thing in your throat is called a gavage and the contents being poured in and straight down your gullet is known as Population Ponzi chunder. If you have enough of it shoved down your throat you will get an exceptionally fat liver from which a nice pate can be made.
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The process is now banned in much of the civilized world.
Let us just assume that Mr McCrindle, and Luke, were transported back that hundred years. Would they notice that as opposed to Asians being allowed to live and visit and desiring to do so, the limiting factor about Asians as part of the Australian population, was that they weren’t allowed to migrate?
Now that isn’t nice, for sure, and it is racist. But in the name of historical veracity, that is where we have come from.
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And the way Australia moved beyond that racism and the restrictions it encompassed was in the post WW2 era when there was an ostensible need for more Australians regardless of where they came from. That ostensible need was a perceived need for ‘industry’ and workers to build up economies of scale and pump out those accessories to post WW2 life without importing them.
We started with the fresh out of refugee camps of Eastern and Southern Europe, of course wrapped around boatloads of Poms and Irish, branched out into large numbers of Greeks and Turks, and started getting into things Asian with the Vietnamese refugees who had been our allies in their war in the mid to late 1970s.
In the late 1980s, we began taking some Chinese, which turned into a rush after they started massacring their own at Tiananmen, and that saw us through to the end of the century.
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All of these, and the descendants of these, are the people of contemporary Australian society. The net result was one of the world’s standout multicultural, peaceful, least violent and law abiding societies. All were underpinned by the simple expedient of ensuring a one-income household had plausible enough income security and that the jobs were doing something for the national economy.
It was something to be genuinely proud of.
The key factor about all of that was that Australia had an economy that could absorb large numbers of migrants, that the economy was significantly exposed and that the incoming punters were able to fit in OK with ‘us’.
Notwithstanding the odd blemish – tobacco shops in Victoria maybe, perhaps some stoushes in the produce markets end of things, and the odd soccer club going overboard with taunting the opposition, a synagogue or church fire here or there – maybe with the odd outbreak of actual racism – the Sydney beaches riots of the early 2000s, and intermittent depredations of the Mount Gambier Neo Nazis on their visits to Corrowa or Ballarat, and of course some actual goldfields massacres of the Chinese in the 19th century – and never forgetting the appalling treatment of our own indigenous people.
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Australians can point at the scoreboard and say they have managed to get things right that plenty of others haven’t. Despite the possibility of encountering racism in the present, Australia consistently ranks highly in global comparisons.
Despite all the bluster about skilled workers and students, Australia’s economic menu has sadly been stripped back to schnitzel sandwiches and fries, which don’t require all that much skill.
Are we bringing in people to work as something other than the skills they bring? Ask your Uber driver next time you get a ride to a big night out.
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Then we get to the foreign students. In and of themselves they too are fine. The problem they represent, however, is that very large numbers of them are solely in Australia to be in Australia, rather than to study. They will take the base-grade employment positions at whatever rate is on offer to sustain themselves while here.
That means that these students have a deleterious impact on the downmarket end of the labour outcome spectrum, alongside the rental market.
And guess what? Australia’s current economy is all about downmarket labour jobs. And that brings in the simple question about the next line.
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In an economy doing nothing but creating downmarket, mainly government-funded, jobs and still overwhelmingly reliant on commodities, why on earth are we planning to grow the economy to 50 million people?
Why are we building dog boxes in Chatswood or Box Hill to house them in? Shouldn’t they be in Ipswich or Kyabram, or Leeton?
And Luke doesn’t go there……….
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Meanwhile back in the diner.
Despite the recent boom, Mr McCrindle said Australia was not keeping up with a heightened population demand on critical infrastructure such as housing.
“The population growth is greater than the built environment growth and that’s really what’s driving the housing affordability challenges, that demand is exceeding supply,” he said.
“That imbalance is a new thing — we haven’t so much seen that, particularly in an era when migration was pretty small and stable a century ago.”
A second helping of Luke and Mr McCrindle, with rationale closing in, calls for the hyperspace button.
Mr McCrindle is right when he says Australia isn’t keeping pace with population growth in terms of housing, or anything else. Luke’s menu doesn’t go near mentioning that as an economy Australia has a ridiculously oversized housing construction sector, in comparison with any economy, and that it has been building houses like billyo for 20 years.
But it just can’t keep up with the Population Ponzi set in motion in the late John Howard era, which neither side of mainstream Australian politics has ever seen fit to mention or address.
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And all that, of course, is before our appetites turn to the thought of the carbon impact of all the additional bums on seats.
Mr McCrindle said he believed that failure would lead to the ratio of four in five Australians living in the country’s capital cities dramatically reducing over the next century as more people sought affordable lives in regional areas with flexible working conditions.
“The opportunity to move from what were the engine rooms of the economy — Sydney and Melbourne — and head to a more affordable place but keep the job is far more of an option than ever before,” he said.
So what is Mr McCrindle saying? Punters can move to Berri or Kerang or Charleville to become online customer service agents for large insurance or power companies? With Australia’s internet and power costs?
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Waiter!
Globally, the demographer predicted the population would grow as high as 10 billion by the 2080s, before stabilising.
He said the world was already experiencing increased rates of population contraction — meaning fewer people are being born annually — and this trend was likely to continue.
He also said that challenge would be faced primarily by the 2.1 billion “Generation Alpha” children born between 2010 and 2024, and their generational successors from 2025 to 2039 — Generation Beta.
“The globe will plateau out in terms of total populating in the lifetime of young people today,” Mr McCrindle said.
Globally, the demographer predicted the population would grow as high as 10 billion by the 2080s, before stabilising.
“It was only about 50 years ago people were worried about overpopulation. In 50 years time, the challenge will be population contraction globally.
“Most [Generation Betas] will live into the 22nd century, many indeed still working in the 22nd century, so they’re the ones that are going to usher us into the period of time ahead, and coming at a time when there’s lots of change.”
So, if we know the long-term plan is to get to more sustainable populations, why doesn’t a nation with an observably sustainable population already simply make sure it doesn’t grow as the rest of the world eases back to our position?
Why are we running the immigration taps full bore?
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We are left chewing on those big chunks of population Ponzi as Luke brings out the AI.
From 1900, the world shifted with major inventions such as the first plane, the first tractor, the first talking motion picture, the creation of insulin, and the assembly line process along with the Model T Ford.
Mr Sorman-Nilsson said leading into 2025, the most groundbreaking invention reshaping the planet was artificial intelligence.
“We’ll have 100 years worth of exploration, discovery, advancement in the next 10 years courtesy of AI — this is massive,” he told the ABC.
“The rate of change has never, ever been this fast and will never, ever be this slow again.”
Luke, as weird as it may sound, you can find precisely the same sentiments being expressed in 1970, and in 1900, and indeed in 1800.
Yes AI will be transformational, no doubt about it. But the biggest single impact is likely to be on straightforward processing – administration, accounting, law, diagnostics – just sifting through data.
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At this point we should call back the waiter and ask him what the expanded population we are importing is doing?
As a follow up we could ask if he thinks bringing in large numbers of people to make them redundant in a heavily indebted society reliant on commodity exports is a good idea.
While he is over he drops off a tray full of AI investment failure.
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Australia’s funding into research and development projects such as AI stood at just 1.68 per cent of national GDP in 2022, which is far behind the spending of the US, Germany, Japan and South Korea.
The federal government’s 2024-25 May Budget revealed $21.6 million would be committed over five years to “Australia’s artificial intelligence (AI) expertise”.
Mr Sorman-Nilsson said in 2025, Australia is quickly being left behind by the rest of the world.
“Fifty per cent of Aussies believe that AI tech is either useless or, at best, an occasional tool in the workplace,” he said.
“There’s definitely a ‘she’ll be right’ attitude amongst Australians.
“While we have this technological dawn and what I call a second renaissance of human creativity on our doorstep, Australians are not really grasping that opportunity with both hands.
He may have a point, but the experience most Australians have with AI currently is being asked to state their name or number into the receiver so the AI can pull up their data before the peon on the end of the line gets to answer your call and ask you to stay on the line to rate their performance.
Most Australians are probably experiencing AI as asking them to hand over the keys to monitoring their existences on line and their financial transactions so someone somewhere else has a good estimate on just how much they can be gouged, and just how long they will wait online before giving up in disgust.
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The outcomes still aren’t all that satisfactory so Australians aren’t twigging to the potential yet. When there is more substance they probably will.
Luke continues.
The Albanese government has forecast that AI can actually add $600 billion to the Australian economy every year for the next decade … that’s if Australians actually choose to adopt it.
The futurist said for Australia to keep up, tangible examples should be shared to show how AI can simplify a person’s life or workflow.
“Science fiction is now very quickly becoming science fact, but Australians tend to be very, very distrustful of new technologies,” Mr Sorman-Nilsson said.
See above. If you are sitting at work chewing over a video on YouTube with a mate but not actually watching that video, and then lo and behold, a day or so later, that video turns up in the YouTube feed, we can assume AI is sorting something and doing its job.
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Whether it is our job, or whether it is just the Uber end of town telling us it is what we should want our job to be is still out there for conjecture.
“We need better storytellers, particularly in government and amongst business leaders, so that people actually go, ‘Hey, let’s suspend our disbelief and actually start exploring how these new technologies will help boost our economy and our opportunities for work.”
Storytellers, Government, Business leaders, and suspended disbelief.
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Sommelier, Can we have a slab of Vic Tins for this table to wash down that paragraph, please?
He also said that while SpaceX founder Elon Musk wanted humans to land on Mars, there were more pressing challenges facing humanity on Earth in 2025.
“What you’ll see with climate change is that current cities that rank very highly on livability indexes, whether that be Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne … we’re going to get hit really, really hard,” Mr Sorman-Nilsson said.
“What you’ll see is a huge climate migration, this will be on an international level, but it also might redefine what is a liveable city.
Garcon!
So if Mr Sorman-Nilsson were to go back to the first course of this dining experience, would he say crush-loading our cities with dog boxes and alienating the locals is all part of a ‘plan’?
That’s before we ask if going where Elon Musk wants to lead is necessarily in the interests of anyone other than Elon?
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“You’ll see new climate oases where people will move to, from certain parts of Australia to other parts of Australia that will be liveable in the future.
“The first thing before Mars exploration — which will be great for a few Silicon Valley billionaires and millionaires — [is that] we also need to look after our planet A and make sure that’s a sustainable and livable place for this next generation.”
But if existing Australians already think their lives and locales are something of an oasis and would like to keep things that way, do they have a right to say we don’t want the crush loading and infrastructure congestion? Or doesn’t their democracy encompass that?
And with the joint really pumping with pointed discussion and unaddressed questions, Luke brings out the geopolitics.
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Diplomacy, peace and the threat of World War III
As the world tackles technological advancements, wars are being waged in Ukraine and the Middle East and political tensions are growing in Asia and the Pacific.
Strategic Analysis Australia founder Michael Shoebridge said the world in 2025 appears to be repeating history.
Between 1900 and 1925, nations were built by cross-country trade on a backdrop of rises in populism and nationalism, World War I and social upheavals like the Russian Revolution, he said.
“Back then … there was a lot of population unhappiness with the way things were,” Mr Shoebridge told the ABC.
“In the early 1900s leading up to the First World War, there was an idea in several of the European powers that war might be an answer to their problems.
“The lesson is, war doesn’t normally go or end as the people that start them think they might.”
The geopolitics carvery removes the blindingly obvious platitudes first. War isn’t a good idea, which brings the question of why societies make things so uncomfortable for the people living in them that these begin to think war is no real downturn from the cheap crappy existences they are left after the 1% dine at their tables.
Mr Shoebridge could have mentioned that the era up until WW1 was known as ‘the gilded age’ and marked by deflation, outrageous capital labour divides, and atrocious living standards for the punterariat.
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He said that, just like before World War I, the world in 2025 is witnessing a “revolution in warfare” with newly-innovated weaponry, and leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and the United States president-elect Donald Trump blindly moving closer to a full-scale war.
“Just as with the European powers sleep-walking into the First World War, humans and governments aren’t all that good at remembering and applying the lessons of history,” Mr Shoebridge said.
“I think Russia’s Putin is in the middle of keeping on with that mistake, with his disastrously miscalculated war in Ukraine.
“Xi Jinping hasn’t learnt that lesson and he’s building a very powerful military with global force projection ability. He doesn’t seem to have learnt from Putin that maybe war doesn’t go the way that you think it will.”
The most powerful global players in World War I were the US, the United Kingdom, Russia, France, Italy, Japan and Germany.
Mr Shoebridge said that a century later, those powers have shifted so the US, the European Union, Russia, India and China are now leading the world.
“With changes to warfare and the global power hierarchy, Mr Shoebridge said there was a significant difference from the last century that involved Australia.
“Our distance no longer protects us,” he said.
“I think Australia is slightly less powerful than we were then. We were amongst the very richest populations on the planet at that time; we’re still wealthy but that’s not true anymore.
“Our partners and allies were the source of unrivalled technological advantage, both economically and militarily, and that’s not the case now.”
So, where does that leave Australia and the world in 2025?
Should we be investing in importing the masses to become customer service operations types from Broken Hill or Geraldton, or should we be investing in actual technological capability and systems hardware and logistics to move things around?
And, ahem, were we part of the side that handed over those skills to the now dangerous parts of the world so the upmarket set could profit while incomes for the punterariat stagnated? So are we going to pay for the new kit we need or is the 1%?
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Just joking.
“Whether it’s the UN or the World Trade Organization … patterns of diplomacy and international cooperation that the world forged after the two world wars to prevent future wars have lost a lot of their power now,” Mr Shoebrige said.
“We’ll see more fraying of international cooperation and much more informal and bloc-led cooperation, which is what we’re seeing with countries like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.
“There’s a definite, credible scenario where there could be a global war this decade and that can be because of the rise of nationalism that we’re seeing, particularly in places like Russia and China.”
So we may as well forget the greenhouse gas emissions targets because the bad guys will blow them out of the water anyway?
What are you saying Luke? We need the population Ponzi to provide cannon fodder for the next war?
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Couldn’t we sit in our recliner rockers behind the screens and let AI do the work for us?
