Shaping a Nation’s Future – Agenda for Change 2022

Agenda for change 2022: shaping a different future for our nation, like the agendas ASPI published in 2016 and 2019, is being released in anticipation of a federal election. But there are differences this time around.

This agenda acknowledges that what might have served us well in the past won’t serve us well in this world of disruption and rolling crises. A public policy plan jam-packed with initiatives is one of those things we took for granted in the past.

While those initiatives may have been useful, they tended to perpetuate siloed thinking and actions and downplayed interconnectivity. One example is the adverse impact that just-in-time supply-chain management is having on national resilience during the Covid pandemic. And if that wasn’t enough to open our eyes, we had limited understanding of the reach and traceability of those supply chains, which in large part were revealed only when we experienced the consequences: manufacturing bottlenecks and single points of failure.

So, the key question that Agenda for change 2022 seeks to answer is this: if a government can focus on only a handful of impactful initiatives, what should it pursue first?

We speak to the report’s editor, Gill Savage of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Gill is a Senior Fellow with ASPI’s Northern Australia Strategic Policy Centre and deputy director of the ASPI Professional Development Centre.

Recorded 4 February 2022.