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Table 12. 4: Key ingredients for scenario construction

See Appendix 12A.1.1 for fuller exposition of these points






A Four Key Questions

Major Category and

Item Numbers (refer to Table 8.1)

What are the driving forces?

What do you feel is uncertain?

What is inevitable?

Macro-Economic

Settings (Items 1 to

21)

Market reforms of the last two decades. The prospect of further reforms leading to greater efficiency and

productivity. Conservative national economic management.



Ability to sustain a reform agenda in the face of rising international competition. Production constraints.

Environmental hazards.



Growing international competition, exacerbated by peripheral location. The march of technology and

rising pressures to innovate. Slow globalisation of labour markets.












Micro-Economic

Issues (Items 22 to

35)

Competition, competition, competition. Australia's innovatory and entrepreneurial talents are substantial

across the board. By global standards, Australia is a highly open economy and market pressures are important for innovation and entrepreneurship, and for

avoiding monopoly and oligopoly.


Surprisingly little. The driving forces of change and strong management appear entrenched. Most uncertainties lie

overseas.



Ever greater pressures on business performance and swifter penalties for those under-performing.










Political Settings

(Items 36 to 47)

Australia and major partner nations realise that trade is

beneficial and that domestic subsidies (arising from special pleading) are expensive and damaging to national competitiveness and aggregate wealth.



Moves to global free trade are hampered by protectionist

sentiment and multi-lateral gains appear increasingly rare, fuelling increasing numbers of bi-lateral relationships. The uncertain commitment of all Australian governments to vigorous pursuit of efficiency.



Slow improvements to international trade and

domestic public management in many countries. The rising incidence of failed states.












Social Settings

(Items 48 to 57)

Rising social and economic adaptive capacity. It is easier to adapt, assume risk and adopt a future

orientation when informed, knowledgeable and financially secure. These conditions also underpin social diversity and tolerance.



This delicate edifice relies on Australia's continued economic prosperity and confidence that this will occur.

Ironically immigrant societies are much less amenable to conservative capture and more optimistic about future events.



Social and institutional deepening have progressed steadily for the last 800 years. The need for

immigrant skills will rise with economic growth, the transition to a creative society, and peaking workforce participation rates.












Environmental

Issues (Items 58 to

65)

Resource sustainability for future generations may be problematic in the light of apparently rapid climate

change, ecological damage, resource depletion or exhaustion, insufficient capital investment in infrastructure. Many trade-offs could affect immigration

policies and their application.


Just about everything: the level of resources; their sustainable consumption; infrastructure needs; and ideal

trade-offs between competing ends (economic, social or environmental).



Issues include the depletion of many finite resources; sustainable limits on the use of others;

rising technologies to create sustainable and renewable resources; the substitution of resources

; international conflict over access to strategic

resources




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