"While the IGR connects demographic trends with threats on the horizon, it is negligent in ignoring the economic damage that the changing climate already is and will increasingly bring in the next 40 years.

The section in the IGR that should have addressed this climate reality is titled the Energy Transition and focuses upon the opportunities that renewable energy will bring. While there will be opportunities, climate change is overwhelmingly a threat.

The IGR does include a small paragraph on Treasury’s modelling of a Disorderly Transition Scenario that finds a $2 trillion hit to the economy by 2050. As the geopolitics show, we are clearly on this disorderly pathway.

And, as the Govt’s own National Climate Risk Assessment stated, current macroeconomic methodologies “significantly underestimate the economic effects” (p57) as they don’t incorporate the recognised complex impacts of climate change. Not integrating this perspective when forecasting the next 40 years is a very disappointing miss, illustrating a government that just doesn’t seem to get it on climate change, all while it co-leads the world towards the next global COP negotiations in Türkiye."

"The Intergenerational Report is an exercise that has long outlived its usefulness. The original motivations of the reports, when they were first legislated in 1998, was to use fears about the fiscal burden of an ageing Baby Boomer generation to marshal support for cuts in public spending. Those fears have failed to materialise. Nearly all of the Baby Boomers have now left the labour force. The last will reach retirement age in 2033. And by the end of the 40-year time frame used in this report, only a handful of super-centenarians will be left.

Australia is facing a range of critical challenges which will play out over the next 40 years, including global heating, artificial intelligence and the breakdown of the post-1945 world order, as well as others we have not yet foreseen. Changes in our demographic structure are the least of our worries. The only good thing to be said about the current report is that it is broken with the fear-mongering that characterised its predecessors."

"The Intergenerational Report ignores the environmental limits to Australian population growth. The Report projects Australia's population growth rate to remain about double that of the average high-income country, and the expected 40% population growth from 28 to 39.3 million by 2065 will make huge, unsustainable demands on Australia's resources of land, water and air.  

Note that the Report makes not a single mention of pollution, reservoirs, dams, traffic, congestion or commuting! The vast bulk of population growth is projected to be from net overseas migration, which could and should be gradually made much lower. The key to this should be by greatly increasing domestic training of skilled workers, the 'shortage' of which has for too long been used as an excuse for excessive net migration."

"The report’s improved fiscal outlook does not, by itself, establish that retirement is becoming more secure. Government expenditure, private wealth and retirement living standards are distinct outcomes, not interchangeable measures of success.

Superannuation can reduce Age Pension expenditure, but it is itself supported through tax concessions. Self-funded retirement is not necessarily unsubsidised retirement. Assessing public support requires looking at both pension payments and revenue forgone, including how that support is distributed.

The critical question is what those concessions actually change: do they generate additional retirement income, or subsidise saving that would have occurred anyway? Treasury’s 2020 Retirement Income Review found that concessions may redirect savings into tax-preferred vehicles without substantially increasing overall saving. That distinction matters when interpreting the growth of the superannuation system.

There is a parallel measurement problem for funds: assets under management measure accumulation, not the effectiveness of retirement support. ASIC and APRA’s 2025 review found a widening gap between trustees’ progress in supporting members approaching and in retirement.

An intergenerational assessment therefore involves more than projecting the pension bill or the national super balance. It involves examining who receives public support, what additional retirement security it delivers, and who bears investment and longevity risks. A larger pool of retirement savings is not, on its own, evidence of a more secure retirement."

"The latest Intergenerational report provides a comprehensive overview of the challenges facing Australian society in the next 40 years. Some climate change scenarios and their impact on different areas of the economy have been modelled in the latest report. However, one lacking omission is the issues facing future water scarcity in Australia. Climate change will affect Australian society in a multitude of economic, social and environmental pathways, and one of the largest impacts will be on water security issues, with higher water variability meaning increased probability of more damaging flooding and severe droughts.

In addition, much of Australia’s water infrastructure is aging. None of the scenarios modelled take these factors into account appropriately. Without urgent action to address and manage these issues, the ramifications on Australian productivity and wellbeing will be huge, and it is unclear that Australia is effectively planning for these challenges.”

"This is a useful and balanced report. In the section about the growth of the ageing population and the care economy, I was disappointed not to see more mention of the investment in prevention strategies to help people age with better functional abilities. In particular, physical activity is known to prevent and manage multiple chronic conditions, enhance physical and mental function and prevent falls. Each day, 16 older Australians die from a fall, and 400 are admitted to hospitals. Up to 30% of falls can be prevented, but Australia has no national policy or strategy for falls prevention."

"The IGR correctly points out the many economic advantages that Australia will reap from the transition to renewable energy, and from future clean energy-based export industries.

Treasury puts the cost savings from electrification at over $3000 per year per household, a good contribution to keeping a lid on the cost of living long. These cost savings are because it is far more efficient to run a car on electricity than on diesel or petrol, and to heat using a reverse cycle air conditioner or heat pump than a gas heater. Upfront costs are quickly recouped.

The national vision of renewable energy based exports of green iron, green ammonia and carbon-neutral fuels is alive, despite some disappointment of early excitement not yet having translated into large investments. Renewable energy base exports were always going to be a gradually unfolding long-term opportunity, not a rapid revolution. The 2020s are for getting in place the building blocks of technology, policy and trade. There’s much work still to be done to enable investments while not going overboard on subsidies. The 2030s are for the first commercial-sized plants, in collaboration with our trade partners. 

The 2040s and 2050s are for massive scale-up. That is when we will want to see large clean energy export revenues, taxed at healthy rates, to backfill for the coal and gas revenues that will tail off then if the world manages to act on climate change. It truly is an inter-generational issue."

"The latest Intergenerational Report (IR) projects that Australia's fertility will continue declining, from approximately 1.5 births per woman today to around 1.34 by 2065. This remains well below the replacement fertility rate of 2.1 births per woman. The IR notes that a key driver of declining fertility is the postponement of childbearing, with women increasingly starting families later in life. Factors contributing to this trend include longer periods spent in education, delayed career establishment, employment and financial uncertainty, and later formation of long-term relationships. Delayed childbearing is also associated with intentions to have smaller families, resulting in fewer children overall.

Australia's projected fertility rate is expected to remain higher than that of many comparable developed societies. In the IR, the reasons underlying these relatively more optimistic forecasts are not entirely clear and warrant further investigation.

The implications of fertility decline extend beyond reduced numbers of births. Declining fertility has a compounding effect over time because each successive generation contains fewer individuals entering the peak childbearing ages of approximately 26 to 37 years. This creates a feedback loop in which a proportionally smaller cohort of potential parents contributes to further reductions in the number of births.

Longer-term social implications may also include shifts in traditional family structures and kinship networks. Many people have historically assumed that they will grow up with cousins, or later have multiple grandchildren. As family sizes decrease, such family relationships may become less common, transforming experiences of family life and intergenerational support.

Importantly, projected fertility decline should not be regarded as a fait accompli. A better understanding of the complex drivers of fertility decline in Australia could inform the development of targeted public policies that support individuals and couples in achieving their desired family size. International experience demonstrates that governments can play a role in shaping fertility outcomes through policies that reduce the economic, career, and caregiving constraints associated with family formation and childrearing."

"The Intergenerational Report reminds us that migration is an important part of our future. If managed well, our working-age population and the variety of skilled labour that we rely upon can be an important part of a resilient economy. How changes to migration play out matters and will impact the strength of our economy over the next decades. "

"Australia’s 2026 Intergenerational Report lands with a critical question for planners that goes deeper than just the headline population numbers. The real challenge isn't just how much we grow, but where that growth happens, and critically, whether our housing, transport, and infrastructure can keep up with the pace.

The report projects that population growth is going to be increasingly concentrated in our major capital cities, which are expected to expand more than twice as fast as the rest of the country. This means that even if national population growth slows down overall, the pressure cooker on housing, transport networks, and city services in our capitals isn't going to let up anytime soon.

From a planning perspective, we need to stop thinking about housing supply in a vacuum. It’s impossible to separate homes from transport and infrastructure. Building more houses is essential, but where we put them changes everything. If new housing estates are disconnected from jobs, schools, hospitals, and decent public transport, we’re just locking ourselves into a future of higher car dependency, worse traffic congestion, soaring household transport bills, and greater inequality in access to services. Housing policy absolutely must be developed in lockstep with transport investment, land-use planning, and the rollout of essential services.

The report also shines a light on the widening gap between metropolitan and regional Australia. While the big cities are dealing with the strain of rapid expansion, many regional communities are looking at a very different future; slower growth, ageing populations, and a totally different set of service needs. This tells us that a "one-size-fits-all" national infrastructure response won't work. We need planning that is geographically targeted and responsive to local realities.

We also need to view transport infrastructure differently; it’s not just asphalt and rails, but a genuine intergenerational investment. As the report rightly points out, good transport connects people, boosts economic productivity, builds resilience, and just makes communities better places to live, and those benefits last for decades.

So, the defining challenge for the next 40 years isn't simply figuring out how to fit more people into the country. It’s about building well-connected, accessible, and resilient communities where housing, transport, and infrastructure are conceived and planned together, right from the start."