Future generations can’t lobby, vote, or protest. Who’s representing their interests?

Somewhere in Australia right now, a child is being born.

By the time they come of age, extreme heat may have made parts of this country unliveable, housing may be a privilege of the wealthy few, and artificial intelligence (AI) may have reordered the world unequally.

But for the next 18 years, while the decisions that will shape the future are being made, this newborn won’t have a vote.

Professor Darren Halpin, a political scientist at The Australian National University (ANU), says democracy struggles with how to look after future generations.

“People by and large tend to discount the future for the present,” he says.

“There exists a kind of presentism, where political institutions are incentivised to focus on the now.

“In Australia, we have short election terms and a two-party system. People get elected and quickly begin to worry about the next election cycle.”

This political myopia has long prevented government from seeing past the end of its own nose.

“A lot of our big policy challenges have implications beyond the present generation,” Halpin says.

“What we decide today will likely create conditions, for better or worse, that future generations will inherit.”

A report published by ANU Professor Nick Biddle last year found 50.3 per cent of Australians believe life will be worse in 50 years.

“It’s a paradox. We all know there are problems, but we’re pessimistic about our ability to do anything about it,” Halpin says.

Such a conundrum sits at the heart of his research – how to politically organise present generations to advocate for future ones. 

A ministry for the future

What if governments had a ministry dedicated entirely to the future?

In his 2020 novel, science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson imagines exactly that: a global body established under the Paris Agreement, tasked with solving the climate crisis and acting on behalf of future generations.

For Halpin, this utopian idea is difficult to imagine.

“You cannot organise a whole government in terms of time horizons. A Ministry for the Future would need to be across all functional policy bases such as transport, housing or finance, which would be really challenging,” he says.

A more realistic approach, though, is already taking shape.

Halpin points to a handful of countries that have established institutional mechanisms designed to protect the interests of people who have not yet been born. 

Wales is one of them. For over a decade, the country has had a Future Generations Commissioner, an independent office that supports and challenges government to make decisions in the interests of future generations.

In Australia, after the short‑lived Commission for the Future in the 1990s, the Parliamentary Group for Future Generations was established in 2022 to promote intergenerational fairness.

These and similar initiatives across the European Union are increasingly acting as proxy voices for future generations. They are widely seen as important steps forward, even when their progress is slow.

Much of the academic debate has focused on these designated advocates and institutions created specifically to represent future generations.

But what if they are already being represented by people whose job description says nothing of the sort?

Informal politics

Most Australians think of politics as elections, parties and parliament.

But a vast amount of the political action happens quietly between MPs and the thousands of non-government organisations that make up what Halpin calls the Australian system of organised interests.

Every day, think tanks, lobbyists, business associations, unions and civil society groups attempt to influence government decisions.

“It would be hard to imagine governing without them,” Halpin says. “Policymakers aren’t across all the minutiae of their issues and they need and seek interest group’s input actively, which is legitimate and necessary.”

In his new research, the ANU scholar is seeking to understand whether organised interests are invoking future generations in their speech. 

“For example, imagine an industry body arguing they need less regulation in order to build community infrastructure that will be essential for our children to inhabit our planet in the future,” he says.

“It’s not possible for future generations to be literally present. Under what conditions can we take claims made on their behalf as legitimate?”

Authentic advocacy?

The system of organised interests is as necessary as it is imperfect.

“It’s not very balanced,” Halpin says. “Of the roughly 1,500 professionalised national interest groups in Australia, the overwhelming majority is formed by industry groups skewed towards economic interests.”

This asymmetry gives well-resourced business groups more access to the halls of power, while leaving others, such as grassroot organisations, at a disadvantage.

Issues around secret lobbyists, and the so-called revolving door compound the problem.

Last year, ACT Independent Senator David Pocock called for reforms to bring lobbying into the open – including a requirement, now in force, to publicly disclose who has direct access to parliamentarians and who sponsors that access.

For Halpin, that same transparency is essential to understanding whether interest groups invoking future generations are doing so in good faith.

“I am exploring whether these claims are actually authentic, grounded in evidence and consistent with arguments these advocates use repeatedly, rather than being tactical statements trying to confuse or obfuscate,” he says. 

“I want to understand how to encourage the positive role of organised interests in our democracy while safeguarding against the cynical ones.

“My research can help start to answer that by providing data on the things advocates are saying, for who and how their claims are received by media and political elites.”

Giving voice to the voiceless

Growing up, Halpin spent much of his time in his nan’s house, where talkback radio was always playing in the background.

A steady stream of callers sharing their views on air became his earliest window into the frustrations of ordinary Australians.

These debates would always leave him with a puzzling question, one that would eventually pull him towards an academic career.

“I didn’t understand why people wouldn’t mobilise around their social grievances,” he says.

Today, future generations represent the most challenging version of that puzzle he has long been trying to solve: how do groups with no power, no resources and no voice get anyone to advocate for them?

“By mapping who claims to speak for future generations, I’m hoping we can draw a line between those who are authentic and those that are more manufactured,” he says. 

“There are so many incentives against considering future generations, and the world is not a great place right now. But in Australia we’re holding it together as best as we can. If I was going to be an optimistic anywhere, it’d probably be here.”