According to Kelly (1992), the ‘Australian settlement’, something like an Australian social contract or national bargain (Reich 1991), drove the development of Australian society, with bipartisan support, for 70 years post-federation. It had five widely agreed principles for guiding society: white Australia, industry protection, wage arbitration, state paternalism (intervention for the common good) and imperial benevolence (the belief that Australian prosperity and security was underwritten by the Empire).

By the 1990s two of these principles, white Australia and imperial benevolence, had been replaced by new verities and the other three, without being dead, had lost much of their influence and are no longer ‘ideas in good currency’. Thus white Australia has been replaced by an acceptance of the idea that Australia is a multicultural society which, as such, is reasonably successful and can and should be kept that way. The idea of imperial---and American---benevolence has been largely replaced by the idea that Australia's defence is in our own hands.

Outside these new truths, a mighty battle rages amongst the few who care about such things to find a new set of widely agreed principles to guide Australia through coming decades. Most obviously, a declining belief in the Australian settlement has been paralleled by a rising belief in ‘economic rationalism’ and the need for Australia to compete in a global economy. Will the victory of the economic rationalists be complete? How long will it last? Will other ideas emerge to displace this headlong rush? What might they be?

In the 1998-99 annual report of the Evatt Foundation, Sydney, the Foundation's director, John Freeland presents the five families of issues around which he would like to see a 'millennium settlement' emerge:

• population policy (including immigration , socio-cultural and indigenous policies)
• approach to globalisation (including foreign policy trade, investment, international regulation)
• environmental and ecological sustainability
• wealth generation policies (including investment, trade. industry, regional development, competition, tax, macro economic policies)
• wealth distribution and equity policies (including tax, social security, cultural policies)

In Future Makers, Future Takers (1999) I derive three strategies for managing Australia's future from a broad critique of modernity, of late twentieth century capitalism (eg Self 1993, Hobsbawm 1994), including Australian capitalism, which, while recognising the successes of the system, also recognises its several ‘hazards’ and failures. These 'hazards' are the families of issues that cry out to be addressed if high quality of life is to be achieved. Alternatively, and at a minimum, these hazards are themes on which a degree of community consensus would need to be in place before a new 'Australian settlement' could be claimed to have emerged.

The two most commonly recognised such hazards are:

. The increase in environmental pollution or, more generally, environmental degradation, of both built and natural environments, that is accompanying world and Australian growth in the production of goods and services and threatening people’s physiological and mental well-being.

. The increasing social injustice (particularly increasing numbers of poor confronting the increasing wealth of the already-rich) that is accompanying growth in gross world and domestic product.

But the most widely recognised failure of the capitalist system is ‘direct’ rather than, like inequity and pollution, ‘collateral’. It is the failure to produce a type and rate of economic growth sufficient to provide employment, and hence sufficient goods and services, for all. Conversely, it is asserted in other quarters that the rate of economic growth is too high, leading to inequitably high consumption by ‘the rich’ and uncompensated pollution-exacerbating throughputs of materials and energy. Covering both perceptions then, we can recognise capitalism’s achievement of an inappropriate level of economic growth.

In addition to environmental degradation, injustice and inappropriate economic growth, there is a fourth hazard accompanying capitalism which, while less widely recognised, is still held by many to be just as much in need of society’s attention, namely deteriorating social relations. This is the perception that capitalism’s excessive concern for economic growth is destroying sociality---social ‘health’ as expressed through collaborative, altruistic, participatory and civil interactions--and breeding its opposite, ie sociopathy (social decay) or sick society syndrome as evidenced by (eg) alienation, crime, dissociation, anomie, conflict, distrust. A healthy (civilised? civil?) society is one where people feel secure, wanted, useful, empowered, and able to grow.

In my book these four hazards are abstracted, in a somewhat magical way, from ten umbrella issues. Most issues in the public eye are narrowly focussed on particular events and situations but behind such situational issues there are a handful of umbrella issues centring on more abstract ‘ideas’. That is, most situational issues turn out to be substantive examples of umbrella issues. It can be suggested that most, perhaps all, of the umbrella issues that are of fundamental importance to the mid-future well-being of Australian society are in the following list:

• The form and functions of government.
• Society’s responsibility to the individual.
• The individual’s responsibility to society.
• The role of markets in the provision of goods and services.
• Environmental quality.
• Social justice.
• Social relations.
• Technology.
• Society’s capital mix.
• Personal consumption.
• International relations.

While the language may have changed, these umbrella issues about the organisation of society have, arguably, not changed much in perhaps 200 years of capitalism (Marshall 1964)! The contrasting attitudes that exist in the community around these umbrella issues, and their further expression in attitudes to particular events, are captured in pairwise contrasts such as: environment versus economy; government versus market; community versus individual; competition versus co-operation; self-reliance versus compassion; altruism versus self-interest; optimism versus pessimism; spirituality versus materialism; liberalism versus conservatism; utility versus virtue; and so on.

It could be of some interest to compare the Freeland and Cocks ways of cutting the issues cake. For example, Freeland's wealth generation and wealth distribution 'families' have an immediate appeal whereas his 'population' umbrella fails to capture the urgency of Cocks' sociopathy theme. Other perspectives such as Donald Horne's 'Charter of the Rights and Duties of Australian Citizens' might also be relevant. Perhaps it would also be worthwhile to explore the pros and cons of attempting to foster a new Australian settlement (versus watching to see if one emerges?) My own current interest in the 'settlement' idea is that it seems to offer a neat way of summarising the zeitgeist of a society.