Scanlon Foundation
Social Cohesion  

The Scanlon Foundation believes that the future prosperity of Australia, underpinned by continued population growth, will depend on our ability to maintain social cohesion in a society with even more cultural diversity than we have successfully accommodated historically.

The Foundation, in seeking to create awareness and knowledge based discussion about Australia's population growth and its relationship to social cohesion, has provided substantial funding grants in the following areas of research:

  1. The Australian Centre for Population Research at the Australian National University, led by Professor Peter McDonald and Rebecca Kippen, have undertaken projections of Australia's population that have enabled the Foundation to “lock in” on a future population target of 30 million Australians by 2050. In shorthand we refer to this as 30/50.

  2. The Australian Academy of Technological Science and Engineering in 2007 have released a major study Report entitled “30/50 The Technological Implications of an Australian Population of 30 Million by 2050” which concludes that there are no insurmountable technological, engineering or environmental barriers to Australia sustaining a population of 30 million by 2050, assuming that thorough analysis and planning occur and that leadership is exercised by governments. See the Foundation's Chairman, Peter Scanlon's address at the ATSE launch of this Report;

  3. The Monash Institute for the Study of Global Movements, in partnership with the Australian Multicultural Foundation, are continuing to undertake a major Social Cohesion Research Program for the Foundation. Further to a  first National Benchmark Mapping of Social Cohesion 2007,survey this has been followed up with a second round Mapping Social Cohesion 2009 survey. See the Foundation Chairman, Peter Scanlon's address at the launch of this second round Report. This research is focused on monitoring how Australia in the future can maintain the “immigration with social cohesion” success story of the last five decades.

  4. Monash University’s Institute for the Study of Global Movements have recently published a Discussion Paper on the Implications of the Economic Downturn for Immigration and Social Cohesion.