Future Tense

Australia is home to over 1,600 shopping centres, covering more than 26.5 million square metres.

We are a nation that love to shop, but times are tough for these aging centres. Online retailers, limited millennial attention spans and old fashioned infrastructure are all putting the squeeze on the mall's market.

This doesn't necessarily mean it's the end though, in fact shopping centres are evolving for the future - pulling out all the tricks, enticements and tech they can to ensure you keep spending and they stick around.

A growing number of human rights academics and activists are worried that our notions of welfare in the democratic west are changing – and not for the better.

They’re concerned that the tools of the digital era are being used to create a new form of welfare state directed against the poor and the disadvantaged, not in their interests.

Water banking involves the deliberate injection of surplus water into known aquifers. The idea is to repurpose the world’s many artesian basins as giant sustainable storage tanks - ones that can readily be drawn upon in times of drought.

It’s just one of the ideas we explore in the second instalment of our two-part series on water conflict and management – the politics, the problems and the potential solutions.

It’s a scarce resource and likely to get even more so. But is it causing an increase in political friction? The answer is yes… and no.

Competition is often seen almost as a universal good. But economist Nicholas Gruen says a slavish adherence to making everything a competition is damaging our trust in public institutions.

Also, the Belgian community trialling an ancient form of democracy. And if big data is made collectively, would nationalising it help to ensure the benefits are widely distributed?