How do we better and more equitably support a broader range of learners and adults to gain improved capabilities in their mathematical understanding and use? This article examines the mathematical and numeracy knowledge and associated skills that young people and adults need for their current and future lives within their personal, social and vocational/workplace spaces. I will present a rationale for the critical role of multi-numeracies as we move further into the 21st century, and highlight a number of aspects that need to be explicitly addressed and incorporated into our curriculum and practices, some of which have been recently introduced through the replacement Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL) numeracy curriculum.