Australia’s first wellbeing framework, announced by the Treasurer under the Measuring What Matters banner, is important and can play a vital part in setting national direction and navigating significant challenges for Australia in the years to come.
The framework uses larger and more diverse data to bring depth and resolution to the picture drawn by important and familiar indicators that track economic growth, employment, investment and inflation. These traditional metrics that public decision-makers have relied on are, alone, insufficient for a 21st century economy that works for people. Democracies globally have upgraded their approach to goal-setting and policy making. Australia’s decision to join them is prudent and timely.
The new framework harnesses powerful data in the service of living standards, community strength and environmental sustainability. This approach has been a priority for national leaders across the political spectrum from David Cameron and Nicholas Sarkozy to Nicola Sturgeon and Jacinda Ardern. A failure to use the advanced tools and data that we have today would be nothing short of negligent. Those who doubt the urgency of this shift need only look to the report of the Royal Commission into the Robodebt scandal for a glimpse of the harm that a data-rich government can do when it is divorced from purpose and direction.
If the indicators that governments currently rely on are the “street map” of public decision-making, approaches like Measuring What Matters are the “GPS”, providing practical guidance to a destination. As living costs bite, geopolitical tensions rise, climate impacts compound and trust frays between people and their institutions, Australia would do well to ask where we are going, how to get there, and what will guide the journey.
This is what Wales did in 2015 to establish their world-leading approach to long-term decision-making and wellbeing. A national conversation conducted at the community level with participation from 10,000 of the country’s 3 million citizens distilled collective aspirations into seven national goals and five ways of working. This supercharged their progress, taking them beyond the obstacle that frustrates countries like New Zealand, where the sophistication of measurement is not matched by a long-term focus with popular backing. On this basis alone Australia would do well to consider the Welsh example.
Wales appointed a new kind of public official – a Future Generations Commissioner – to act as the guardian of the interests of citizens yet to be born, advising and challenging public decision-makers on how their work aligns to these goals. Inaugural Welsh Future Generations Commissioner, Sophie Howe, travelled to Australia after her seven-year term ended in early 2023 to deliver the Centre for Policy Development’s flagship Oration. Ms Howe emphasised the importance of long-term, data-enabled missions extending beyond government to the community and private sectors.
This national purpose that extends beyond government is particularly important today. Challenges like climate transition require a coherent and strategic long-term response from investors and industry. Modern social service systems are sites of collaboration – not just top-down compliance policing – that involve the community and private sectors as well as government and citizens. Voices from disparate fields are calling urgently for long-term vision. Investors recognise the role environmental, social and governance factors play in the long-term profitability of their capital allocation. In the public sector, the importance of stewardship and collaborative missions is highlighted by organisations from the CSIRO to the Public Sector Commission.
And in economics and government decision-making there is a half century of work to enrich traditional economic measures so we can better define and pursue progress. The national wellbeing framework will help address challenges like climate transition, productivity, living standards and geopolitical tensions. Indeed, it is an impossible task to address these challenges without such a framework. It will take time to perfect and embed the framework into government decision making but this time will be well spent if it includes an inclusive national conversation that leads to popular support for the wellbeing framework.
Andrew Hudson is the CEO of the Centre Policy Development (CPD), an independent policy institute that advances long-term wellbeing in Australia and the region.