Australia's first national wellbeing framework released

The federal government has released the first ever national wellbeing framework. It'll track areas like health, community safety and cohesion.

Transcript

00:00 Now, this is something the Albanese government had been spruiking while they were in opposition.

00:06 They called it a wellbeing budget.

00:08 Now, it's basically looking at how we're tracking over time across 50 different indicators,

00:14 things around things like health, the environment and also community safety.

00:19 Now, the government says they're hoping that this framework will be embedded into their

00:23 decision making and that these measures are in addition to, not in replacement of, the

00:30 existing ways that we measure our economy, things like inflation and the GDP.

00:35 Now the government says they've released this first initial report looking at Australia's

00:40 progress in the past decade.

00:42 Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers has this morning rejected some of the criticism around the

00:46 data that's been used.

00:47 Some of it is pre-COVID and out of date.

00:51 Here's what he had to say at a press conference about that a little earlier.

00:55 Well, what we've said really from the beginning is we want to refine this national wellbeing

01:01 framework as we go.

01:03 And a really important part of the task is understanding and recognising where there

01:09 are gaps in the data or where we would like that data to be more up to date.

01:15 We've made that clear from the beginning.

01:17 The commentary in the document itself recognises that there are a number of areas where there

01:22 are limitations in the data and we need to improve that.

01:26 And one of the motivations for releasing this first national wellbeing framework is to recognise

01:31 where we need to do a much better job measuring what matters in our economy and in our society.

01:37 Yeah, acknowledging there are limitations to the data.

01:40 But what does the report tell us about Australia's progress over the past decade?

01:45 Well, it paints a pretty mixed picture.

01:48 There are 20 areas of improvement, including things like life expectancy increasing over

01:53 the past two decades, job opportunities and job satisfaction as well have seen some improvements.

02:00 It says that Australia is more accepting of diversity and have more trust in each other

02:05 and the public service, but not when it comes to politicians.

02:09 Twelve areas have deteriorated.

02:11 That's including higher rates of chronic conditions and for some it's harder to access care and

02:18 support services around that.

02:20 There's also little progress on things like mental health, wealth inequality and some

02:26 people are having more trouble making ends meet.

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