Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In February of this year, Labor's shadow Treasurer gave an excellent speech in which he made what should be an uncontroversial suggestion—that we look at a version of New Zealand's wellbeing budget, which redefines what success means in terms of economic outcomes. Although GDP matters and not for a moment should we consider ditching it, as Labor's shadow Treasurer said, we should consider how we could supplement it, because, to quote Joseph Stiglitz, if we measure the wrong thing, we will do the wrong thing. In response to this suggestion, the federal Treasurer came into this chamber and put on a pantomime act, saying that the shadow Treasurer was:

… fresh from his ashram deep in the Himalayas, barefoot, robes flowing, incense burning, beads in one hand, wellbeing budget in the other …

Not only was this embarrassing because it was a pantomime act; the Treasurer should have been embarrassed because of his lack of knowledge of the history of GDP. As one of the authors of GDP, Simon Kuznets, has said:

The welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income.

There is more to measure than simply GDP, as important as GDP is.

The Treasurer's reaction is even more embarrassing now, in December of 2020. This year, COVID-19 has illustrated starkly and painfully that it's impossible to separate the wellbeing of our people from the health of our economy, society and environment. We knew before the pandemic that Australians cared about their physical and mental health and that of their families and friends as well as their connections to their community, the health of the natural environment and planet their children will inherit and whether society is broadly equal and fair. But COVID-19 and, before it, the devastating summer bushfires have stripped bare the fragility of almost everything we hold dear. They have raised the spectre of an entire generation of young Australians who may now face a future more difficult, less prosperous and less secure than the future their parents once faced.

There is no doubt that reviving economic growth and creating jobs are critical challenges facing our leaders and will be for many years to come, but, as we imagine post-COVID or COVID-normal Australia, we should be asking ourselves whether the traditional measures of national income, such as GDP, are sufficient indicators of our progress. While economic prosperity fairly shared must play a central role in our national agenda, in order for Australia and Australians to truly thrive it should be embedded in a larger story of wellbeing, of people, of communities and of the places we live in and love. Arguably, the failure to see national wellbeing and national economic growth as indivisible explains why, as The Economist observed in 2011, while Australia is at our best in a crisis, our history is one of failing to take advantage of prosperity.

Historically, though, times of profound national change in Australia—1901, World Wars I and II, the 1980s—have characteristics in common with each other and where we find ourselves now. Most obviously, they followed crises that threatened health, wealth and wellbeing. They all required leaders from the political, social, business and civil spheres of society to put down their cudgels, at least temporarily, in order to achieve the nation's larger goals. In all instances, in the urgency of the moment, leaders took one step back to forge a simple, compelling narrative that the population could rally behind. Thinking larger, looking longer, leaders of periods in the past built legacies that will endure. They created a nation. They built a nation in which everyone had a job, and they opened our nation to the world. We need equivalent vision from our leaders today.

As economist Kate Raworth said in her book Doughnut Economics, 'We have an opportunity to change the goal.' We can decide to judge the success of recovery from the global pandemic not just by how swiftly the economy rebounds but also by whether our country is meeting measures of what Australians value as contributing to a good society. I've suggested that we look at a quadruple bottom line: what is good for the economy, what is good for health, what is good for the environment and what is good for democracy. Australians deserve us to stand up. (Time expired)

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