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

Recently I made a submission on behalf of my community to the Treasury consultation about how the government should measure what matters. I was thinking about this on the weekend, when so many members of my community took part in Clean Up Australia Day. The health of our environment is so important to the people of Dunkley, with our beautiful coastline, our fauna and flora parks and our creeks. A wellbeing budget, or measuring what matters, is designed to help us monitor things like the health of our environment. Whenever people talk about how you should measure what matters or what should be in a wellbeing budget, the environment always features because spending time in nature, we know, decreases stress, anxiety and depression and has positive effects on cognitive function, physical activity and creativity.

Natural spaces need to be available to all Australians no matter where we live, and we know that climate change is impacting that and that any government that cares about the future of its citizens needs to act urgently not just to reduce global warming but to protect precious species, flora and fauna. If we position economic growth and wellbeing alongside each other but as indivisible, we can enable more integrated problem-solving. If we measure how our environment is faring, we can bring in policies that will protect it now and into the future. (Time expired)

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