Interview with Fran Kelly, Sydney Mornings, ABC

FRAN KELLY:

First thing, Treasurer, why do we need a wellbeing budget? What are we trying to do with this annual set of measurements?

JIM CHALMERS:

What we're trying to do here is to recognise that rolling out cost‑of‑living help for people doing it tough is the main game ‑ it's the government's major priority and major focus ‑ but at the same time that shouldn't prevent us from thinking more broadly about how we align what we want in our economy with what we want in our society. I think for too long, one of the frustrating elements of the economic conversation is that people think that our society and our economy are necessarily in conflict and for a really long time now I've wanted to change that. So this report that we're releasing today is Australia's first ever national wellbeing framework. It's called Measuring What Matters, and it's really about trying to refocus the economic conversation on the wellbeing of real people in real communities around the country.

KELLY:

Okay, what does it tell us about our society? What's this snapshot, if you like, tell us? Let's look on the upside first, where are we better off?

CHALMERS:

There's a whole range of things that we can be pleased about over the longer‑term broader trends: things like life expectancy, emissions reduction, some of our environmental measures where there's been progress under this government, some of the income measures have been more positive, digital preparedness, some of those kinds of measures. There's a whole bunch of them that are stable, where there hasn't been much change: air quality, wealth inequality, some of those measures. And there's been some where we haven't been going as well as we would like to: chronic conditions, online safety, some of these measures as well. So what it tries to do is it says wellbeing in this context is about people being healthy and secure in communities which are cohesive and sustainable and prosperous. We've got about 50 measures there across those five themes, and we want to try and evolve those measures and update those measures and refine those measures over time. A big part of the task has been recognising where there are some gaps in our data and some gaps in our understanding so that we can refine them going forward as well. But overwhelmingly, is as you'd expect, when you've got 50 indicators, we're doing well on some, not as well on others. The job really is to track those longer‑term trends and see where we can do better.

KELLY:

Are some of the measures not reliable? I mean, for instance, it measures the mental health of the nation and rates it stable, that's one of the stable ones. But since COVID, all of us will have a hunch that that is actually not true. Mental health problems, particularly amongst young Australians are higher than ever, without enough services to deal with it. So what use is this wellbeing picture if the data doesn't take into account, for instance, the impact of COVID?

CHALMERS:

I think there's two important things about that, Fran. First of all, which data that you choose to track is obviously a fundamental thing and so there will be a welcome debate about whether we've got the right measures or whether people think that there are better ways or more accurate ways to pick up the ways that our society is changing. So that's a good thing. Secondly, what we're hoping and I think your question is a good harbinger for this, is that we want people to say, ‘okay, well that sounds right, or that doesn't sound right', or to have a proper debate about the mental health of our people in our communities. That's a good thing too. We've got realistic expectations about this. We know that the people expect us to maintain our focus on the cost of living and we're doing that and on jobs and we're doing well on that front as well. You mentioned COVID, I think coming out of COVID people started to think a little bit differently about their own wellbeing and the wellbeing of their communities. I think that's a good thing. And we can focus on that without it being at the expense of some of these harder, nearer term economic issues that the government's focused on.

KELLY:

What about harder, everyday problems? And then again, to go to what looks to me a clear anomaly in your report, in fact, something that's quite wrong ‑ it finds people are spending less of their pay on their housing than they were 20 years ago. I mean, we've just had 12 rate rises, rents are sky high, that rosy picture is wrong. I mean, why put that in there if you know what's wrong?

CHALMERS:

First of all, we do understand that people are under the pump and that's why, as I've said a couple of times, our major focus, our main priority is rolling out these billions of dollars in cost‑of‑living relief that we've budgeted for. And we've also got more frequent data, more recent data that helps us calibrate that. Obviously we understand that the impact of these rate rises, putting people under pressure. What we're talking about here in this wellbeing framework is the broader, longer‑term trends and changes. And in putting this out there, we've made it really clear that this is our first crack at it, and that one of the tasks is to identify the gaps in the data, or where it's not up to scratch or where we need it more frequently, so that we can try and address those gaps. We've been pretty up‑front about that and we do want people to discuss it, we want people to critique it, we want people to give us feedback, and we'll take that into consideration as we refine it going forward.

KELLY:

Seems a shame, though, to have such glaring errors in it because people will think, ‘oh, well, it's not right'. But can I go to some of the society issues, you talk about it because your report shows a drop in loneliness. That would be surprising, I think, given we know, and in fact, your report finds fewer hours of volunteering in the community. More of us, we know are living alone and not partnering. How do you measure the loneliness scale?

CHALMERS:

Obviously we're relying pretty substantially on some of the international measures, and on the advice of the Treasury and others. And it is to be up‑front with you and frank with you, there are a series of judgments in relying on which data we include in the framework and not. There are thousands, if not tens of thousands of different ways to measure the kinds of things that we're talking about. And so that's one of the surprising ones for me as well. There's a number in there where you think, ‘well, that doesn't quite accord with what my assumptions are’. But again, I reckon that's a good thing, Fran. I reckon it's great that you've had a look at it and there's a few that don't accord with your own conversations and then people can have quite a healthy discussion about that. But again our goal here isn't to put one out and pretend that it's in every way perfect. Our goal here is to begin this national wellbeing framework to understand and be up‑front about the fact that we will refine it going forward, we make that clear in the document itself and we've been encouraged so far by the level of interest and input into what we've got here but we don't pretend that this is a finished product. This is an ongoing thing and I want it to be a feature of the economic conversation in the years ahead.

KELLY:

My guest this morning is the Federal Treasurer, Jim Chalmers talking about the wellbeing budget, Australia's first wellbeing budget. It's called Measuring What Matters. Just to stay with some of those society indicators, on the deficit side, we've got richer, but more of us are homeless. What does that say about us as a society?

CHALMERS:

It says we have to do much better when it comes to providing housing for our people and that's a key motivation for the couple of billions of dollars that we put into public housing in the last few weeks. It's a key motivation behind the Housing Australia Future Fund, which the Greens are holding up in the Senate, and a whole bunch of other parts of our pretty broad and pretty ambitious housing policy. That's one that really stands out for me in this. When it comes to wellbeing, one of the primary ways that we can make our people more secure is to help provide a roof over their head, and we are spending billions and billions of dollars on that objective.

KELLY:

One that struck me was it finds we spend about three and a half hours a day watching television, which is a lot; more than two hours listening to the radio or podcasts, but as I mentioned before, we're reducing the time we're giving to volunteer work. Again, what does that say about us as a society and what can a government do about that? Nothing really, can it?

CHALMERS:

I think if you listen to my colleague, Andrew Leigh, he's very focused on the trends in volunteering and how we try and rebuild that social capital. I think that that one is not especially surprising conclusion in the report, I think we've all seen the way that people have been in the main, in aggregate kind of retreating from public organisations. You read people like Robert Putnam in the US and others about the decline of social capital in our communities, I think that's a troubling thing. And for us, it's about supporting community organisations; we've made it easier for them to pay their workers and pay their bills with the indexation changes. There's a whole range of things that we can do. I think that is a worrying trend in our communities. Obviously, there are a lot of people doing wonderful things, there are people joining and volunteering and all the rest of it, but we'd like to see more of that. And I think this conclusion in the report really kind of spurs us on that front too.

KELLY:

Okay, but this report will be useless unless it is used to indicate to our government where they need to do more. And, for instance, a significant negative finding in this wellbeing budget is a 55 per cent drop in 278 monitored species of animals, reptiles and fish. Does this mean your next Budget must include a significant increase in dollars and resources to not only measure but protect our biodiversity?

CHALMERS:

One of the reasons why we've put in the report a very brief, not a long kind of commentary about it, under each of these areas is to show the action that we are taking. And I tip my hat to Tanya Plibersek, who's made nature and conservation a central part of her work as the Environment Minister. And so when people go through this report, they'll see there's a kind of a dot point list of all of the things we're doing on each of these fronts. You talked about homelessness a moment ago, talking about environment now and biodiversity, what we've tried to show people is where we're acting. Obviously, we've only been in government for a little over a year now and so a lot of the stuff that we're working on is trying to turn around long‑term entrenched trends. But we've made a start in a heap of these areas, including the one you've just asked about.

KELLY:

Jim Chalmers, this is clearly a very important project for you. As Treasurer, what do you want to change in Australia as a result of this wellbeing budget?

CHALMERS:

What I really want to do here is to demonstrate that we can maintain a primary focus on all of the usual ways that we measure the economy: inflation, and wages and unemployment and GDP, they are all incredibly important. There's been half a million jobs created on our watch already, which is a record for a new government; we're rolling out billions of dollars in cost‑of‑living help; we've got the Budget back into surplus. And so all of those things are the primary focus of the Government and in my portfolio in particular, but I've had this frustration for a while now, Fran, and I think you and I have talked about it before and I just don't like this sort of broadly entrenched idea that we have to choose between good outcomes in our communities and in our society, and good outcomes in our economy. I want to line those things up and in order to line those things up, we've got to do a better job of measuring what matters in our society and in our communities when it comes to people's wellbeing, not as a substitute for those other hard economic measures but in addition to that, and so that's why I'm pretty relaxed about it. People will come out and they'll rant about this. There'll be the usual suspects, making the usual partisan points. My predecessor in the parliament famously bagged this idea and he doesn't work there anymore. There will be people who bag it ‑ I'm relaxed about that because my job here is to focus on my primary task, and I'm doing that, but also to try and broaden the conversation and not just in this way, Fran. This wellbeing framework is really about focusing the economy on real people and real communities, but next we'll release an Intergenerational Report which is all about focusing on the future, and then after that we'll have an Employment White Paper, which is really about focusing on the opportunities that we create for people in our economy and in our country as well. In all of those ways, I'm trying to show that we can have a much more sophisticated conversation about the economy focused on people and opportunities and the future. And I'm prepared frankly to cop a little bit of stick about that on the way through if it broadens out that conversation in welcome and meaningful ways.

KELLY:

Jim Chalmers, thanks very much for joining us on Mornings.