Australia is the latest of the Countries which is encompassing other indicators/criteria into its budgets/policies to measure growth.
The Australia’s first ever budget to benchmark its measures against their impact on the wellbeing of the Australian people: the first Labour budget “wellbeing budget”, is coming in October.
When Chalmers proposed the idea in opposition, the treasurer at the time, Josh Frydenberg, described it as “laughable“.
Former treasurer described Wellbeing was “doublespeak for higher taxes and more debt”.
Frydenberg asked parliament to imagine Chalmers delivering his first budget, the one he will deliver on October 25, “fresh from his ashram deep in the Himalayas, barefoot, robes flowing, incense burning, beads in one hand, wellbeing budget in the other”.
Encompassing rather than replacing GDP
What Chalmers is proposing, what New Zealand and Scotland are already doing, and what Canada is working towards, is a scorecard of how budget measures affect the things that matter, including how much we produce: gross domestic product.
The expected effects of budget measures weren’t made explicit, although kept in confidence at budget drawing boards. But what is happening now is the other measurables than GDP are coming out in open We can understand whether measures taken to boost GDP come at the cost of Main heads of Larger Society, Environment, long term Economy, Government, etc. and their subheadings, For example each of the 26 indices- whether each one remain as it is or going down or going up, will be known to all. This can make nations go from one sided view of the economy from just GDP angle to measure growth to a wholesome almost full view of the economic welfare of the country and its subjects.
In Current GDP focus, what happened couldn’t be assessed against expectations of these 26 measurables of the country.
Introducing those measurables wouldn’t be about replacing or demeaning GDP, but about including it along with other measures of prosperity as outcomes against which the budget could be assessed, along with measures of health, the environment, gender, children’s welfare, and the welfare of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people,etc.
Are we making progress or going backwards on the environment (where we seem to be going backwards) and on living standards, inequality, health and other things, and what the budget is doing about it.? All these questions can find answers in the new system.
New Zealand also is including some measurables as seen from the following picture. They now measure the wealth of New Zealand on 4 fronts 1)Natural Environment (why nobody thought about it as separate wealth so far) 2)Financial and Physical Capital 3) Social Cohesion 4) Human capability.
What will these measurables do to a Country?
Let us look at what OECD well-being framework is and how it enables comparison of the measurables of time period of a country.
Australian SWOT using these measurables
Lets see an example of how the budget can work to improve No say in Government – Each ministry/department to have more staff to interact with public proposals and discussion and should encourage more public discussions on current bills and take the finer ideas emerging from that discussion to incorporate into the bill – The current legislative system allows only discussion between ruling and opposition or other parties. If for example a member of public has an idea for good alternative to the points in the bill, how can he or she express it and what are the chances of the idea taken into the bill if he proves his point in the discussion to the satisfaction of members of parliament. If improving the chances of Parliament listening and taking into account public suggestions systematically could increase Australian ranking for measurable – No say in Government