Chalmers calls for calm as wellbeing budget falls short
Those clicking on the new Measuring What Matters dashboard on Friday may have found themselves bemused about how the nation's wellbeing is tracking.
Jim Chalmers made a plea to journalists for “perspective” on Friday morning after choosing to be upfront about obvious shortfalls in new official data about the wellbeing of the nation's households.
“We believe deeply in this wellbeing framework ... but we recognise that some of the data is still too old,” the federal Treasurer said at a press conference in Brisbane.
“There are still too many holes in the data, and that’s why I’ve provided funding in the most recent budget to help the Australian Bureau of Statistics fill in some of these holes and make sure that we get more regular data between now and when the first full government update happens in 2026.”
About a year ago, Chalmers told Capital Brief that he wanted to change the public discussion about the economy. Specifically, he wanted to broaden it out to be about the wellbeing of Australians — not solely the blunt calculation of GDP. One of his ways of achieving this was to release a new set of statistics under a wellbeing framework, which back in 2020 as then-shadow treasurer he had floated as a "wellbeing budget".
