Page 2831 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 13 August 2019
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growth, through a particular emphasis on measuring our wellbeing beyond just economic statistics.
As I have indicated, a strong economy is very important. It is fundamental to delivering a decent quality of life for Canberrans. But a strong economy is not the only thing that matters. Our wellbeing, both as individuals and as a community, is also determined by things like our environment, our connections to place and others, the quality of our services and institutions, how inclusive we are towards others and our preparedness to contend with future challenges and opportunities. These are things that governments around the world are not currently tracking as attentively or as regularly as we do our economic indicators. But we are going to change that.
The Chief Minister’s stream is leading the work to develop a set of wellbeing indicators which the government and the broader community can use to collectively monitor our progress as a community, not just our progress as an economy, and to monitor our progress across a broad range of areas that reflect the priorities of Canberrans when it comes to our quality of life. The indicators will help guide government decision-making and our investments, through future ACT budgets. But just as importantly they will help all of us—government, community groups, businesses and individuals—to better understand where our community is doing well and where we may need to make more of an effort to ensure that everyone who lives in our city shares the benefits of a good life.
We have started a period of extensive consultation on this framework with the broadest range of stakeholders. We will continue to engage the broader community in a conversation about this later this calendar year. As I have indicated before, we plan to launch the indicators on Canberra Day in 2020. I look forward to them being a prominent feature of next year’s territory budget and territory budgets into the future. The wellbeing indicators work is about understanding and working to improve the quality of life that all Canberrans enjoy.
At the other end of the scale, this year’s budget contained a small initiative that also highlights the importance of taking a whole-of-government view. Community groups make a huge contribution to our city every day. The ACT government offers a wide range of grants and programs to support their activities and provides direct funding to a broad range of community groups across all our directorates—over 900 community groups in 2017-18.
But in some cases there are community groups doing worthy and important work that does not neatly fit within the criteria of these grant programs because of the breadth or nature of the services that they provide. We saw that there were a small number of these groups who were at risk of falling between the cracks of policy directorates. This year’s budget takes action by providing a combined $450,000 in direct support to three local groups: Kulture Break, the north side Veterans Support Centre and the Australian National Eisteddfod. Each of these organisations works to increase opportunities for connection and inclusion. They enable community members who might otherwise be at risk of exclusion to participate in and contribute to our city in unique ways. This is work that we are glad to support.
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