Labor’s Measuring What Matters is a worthy goal – but one that has utterly failed to live up to its promise

‘Until the government actually funds the ABS to regularly measure what matters, the wellbeing framework will be irrelevant to policy discussion.’ Photograph: mihailomilovanovic/Getty Images/iStockphoto

This week, the Bureau of Statistics realised its latest series of Measuring What Matters in an attempt to assess things beyond the mere economics. It comes off the back of the bureau’s first attempt to measure productivity in the non-market sector. Both raise questions of what we value and also whether our focus is where it should be.

In 2020 the then shadow treasurer, Jim Chalmers, announced an ALP government would develop a wellbeing framework that would seek to “measure what matters”. It was a worthy goal mocked by the then treasurer, Josh Frydenberg.