Which communities will be most impacted by this week's interest rate increase? Which communities will be most impacted by this summer's bushfires, Trump's tariffs, cuts to immigration, artificial intelligence, another pandemic, or an economic downturn?
We now know the answers to these questions.
Enter the Australian Resilience Index: an index we at Mandala developed with the insurance company, Zurich, and Australia's top pollsters, RedBridge and Accent, over the last year.
What do an economics firm, a global insurance company and pollsters have in common? Amazing data. More than 2 million data points, to be precise, which we have brought together into a single model.
Our objective was simple: understand how resilient Australia's 2500 communities are, both in aggregate, and across four specific dimensions: financial, health, social and environmental.
Our motivation is obvious: risks are uncomfortably high at the moment. People face multi-dimensional risks, which are more correlated than ever.
Single data points will no longer cut it. We need a holistic measure of resilience across multiple of these dimensions if we are to properly understand how risks will impact Australians.
This is what our Resilience Index delivers.
So, what are the results? Millions of public and proprietary data points mean there are plenty of insights. But one insight is particularly hard to miss: it's great being in Canberra.
The haters will roll out the usual trope: Canberra is pumped full of cash by the public service, so of course they would be more resilient.
This is not what the data shows.
Canberra doesn't win because of financial resilience. In fact, when we rank Australian communities by financial resilience, Canberra doesn't even make the top 10, top 20 or top 30. It's not until 36 down the list that a Canberra community makes an appearance (congratulations, Red Hill).
Canberra does fine on financial resilience, but it's not what's driving the overall result.
Is it health resilience? Even less so. There are 242 communities on the list before Canberra makes an appearance (Yarralumla takes the gong for that one).
Environmental resilience is similar. The first Canberra community to make the top ranks is O'Connor which comes in at 29th.
So, why does Canberra rank so highly on overall resilience?
To be clear: we do pretty well on all of the above. But the reason we do so well overall is because of one measure in particular: social resilience.
Some of the data we use for social resilience comes from our pollster friends, RedBridge and Accent. They ask questions like: do you feel like a stranger in your own country? Do you have a sense of belonging? Are you comfortable expressing political opinions in your community?
We then marry this up with broader indicators of social resilience and social inclusion, such as participation in community groups, crime rates, marriage/long-term relationship rates, and rates of volunteering.
When we pull these altogether, Canberra doesn't just do well, we dominate.
Out of all the communities in Australia, Canberra communities come in at number 1 and number 2: Aranda and Forrest, respectively.
The top 10 includes even more Canberra communities: Yarralumla and Red Hill feature again, and are joined by Deakin and Chapman.
Keep reading down the list and you'll see Campbell, Barton, Hughes, Cook, Hackett, Fadden, O'Connor and Curtin.
In fact, of the top 20 communities across Australia ranked by social resilience, 12 of them are in Canberra.
Why do we do so well? It's not that we do well on just one thing. We seem to do well on everything.
Canberrans are more likely to be in community groups, are more likely to do volunteering, we're more likely to be partnered-up and have lower crime rates.
And our survey results back this in. Canberrans feel part of the community. They feel a strong sense of belonging. They feel at home here.
The results send a clear signal that Canberra is the place to be for resilience, particularly social resilience. But this has important national consequences, too.
When we breakdown our resilience index by electorate and look at which electorates are drifting towards the political extreme, there is a clear correlation: it's the communities which lack resilience that are drifting towards One Nation.
This is particularly acute for middle-aged women. Just under 30 per cent of Australian women have low or very low overall resilience, compared to 8.7 per cent for men. Among these women, the most impacted are those who are 35 to 49 years old. Unsurprisingly, this is the cohort driving much of the One Nation vote.
The resilience tells us where we need to do better. It tells us which communities need help, which cohorts need help, and what type of help they need.
The resilience index also has a clear message for Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce: if you find yourselves near Canberra looking for political support, keep driving.
