Menslink Walk participants 2024: Canberrans donate and volunteer at nation-leading rates. Photo: Thomas Lucraft.
How do you rate a country’s progress? Is the economy the only measure that matters?
For the last decade, the Community Council for Australia (CCA) has been analysing our national progress by measures other than cash in hand and assets on the ledger. As the Reverend Tim Costello says, the nation might just be made up of more than economic units.
About 10 years ago, CCA gathered 60 community leaders from the not-for-profit sector and asked them to reflect on what kind of Australia they wanted.
The answer was a nation that’s just, fair, safe and compassionate, inclusive, equal, creative and confident, authentic, united and generous. Measurable indicators were applied using research from the Bureau of Statistics, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the ANU’s Centre for Social Research and other nationally reliable sources.
With AMP’s support, CCA has produced three national report cards. The Australia We Want 2025 report was released this month at the National Press Club alongside charities minister Andrew Leigh and his Opposition counterpart Senator Dean Smith.
So, how are we doing now?
Not so well on many national measures, apparently.
“Australia’s performance has not improved – high incarceration rates, loss of volunteers, high per capita CO2 emissions, ongoing inequality and low generosity are all areas needing more attention if we are to achieve the Australia we want”, the report notes.
The Northern Territory’s incarceration rate now outstrips the US on a per capita basis, and nationally, we jail twice as many people as Canada and most European countries, and five times that of Japan. One in three of those prisoners are Indigenous, one in three have disabilities or chronic health problems, and four out of five have not completed secondary schooling.
And then there’s housing, where nobody’s doing well, even though our costs are close to the OECD average overall.
There are bright spots.
Australia sits above OECD averages in terms of access to education and employment. Our transparency levels are good, and both consumer and business confidence are high.
Nationally, Australians volunteer significantly less, and despite growing wealth, donation levels both internally and to impoverished countries around the world have declined.
But there’s a twist for Canberrans: if you’re measuring progress on these indicators, the ACT is a clear national winner, receiving universally positive results except for housing and increasing inequality.
The ACT is positioned “well above the national average across most of the important measures”, according to the report.
We feel safer, and that’s increasing. Our suicide rate is well below the national average and falling, our educational attainment rate is increasing and, unsurprisingly, is well above other jurisdictions.
Female workplace participation is high and growing, per capita CO2 emissions are “a long way below” the national average, and while inequality is increasing, it’s less pronounced than in other places.
Our levels of giving are high and we’re the only place in Australia where volunteering increased. Nearly one in three Canberrans gives up their time to help their community.
These findings endorse my own belief that Canberrans are the most generous people in Australia. We donate and volunteer at nation-leading rates.
Yes, much of this is about demographics. A city full of people in good jobs with high disposable incomes should look like this. But there are plenty of wealthy places in Australia where people don’t give, don’t share and presumably don’t care much either.
Canberra is often the butt of negativity – sometimes from our within own community. Cue some commentary about “progressive nitwits” who are fools to ourselves.
Yet external reporting says things are pretty good here in the national capital, largely because of the people who live here. Instead of the negativity, perhaps we could take pride in being the kind of Australia we all want?
Genevieve Jacobs is the CEO of Hands Across Canberra, the ACT’s community foundation.
