Treasurer Jim Chalmers has set himself a tough but vitally important task. He is about to deliver the first federal Labor budget since 2013 and he's told us it's going to look at our nation's wellbeing.
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Chalmers has indicated a desire to move the budget away from just strict economic measures, looking to ensure the broader social impact of policies are tracked and understood.
He's recently indicated education standards, the quality of health services, the state of the environment and childhood disadvantage are his initial wellbeing priorities.
Measuring wellbeing is a tricky task. While we know most Australian children thrive, for some of our youngest and most vulnerable Australians, work remains to level the playing field and give them a fair start in life.
An essential part of this work is to understand what matters to children and young people.
The Treasurer's commitment to delivering Australia's first wellbeing budget has seen wellbeing emerge as the latest trend or "in thing" too frequently, the term is used as shorthand or a synonym for individual aspects of overall or holistic wellbeing - such as health, mental health, or social-emotional learning. And the challenge for a prosperous nation like Australia is finding out why so many of our population are not doing as well as you'd expect.
In talking with children and young people we are hearing they want to be heard, and things are not all OK.
Survey data collected via an app called ei Pulse, used by 84,000 students across Australia, shows young people have been on a rollercoaster of emotions over the past 18 months.
In any given week, 40 per cent of students will choose a different answer to the question "how are you feeling" than their previous response.
And while 70 per cent of the time, students reported feeling positive in any given week, about 6 per cent of students reported negative feelings.
And concerningly, in line with reports from earlier in the pandemic, two in five students are still worrying a lot about mistakes they make, with a quarter reporting they often feel nervous or upset about things.
As a nation, we can't "fix" the way our kids are feeling by investing in physical infrastructure projects across the country.
While highways, public transport corridors and dams are vital, a true wellbeing budget committed to addressing childhood disadvantage will see these projects for the impact they have on people and communities - not just the movement of goods and the dollar return on investment.
Providing for our national social infrastructure, as well as the care economy and its associated workforce, will secure our current and future social capital and return both the economic and wellbeing dividends necessary to see improvements in the Treasurer's priority wellbeing areas.
A holistic understanding of and approach to wellbeing is the antidote for the all too frequent criticisms of siloing or disconnected services. It allows us to see the whole - the whole child, the whole family, the whole community.
As First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon recently said, "it is an approach based on human wellbeing - lifting people up so they can contribute fully, not waiting for wealth to trickle down while the inequality gap grows."
Across a period of two years, the Australia Research Alliance for Children and Youth worked with more than 4000 children, young people and their families, investigating what was needed for them to truly thrive.
The Nest is Australia's wellbeing framework for children and young people.
Since this original piece of research was launched a decade ago, it has been updated and strengthened.
The Nest has been used to develop frameworks and strategies across Tasmania, Northern Territory, New Zealand, and by local council regions in NSW and Victoria.
The Nest's conceptualisation of wellbeing is deeply and deliberately holistic. While identifying six domains of wellbeing - being valued, loved and safe, having material basics, being healthy, learning, participating and having a positive sense of identity and culture - it also acknowledges that individually these domains are not enough.
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A child needs them all to thrive and if they're not doing so well in one or more, it's likely they'll struggle in others too.
A child living in poverty, may not have enough to eat, may struggle at school and participate less in their community.
A wellbeing perspective allows us to the see the whole.
Perhaps this is the most exciting opportunity the upcoming budget will present.
An opportunity for us to see all Australians as "whole" people.
An opportunity for us to tackle the big issues like childhood disadvantage as the complex, multidimensional challenges they are. One thing is certain, the way we've been approaching these issues up to this point isn't working.
The wellbeing budget is our next big step.
- Penny Dakin is chief executive officer of the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth.
