Australia unveiled a groundbreaking initiative on Friday, launching a "national wellbeing" dashboard designed to assess progress on key social and environmental issues, aiming to strike a better balance between economic and societal goals.

The dashboard will monitor indicators in five essential categories: healthy, secure, sustainable, cohesive, and prosperous. These indicators will be accessible on an online dashboard and updated annually, complementing traditional economic measures like gross domestic product, inflation, and employment figures.

At a news conference, Treasurer Jim Chalmers expressed the frustration with the perception that economic and social objectives are inherently conflicting. He asserted that the national wellbeing framework seeks to demonstrate that these objectives can work in harmony.

Accompanying the dashboard launch, a comprehensive 127-page report titled "Measuring What Matters" provided a nuanced view of Australia's wellbeing. Positive advancements were evident in life expectancy, reduced resource consumption, income diversity, and employment rates. However, it also highlighted areas of concern, with measures related to chronic health conditions, national security, biodiversity, and fiscal sustainability showing signs of decline.

The report pointed out that nearly half of the population faced one or more chronic health conditions, while 13% reported mental health challenges. Access to healthcare and treatment wait times worsened, and measures of household financial stress and housing access also deteriorated, even before the recent surge in living costs and borrowing expenses.

Over the past few decades, 20 of the indicators exhibited improvement, while seven remained stable, and 12 showed a decline.

Many countries have sought to broaden policymaking beyond economic metrics in recent times, with Bhutan's "gross national happiness" index being a well-known example, emphasizing the importance of happiness and well-being over GDP figures. Australia's "national wellbeing" dashboard reflects a similar commitment to considering a broader range of factors to gauge the nation's prosperity and progress.