One thing I struggle with in this context is how to assess resource depletion. Are natural resources a national asset or part of a global patrimony? While future generations of Australians may benefit from the resource depletion of earlier Australians via increased physical capital, knowledge, etc unless such wealth increases somehow filter out as well to the billions of human beings living on $2 a day is such depletion justified in a wider context? The way the world is currently set up I cannot see that it can be assumed that current consumption and its byproducts (eg global warming) will be compensated by future gains by the world’s poor.

A few years ago I wrote a (small) thesis on measuring progress. Around the same time I was on an ABS reference group for their “measures of Australia’s progress”. The ABS didn’t go for the single indicator model – indeed they struggled to find both reliable data and indicators for each of the measures.

But – without a considerable amount of work and challenges to the orthodoxy, these sorts of new ways of considering well-being and progress might never have been considered. My thesis looked at whether Australia was ready for genuine engagement with progress that was broader than reductionist economic indicators and I interviewed influential people at very senior levels in various policy circles. I found support, but also pessimism about whether it would be possible.

A lot of these people’s thinking really does belong on John Howard’s side of the white picket fence.