The Senate Inquiry on Sustainable Development Goals Australian
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Submission to The Senate Inquiry on Sustainable Development Goals by Australian National Development Index (ANDI) Limited and The University of Melbourne Author Mike Salvaris BA, LL.B Project Manager, The ANDI Project Melbourne Graduate School of Education The University of Melbourne 100 Leicester Street, Carlton, Victoria 3010 2 29th March 2018 Introduction 1. This submission is made by Australian National Development Index (ANDI) Limited and the University of Melbourne, partners in the development of a community and research based national index of progress, wellbeing and sustainability. Details of the project and the partnership are summarised below, and in the Appendix to this submission. 2. The submission briefly addresses aspects of the following Terms of Reference of the Inquiry: (a) the understanding and awareness of the SDG across the Australian Government and in the wider Australian community; (b) the potential costs, benefits and opportunities for Australia in the domestic implementation of the SDG; (c) what governance structures and accountability measures are required at the national, state and local levels of government to ensure an integrated approach to implementing the SDG that is both meaningful and achieves real outcomes; (d) how can performance against the SDG be monitored and communicated in a way that engages government, businesses and the public, and allows effective review of Australia’s performance by civil society; (h) examples of best practice in how other countries are implementing the SDG from which Australia could learn. What ANDI is and why it is relevant to the SDGs 3. ANDI Limited is a not-for-profit company incorporated in 2012 for the purpose of developing an ongoing national community and research based index of Australia’s progress, wellbeing and sustainability. This proposal was strongly supported at the Australia 2020 Summit in 2008, and has been developed over a decade with input from a wide range of national and international partners, including the OECD and the Canadian index of Wellbeing. ANDI’s Australian partners include over 60 organisations and peak groups across a broad range of interests: welfare, environmental, trade union, business, indigenous, academic, ethnic, religious, youth 3 and children, local government and human rights. ANDI Directors and Ambassadors include eminent Australians Professor Fiona Stanley, Rev Tim Costello and Sir Gustav Nossal. 4. In late 2016 ANDI entered a 5-year agreement with the University of Melbourne (UoM) under which the University will take on the role of long-term research partner in the project, and will help to develop research and community-based teams across each of 12 ‘progress’ domains: 1) Children and youth wellbeing; 2) Communities and regions; 3) Culture, recreation and leisure; 4) Democracy and governance; 5) Economic life and prosperity; 6) Education and creativity; 7) Environment and sustainability; 8) Health; 9) Indigenous wellbeing; 10) Justice and fairness; 11) Subjective wellbeing; 12) Work and work life. These domain teams will produce an annual index of progress and a status report in their field, each released in different months, to maximise publicity, discussion and policy relevance, and aggregated into the national wellbeing index. UoM’s role will be to oversight the research program and build a powerful national research collaboration ultimately involving perhaps 8- 10 universities, each working in a particular progress domain. 5. This research will be directed and underpinned by an extensive and inclusive national community engagement program directly involving over 500,000 Australians across the nation though a wide range of platforms (see below). Why we are making this submission 6. The ANDI-UoM partnership strongly supports the SDGs and acknowledges their critical global importance for peace, justice and sustainable progress. We will seek to ensure that the ANDI project is developed in ways that will help to promote and support the SDGs, while at the same time maintaining our focus on Australian priorities for ‘the kind of Australia we want’ (which in any case, we expect to be very similar to the SDGs: as shown, for example, by the fact that around 70,000 Australians voted for similar priorities in the UNDP MyWorld2015 survey: see:www.myworld2015.org , Results, Australia and New Zealand). In fact, ANDI and the SDGs cover very similar ground in terms of their key subject matter: although ANDI has 12 ‘domains’ (above) and the SDGs have 17 goals, and their descriptors are different, collectively they deal with the same broad issues of equity, sustainability, and wellbeing and most of the same specific policy areas. 7. In the process of developing the ANDI project over the next five years, we expect that there will strong, mutually beneficial opportunities (in community engagement, research, statistical analysis) to advance both projects and we are keen to work with DFAT and our university colleagues and community partners in this task. Thus a key purpose of this submission is to inform parliamentary and government decision- makers about the ANDI project both in its own right (as a national project with important and similar goals) and as a possible resource and partner for the successful implementation of the SDGs (in terms of research, networks, community education and engagement). 4 8. Our submission briefly addresses the terms of refence above in our comments below, with more detail given to the issues of: the role of government; publicity and education for the SDGs; the need to prioritise the SDGs; and possible best practice models. Need for clear government decision about the status and role of the SDGs 9. There is currently some confusion and ambiguity about the relevance and applicability of SDG’s in Australia. 10. The Terms of Reference of the Inquiry make clear that the SDGs are important both for Australian domestic policy and for our international aid and relations, which is indeed true. However, the implications of fully implementing the SDGs domestically as against implementing them through aid and foreign relations are very different. The former task will require considerably more resources and organisation. While it is very encouraging to see DFAT taking a strong and supportive stance on the SDGs, as a single federal department mostly working outside domestic policy, it is unlikely to have the traction and resources to develop and promote the SDGs domestically unless it is joined and strongly supported by other key federal departments, as well as state and local governments and the wider community. 11. This suggests that the first step needed for successful implementation of the SDGs is for the federal government as a whole to take an explicit decision and develop a unified policy as to how it treats the SDGs: are they a set of goals that we can use to help other less well-off developing countries (i.e., primarily as a tool for Australian’s overseas aid program)? Or are they a set of goals and measures that are directly relevant to Australia and can help us to improve our own society, progress, wellbeing and sustainability? For governments concerned about the difficult political implications of the latter, it would not be difficult (given current public views, indicated below) to represent the SDGs as primarily an issue of overseas aid policy. In fact, the SDG’s (as distinct from the MDG’s) are specifically designed as goals and standards for sustainable development for all countries to achieve in their own country. 12. We believe that, as part of this first stage, the federal government as whole should make a serious long-term commitment to implement the SDGs within Australia and indeed to take a prominent position of national leadership on the issue. To do this successfully, the government needs to be seen to be working side-by-side with local and state governments, business, trade unions, local government and community stakeholders and NGOs. It is unlikely that we will achieve success in implementing (rather than simply monitoring) the SDGs unless all these sectors are working together. This also implies the need for deeper community engagement, perhaps starting off at the local and school level and working through major community organisations. Need for publicising and educating the SDG’s 5 13. We believe that the second task in a successful SDGs strategy is to communicate what the SDGs are and why they are important for Australia. At present, our impression is that most Australians would be unaware of the SDGs; and if they are aware of them, they would in many cases regard them critically or unfavourably, either on the ground that they are only relevant to very poor countries, not countries like Australia; or perhaps because they would see them as an example of the United Nations (once again!) interfering in Australian domestic life and telling us how to run our country. 14. So perhaps the first step needs to be a major national publicity and education campaign to educate Australians in the SDGs, to explain what they are and why they are relevant to Australians and how they can improve our country and the life of our people if we set about implementing them systematically. An example of a national publicity campaign 15. The example of United Nations MyWorld 2015 is a strong and relevant one for Australia on implementing the SDGs. In the MyWorld campaign (which was a prelude to the Paris summit) citizens all over the world were asked to vote on 6 out of 17 sustainable development goals or priorities (in fact in fact over 9 million did so). At the same time, a campaign was carefully worked out around this survey, whereby businesses, community organisations, trade unions, local authorities et cetera all took on the responsibility of promoting discussion on sustainable development priorities within their organisations and their communities, including asking them to hold meetings, promote the survey, encourage blogs and discussions, make videos et cetera.