About Measuring What Matters

Released 15/09/2025

The Measuring What Matters wellbeing framework was established by the Australian Government in 2023. 

The framework has five themes:

• Healthy: A society in which people feel well and are in good physical and mental health, can access services when they need, and have the information they require to take action to improve their health.
• Secure: A society where people live peacefully, feel safe, have financial security and access to housing.
• Sustainable: A society that sustainably uses natural and financial resources, protects and repairs the environment and builds resilience to combat challenges.
• Cohesive: A society that supports connections with family, friends and the community, values diversity, and promotes belonging and culture.
• Prosperous: A society that has a dynamic, strong economy, invests in people’s skills and education, and provides broad opportunities for employment and well-paid, secure jobs.

Inclusion, equity and fairness are cross-cutting dimensions of the framework.

The themes are supported by 12 dimensions that describe aspects of the wellbeing themes and 50 key indicators, to monitor and track progress, which will be updated over time.

The first dashboard, published by Treasury in 2023, defines the metrics for each of the key indicators. In 2024, responsibility for updating the data in the dashboard moved to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). This 2025 update continues the reporting model established by Treasury.

The 2025 update:

• retains the themes and dimensions established by Treasury
• retains Treasury's indicator names and descriptions (Why this matters text) with minor changes included, where necessary
• retains the metrics and data sources selected by Treasury with limited changes included, where necessary
• where possible, provides supplementary data for context in circumstances where headline sources have no recent update
• includes new data presentations to enhance interpretability.

Changes made in 2025 are described in detail below.

'Why this matters' text is authored by Treasury to explain the relevance of an indicator in the context of the relevant theme and dimension of the framework. Minor updates have been applied to 5 indicators. These changes have been made to apply ABS web content guidelines, including ease of reading, and to fix broken links.

Measuring What Matters metrics and data sources are selected and described by Treasury. 

In 2025, four metric names were changed:

• ‘Unmet needs: proportion of people (aged 0-64 years) living in households who receive disability support who felt their needs were not being met’ is now ‘Unmet needs: proportion of people with disability (aged 0-64 years) who need more formal assistance than they are currently receiving’. This better describes the target population in the source data.
• ‘Unmet needs: proportion of people (aged 65 years and over) living in households who receive aged care services and who felt their needs were not being met’ is now ‘Unmet needs: proportion of people (aged 65 years and over) living in households who need more formal assistance than they are currently receiving’. This better describes the target population in the source data.
• ‘Net worth per household’ is now ‘Average household wealth’, describing the same concept in plainer language.
• ‘Proportion of people who felt safe or very safe walking alone during the day and night’ is now ‘Proportion of people who felt safe walking alone at night in their local area’. This reflects a change in the data source.

In 2025, derivation methods were changed slightly for the following metrics:

• ‘Proportion of people who used a language other than English at home’ uses a simpler derivation based solely on the Census variable Proficiency in spoken English (ENGLP).
• ‘Proportion of employees who had irregular working arrangements’ was re-derived to correct an error in the previous calculation.

In 2025, the data sources for two metrics were changed:

• Scanlon Institute Mapping Social Cohesion survey replaced National Survey of Community Satisfaction with Policing as reported in Productivity Commission Report on Government Services for the Feeling of safety indicator. This is due to the national-level estimates for this metric no longer being available.
• Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey replaced  ABS Survey of Income and Housing for Housing serviceability, Household income and wealth and Income and wealth inequality indicators to provide a timelier data picture. 

The 2025 dashboard updated headline metrics with available data for 35 of the 50 indicators. Where possible, supplementary data has been sourced to provide contemporary context to headline sources that have no recent update, or additional detail about how wellbeing is experienced by different groups. Collectively, these new sources bring the total number of updated indicators to 44 of 50.

In the 2025 update, supplementary data was included from a range of sources already included in Measuring What Matters as headline sources. In addition, new data was sourced from:

• Socioeconomic inequalities in life expectancy in Australia, 2013–22: an ecological study of trends and contributions of causes of death, as published in the Lancet
• Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) Cybercrime in Australia survey
• ABS National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Survey 2022-23.

The 2025 dashboard features simple data visualisations on navigation tiles, providing an at-a-glance view of progress within each theme. Clicking on a tile takes you to the indicator page where you can find further information.

Other minor changes have been made to indicator page and graph layout to improve readability and interpretability.