The Fair Go – Going, Gone: The Decline Of The Australian Way Of Life, 2000 to 2020

Key findings :

• The quality of the Australian way of life is collapsing. 
• The Australian Way of Life Scoreboard, which measures the quality of the Australian way of life, has declined by 28.5% since 2000. 
• 23 of 25 measures relevant to the Australian way of life have declined since 2000. 
• This decline can be found across every area of Australian life, spanning home, work, enterprise, governance, and lifestyle. 

This report demonstrates that the quality of the Australian way of life is worse than it was 20 years ago. Across a wide range of measures, each tracking a good that is essential to the Australian way of life as traditionally understood, Australia is today performing worse than in 2000. 

The Australian Way of Life Scoreboard is an index of 25 measures of different aspects of Australia’s culture and economy. These measures provide a reasonable representation of the quality of Australian life as it is really lived. The measures were selected on the basis of capturing an important feature of Australian life and on data availability. 23 of the 25 measures selected have declined across the period 2000- 2020, which shows that the decline of the quality of the Australian way of life has been felt across all aspects of Australian life. 

The Scoreboard provides a comparison of the Australian way of life as lived today and as lived in the recent past. This suggests that Australia can correct its current unfortunate course by reflecting on the values, customs, and institutions that made our country great in the first place. To improve the Australian way of life, we need to rediscover what the Australian way of life really means.

Download the report.