Treasury seeks feedback on proposed Living Standards Dashboard

Treasury is seeking feedback on a report on proposed new living standard indicators. Photo / NZME

Treasury is seeking feedback on the way it measures New Zealand living standards as part of work to strengthen its policy-making and advice to better reflect a new focus on wellbeing.

It has released an independent report, Treasury Living Standards Dashboard: Monitoring Intergenerational Wellbeing, which includes a proposed "dashboard" of indicators of living standards and intergenerational wellbeing.

"Public consultation on the report and its proposed Living Standards Dashboard is very important to the Treasury. It will help ensure the dashboard we are releasing at the end of 2018 is expert, evidence-based, and reflects the perspectives of a wide range of New Zealanders, said Treasury chief economic adviser Tim Ng.

"While this independent report does not represent government policy or Treasury advice, the work provides a strong foundation for discussion and generating well-informed feedback," he said in a statement.

Ng acknowledged that some elements of the Treasury's Living Standards Framework were not yet fully developed and there were still gaps in knowledge and indicators, but work was underway to fill those gaps.

"Creating a dashboard to capture every measure relevant to living standards is neither achievable nor desirable. Instead, the Treasury's focus unapologetically pragmatic: our aim is to have a practical set of meaningful indicators to inform policy and contribute towards higher living standards for New Zealand," he said.

The aim is to get the dashboard aligned with planning for the Government's "wellbeing" Budget in 2019.

"This will involve a Budget process that captures the impact of proposed initiatives in terms of both current wellbeing and the four capitals, as well as a framework to support ministers in making Budget decisions," the report says.

The four capitals are natural, human, social and financial.

Secretary to the Treasury Gabriel Makhlouf told the Herald earlier this year: "What we've been doing, for the last six years or so, is working up the framework to improve our advice. The new Government has arrived and said: we like this stuff, we want to base our Budget around it, we want to develop a series of indicators. We want to measure our success against it.

"We're probably the first country in the world saying, all this conceptual stuff is great but let's take it and apply it to policy and decision-making."

The public has eight weeks to give feedback.