In this episode, we’re joined by Professor John Thwaites, who boasts a very impressive CV.
John Thwaites is currently the chair and Professorial Fellow of Monash University’s Sustainable Development Institute, ClimateWorks Australia & BehaviourWorks Australia.
John is Chair of Melbourne Water and a Director of Fair Trade Australia New Zealand.
John is the Chair of the National Sustainable Development Council, which has developed the Transforming Australia: SDGs Progress Report 2018. We’ll be speaking with him today predominantly about the 2020 update of the Transforming Australia report, for which John was the Principal Lead. You can find the report at sdgtransformingaustralia.com
He is a Co-Chair of the Leadership Council of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (“SDSN”) launched by the Secretary General of the United Nations to provide expert advice and support to the development and implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.
The Lancet Covid-19 Commission, one of the pre-eminent global bodies created solutions to the pandemic appointed John as a Commissioner.
John Thwaites was also Deputy Premier of Victoria from 1999 until his retirement in 2007, as well as holding Ministerial portfolios including Health, Planning, Environment, Water, and has the honour of being Victoria’s first Minister for Climate Change.
Transcript
Dominic Billings
Firstly, John, thanks so much for everything you've done as part of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, particularly with Monash Sustainable Development Institute, as the anchor of the Australia, New Zealand and Pacific network, part of the SDSN. Obviously, we're chatting today because MSDI has released Transforming Australia, a report getting up to speed with where Australia is at in terms of the SDGs. So, John, I tend to think of Australia is languishing with the environmental SDGs, but prospering with the economic Goals and one of the most things I found most striking about the Transforming Australia report was have woeful the picture portrayed of reality of Australian socio-economic life. That was something I wasn’t expecting to come out of the report. But obviously, the data is there. Some of the indicators off-track included on inadequacy on welfare payments, elevated levels of psychological distress, high household debts, high rent burdens, homelessness, underemployment, and victims of sexual assault. And obviously, many of those topics were negatively affected by COVID. Do you see COVID as both a driver, which has been combating those issues, but also on the other hand, an opportunity to address some of those shortcomings seeing is they're so obviously in the public eye now and perhaps experienced more broadly, among the broader population
John Thwaites
COVID-19 has had a negative impact on women, on young people and on lower-income households. And from that point-of-view, it's exacerbated pre-existing inequalities. So, I think we've got to see COVID as a huge challenge, but also there are some opportunities. And one good thing about the COVID pandemic has been the way in which Australians have come together, largely collaborated, to respond to the health demands of the pandemic, and largely relied on expert health advice on the science. And we've shown that when we do that, we can have huge achievements. And Australia is performing better on COVID than most countries in the world. And I think we can learn from that, as we meet some of these other challenges that we've highlighted in the report like climate change and embedded inequality.
Dominic Billings
Another I issue I probably wasn't expecting Australia to stand out in was that we're off track in investment in knowledge-based capital, which obviously has flown effects to the resources that are made possible to even capture the data for the Transforming Australia report. And a lot of the work I imagine on the Monash Sustainable Development Institute is doing. It's a bit of a qualitative question, but what would you attribute to Australians' reticence to not invest more in in R&D?
John Thwaites
This is really one of the most shocking findings in the report, I believe, for a country that is so advanced and put such a high priority on education, that we invest less in knowledge-based capital than most of our comparable countries. Now, when we say invest in knowledge-based capital, we mean things like in IT, in human capacity building, research and development. So in those things that build up knowledge in the community that are very much the core of the knowledge economy, which is the future economy, we spend much less on that, for example, in most European countries, but also much less than the United States. And the disturbing finding in the report is that our expenditure on research and development, for example, is reducing now. We're spending less now than we were five years ago, and we're spending considerably less than the OECD average. So, in Australia, we're spending about 1.79% of GDP on research and development. The OECD average is 2.4%. And that's a significant difference. Unfortunately, that's going to mean we're not going to be as prepared as we should be for the future economy, which is based on knowledge, digital technologies, and human capital.
Dominic Billings
I suppose like you mentioned, the knowledge-based capital indicator was probably one of the surprises, but I suppose one of the indicators, which was less of a surprise was the continued prevalence of obesity, which as the Transforming Australia report indicated was about a third of the population. And I just want to ask you, firstly, kudos on your role as Commissioner on the Lancet COVID-19 Commission. That's a very prestigious role to hold. So, congratulations. But I was curious whether the slow-moving nature of an epidemic such as obesity, whether at the level of The Lancet COVID-19 Commission, whether there had been much discussion as to the relation between obesity and a fast-moving, infectious pandemics, such as COVID-19 has had - if the interplay between those two have been discussed at that level of the Commission.
John Thwaites
There has been some discussion of that. And there's certainly been some evidence that obesity is a risk factor for those who are infected with COVID-19. And can lead to higher cause of mortality or morbidity as a result. So certainly, obesity is a risk factor for COVID, as it is for numerous other conditions. And that's a real concern, because the health story in Australia is generally a very positive one. We've seen increasing life expectancy, our life expectancy has actually increased more in Australia than in most comparable countries, were now sitting on life expectancy of around 83 years, which is one of the top in the OECD. So, we're doing generally very well. Obesity is this black mark that we have. And it's something that if we're not careful, we'll turn around that very good result we've had to date. So much of the improvement in life expectancy has been linked to better health care, to access for all to health care that we have here that they don't have in, for example, the United States. But in the future, health care itself isn't going to be enough. It's how we take care of ourselves. That is, how healthy we are, what our well-being is, our mental health. What we need to look at is some of these non-communicable diseases as someone are ironic at a time, when we're all focused on the first major infectious disease that's affected my life and probably most people's lives in a really big way. But the non-communicable diseases, linked to things like obesity, are the sort of ticking time bombs that are going to potentially lessen life expectancy and certainly increase ill health into the future.
Dominic Billings
Another one of a couple of indicators that some fell under SDG 10 - Reducing inequality both in Transforming Australia report, which you've just released, and also the broader SDSN's SDG Index. I'm conscious that in the Gini coefficient for both reports, and the upper two quintiles in net worth, that we're off-track in both of those. And it strikes me that, I'm not sure whether it's a symptom of the media narrative. But do you think, again, this is quite a qualitative question, but would you say that recognition of that trends towards inequality...Again, we're familiar with that in the US, that I tend to less associate it with Australia, unless I see those stark indicators exhibiting that were off-track. Do you feel like it's under-represented in a more public space, like the media, for instance?
John Thwaites
It's a mixed bag, and certainly some elements of the media have highlighted inequality. But I don't think there's a full realisation of the extent, or what the real focus of that inequality is. Australia hasn't done too badly in terms of income inequality. It hasn't improved, but it hasn’t gotten a lot worse. Where we've really got a lot worse in terms of net worth or wealth. How much of the total wealth of Australia is owned by different segments of the population and the bottom 40% of the population now only own about just over 5% of the total wealth. And that's come down very substantially in the last 20 years. So, it's really in access to wealth. Now, why does that matter? Well, it matters. first, of course, because it's unfair and equitable. But it is wealth that gives people access to funds that they might need, if they have a rough patch, if they're unemployed for a period, rather than just living hand-to-mouth. So, while incomes, haven't shown a huge increase in inequality, wealth has, and I think we've got to really focus some of our policies and strategies on that. Now, unfortunately, we're doing some things that are probably going to make that worse. The fact that people were able to access their superannuation during COVID seemed like a good idea at the time, but it means for the lower-income people who did that, they're going to have significantly less wealth that they can call on in future years. Similarly, I think a lot of our policies around housing are very much focused on people who already have a house and protecting them. And some of our social security policies are very focused on that. Whereas people who don't have a house, they don't have an asset - they're renters largely - are losing out. And another thing that we point out in the in the Transforming Australia report is that lower-income renter households, are now paying a greater proportion of their income on housing costs. We're seeing more and more of those lower-income renters paying more than 30% of their income on housing costs. So, I think the big story here is about wealth and assets, and how we can make that fairer across the community.
Dominic Billings
I suppose the following questions, a bit more of a question of your personal opinion, when you just kind of you feel like you took the pulse of Australia. I know you were Deputy Premier of the state of Victoria in the past. And I guess coupling that with knowing that the Federal Government haven't seemed to fully embrace the SDGs or the Paris Agreement, for that matter. Do you feel optimistic about the decade ahead? Or instead you feel like institutions like the SDSN and Monash Sustainable Development Institute are the key drivers of Australia shifting, having a greater consciousness of the SDGs to one to reach the Goals?
John Thwaites
Are you talking generally or in relation to climate change?
Dominic Billings
More looking toward the SDGs by 2030, in contrast to, let's say, like a decarbonisation by 2050.
John Thwaites
So, like a lot of things, it's a mixed bag. And I believe that there are some positive signs, as I said, the response to COVID in Australia has been pretty good. The immediate economic response by the Federal Government was appropriate. And the fact that JobKeeper was at a reasonable level across the whole community and JobSeeker was increased well beyond Newstart, were all very positive policies. What's depressing is that the Federal Government seems to be turning back from those good directions, and now threatening to go back to the old, totally inadequate level of Newstart, which will put tens of thousands of people below the poverty line. So I think that's where I say there have been some green shoots of hope. But what we don't want is for them to be snuffed out across other SDGs. We're seeing, I think, good efforts in health and education, we're certainly seeing attempts at improving areas in the economy. Where we're really seeing very little substantial progress, at a national level least, is in climate change. And reality is our emissions as a country today are pretty much the same as they were in the year 2000. We've improved very little since then. There have certainly been some positive steps in renewable energy for electricity. And so, we're seeing now more than 20% of our electricity is when renewable, but in transport and industry, there's almost no step forward at all. So if you ask me, am I optimistic, I see some positive signs, but I'm not optimistic that we're going to be anywhere near the targets that we need, if we're going to have the sort of healthy society, the safe environment that we need, and that are set out in the Sustainable Development Goals.
Dominic Billings
In the past few years, you've taken on the role as the head of Monash Sustainable Development Institute, which, when the SDSN was established became, like I mentioned at the beginning of the show, the anchor of the SDSN, for this region of the world, Oceania. And obviously, you've taken on the commissioner role of the Lancet COVID-19 Commission. And also, you're the co-chair of the worldwide SDSN Leadership Council. I guess like from the point where you left politics, and took on the role of head of MSDI and also the head of ClimateWorks, to kind of reach where you are now on I guess, again, just on a very kind of personal human level, what's kind of been that experience to be working alongside the people that you are, who are preeminent in the field of sustainable development. What's been the emotional, life trajectory of realising that if you ever do smell the roses,
John Thwaites
(inaudible) ...very inspiring to be around people who are very smart, very knowledgeable and very passionate about sustainability and sustainable development. Politics was very different. Obviously, the great advantage of being in politics is that you can do stuff. I mean, it's where the power is. And to a degree, it's sometimes frustrating in academia, or outside government, that you can't implement the things that you think need doing. But on the other hand, you have a lot more time to really learn from others and to get the best ideas. Whereas in politics, you're so time poor that you have to jump at a solution probably too fast, most of the time. So, it's just a very different lifestyle, and a very different (inaudible)...some of my practical experience in politics to work of academics and others who have (inaudible). So I see my role really is a bridge between the two using my background in politics, but my current job embedded in a university to help bring those two cultures together.
Dominic Billings
Again, John, really appreciate your time, especially considering carrying on counting all those really important roles. So yes, thank you so much, John. Really appreciate time and thanks for everything you do.
John Thwaites
Pleasure.