(Australian Associated Press)

AUSTRALIA’S PROGRESS TOWARDS UNITED NATIONS SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS

On-track:

– The employment rate is at near record high levels, with more women entering the workforce and unemployment rates falling.

– Australia has one of the highest life expectancy rates in the world, male life expectancy was 80.4 years and 84.5 years for females.

– Smoking rates have declined by 34 per cent.

– Australia’s water consumption per capita was reduced by 45 per cent between 2001 and 2011, one of the largest falls in the world.

Off-track:

– People on the unemployment benefit Newstart were on the poverty line in 2000, but by 2014 they were 20 per cent below the poverty line.

– Cost of living pressures show the retail price of electricity has more than doubled, meaning Australians now pay higher electricity prices than most other OECD countries.

– Housing affordability has nose-dived with the ratio of house prices compared to household disposable incomes increasing by 51 per cent between 2000 and 2016.

– Income inequality remains high by international standards, although not as high as countries such as the United States.

– Australia’s prison population is at its highest recorded level with Indigenous people representing more than 28 per cent of the prison population.

– Australia still has the highest per capita emissions of any OECD country.

– The Great Barrier Reef hard coral cover has decreased by 38 per cent from 2000 to 2011.

(Source: The National Sustainable Development Council and Mondash Sustainable Development Institute.)

Photo by Oleh Aleinyk on Unsplash