What's with Treasurer Chalmer's "Wellbeing" obsession?

Focus on schools

I’ve been a bit quiet lately as I am getting my head around the proposed amendments to the Queensland Education Act. Proposals such as:

A year of kindergarten (3.5 years up) with a focus being Social Emotional Learning (SEL).

No parental permission needed for massive data sharing.

The word “Wellbeing” littered all through the amendments.

A group of us will be covering the education- wellbeing- data collection- social impact bond arena in more detail in the following weeks. I encourage parents/ grandparents, teachers and anyone who cares about children to keep an eye out, read and share.

I have been raising a number of concerns in the last few years, in my view none are as important as the wellbeing-social impact bond space. Enough parents need to understand the underbelly to this space- to say NO. We have the right to raise our children according to our own values, and children have the right to grow up without being feasted on and nudged in to prescribed behaviours and thoughts, orchestrated by global frameworks.

My first article in this series is to raise one thing: your children’s data is being collected- and will be increasingly collected- under the guise of wellbeing. This wellbeing agenda goes way beyond helping teachers identify which children need help at school. The government has not been transparent around the scope of the data collection, the purpose for why it is being collected, and how it will be used so it’s time to (yet again) do what the government should be doing- and drill down on what is really going on behind the shiny facade.

Data- Wellbeing- and the National Unique Student Identifier (USI)

In process is a Unique Student Identifier (think Digital ID) where all data for your children is housed- this will follow our children through schooling and their life. From a general search, it looks like the USI is currently only in tertiary education- but it is planned from Kindergarten up.

National Unique Student Identifier (USI)

In the USI document it states:

USI will contribute to an existing information exchange scheme operating across Australian jurisdictions related to the safety and wellbeing of children.”

Treasurer Chalmers

Treasurer Chalmers has been very active in the Wellbeing space. He released The Australian Wellbeing Budget in 2023 . Note the tagline- “Measuring What Matters”-take that literally- it’s all about data.

Investors

In December 2023 Chalmers hosted the Investment Dialogue for Australia’s Children, where millions of dollars have been collected from Philanthropists. You may be mistaken for thinking Philanthropy is giving without a return. That is not the case- Philanthropists are involved in the Social Impact Bond market- they plan on a financial return.

Investors, in the form of Philanthropists, are sitting around a table with Chalmers discussing how to access your children and family through “Wellbeing” impact infrastructure.

The focus is on our children

Here are the 18 “Philanthropic” organisations. Many, if not all, are involved in Impact Investing.

Impact investing and Social Impact Bonds (SIB)

Social Impact Bonds are where wealthy “philanthropists” and investors fund (amongst other things) social welfare programs- think homelessness, disability, learning, refugees, social emotional learning programs etc and they get a profit return (paid by the government). They get a percentage return a year (based on metrics- hence one of the reasons they need continuous data). We are looking at a transition to where the State no longer funds services- it instead reimburses (with a profit return) wealthy individuals and corporate entities who supply the initial capital for the program (which costs the government more then if they supplied the service directly). If it smacks of a transition to corporate governance, it’s because it is.

The investors need a few things- data collection, access to the data, and a financial market (for Social Impact Bonds) infrastructure. Chalmers is obliging.

As an ex welfare worker Social Impact Bonds make absolutely no sense from a financial position and raise serious ethical concerns. In my opinion it is an extraordinarily dangerous model and one I will explore in more depth in future articles. Here are two videos I made with Taschi Talks regarding the Social Impact model. Taschi has created some excellent content on data collection, children and markets- found here

Wellbeing and the OECD

Equity Economics in their submission to the Treasurers Wellbeing Budget puts the OECD Child Wellbeing Measurement Framework front and centre.

Treasurer Chalmers references the OECD’s Wellbeing model in his consultation pack for the creation of Australia’s first national framework on wellbeing.

So it’s important to read what the OECD sees as essential data to capture to assess a child’s wellbeing……And they plan to capture enormous amounts of information about your children including: health, emotional, education, learning, personal, social and parents economic position etc:

The scope of what the OECD wants to capture in your family is extraordinarily invasive, down to the “quality” of the parent’s relationship, as well as who families spend time with.

The welfare reporting model used to be that if you saw or heard something that constituted a child at risk of “Serious Harm” you reported it. Serious Harm includes things such as the child being beaten, serious neglect, sexual abuse etc. The Wellbeing model is much vaguer and idealogically based. It reads as though they are collecting data on all families to see if they are “dangerous”. Dangerous in what way? Depends on the idealogical framework for what constitutes children’s wellbeing.

Disturbingly the NSW Dept of Education now states that teachers concerned about a students “wellbeing” need to report it on further. Risk of Serious Harm used to be the benchmark- there has been a shift.

Wellbeing data collection in Australian schools

An online wellbeing App has been rolled out in Australian schools. Here’s an example of what the schools are telling parents, the app is to assist teachers to identify if children need assistance. Most parent’s wouldn’t have an issue with this on face value.

The company behind the App is Likewize - which is a tech start up called Family Zone.

The app tracks your children with real time data. Note the Home Climate tab in the picture.

You can learn a little about Pulse here:

Pulse worked with the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth (ARACY) to incorporate their Nest framework into the app.

The Nest Framework focuses on babies, children, teenagers and young adults (0-24 years):

The Nest program was created by Professor Fiona Stanley, who also started ARACY. According to Wikipedia Fiona is a professor at the School of Paediatrics and Child Health at University of Western Australia. She is also on the Board of the ABC.

The six domains of the Nest are:

• Valued, loved and safe

• Material basics

• Healthy

• Learning

• Participating

• Positive sense of identity and culture

The paper states:

Globally, the need and value of an ecological, holistic wellbeing framework for children and young people continues to rise, as described in the 2021 OECD paper Measuring what matters for child wellbeing and policies.

Taking us again to the OECD Wellbeing framework.

Professor Fiona Stanley is the UNICEF Australian Ambassador for Early Childhood Development (UNICEF stands for United Nations Children’s Fund). UNICEF is a proponent of Social Impact Bonds, and are of course invested in children learning about the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals and more specifically Goal 4.7

Goal 4.7 is the focus on the Sustainable Development goals and being a good “global citizen.”

What does this all mean?

In a number of steps we find ourselves moving from the arena of an app which helps teachers help our children, to an agenda that runs far deeper. A global agenda which includes: extensive data collection on the child and the family, global frameworks which want to collect an enormous array of information on children and families, “philanthropists” champing at the bit to invest, and a government setting up a National Social Impact Bond infrastructure- with children being the first (extensive) market. Not very transparent Treasurer Chalmers!

Currently, parents have the right to say No to the collection of this data. I know what I would be doing.

A note about homeschooling

The original clauses in the Queensland Education Act amendments referenced greater oversight for homeschooling. The homeschooling community pushed back and the clauses were removed from the amendments. However, the Government is looking at the creation of a Home Schooling Peak Body, and unless the homeschooling community is aware of the larger context of the “transformation” of our school systems they will not be able to locate the larger agenda at play.

Finishing off for today with a discussion I had with English teacher Rob Wilson on the Global Citizen arena children are now schooled in.