Jenna Price | Children's book The Lorax has a message all of us should take note of

Anyhow, if we did dab Eau de Leigh, the scent of sense might follow them everywhere. Since I can't turn the assistant minister into cologne (so weird), I'll let you know what he said on Wednesday night at the Centre for Social Impact's birthday party.

As feminist geographer Joni Seager said seven years ago, "What gets counted, counts." That's a direct link to the best prime minister New Zealand never had, Marilyn Waring, who understood that the work women did and do needed to be counted in national accounts.

Now Australia is about to measure what matters. As Andrew Leigh said in a happy birthday speech, the government's new Measuring What Matters Framework will help us build on what we already know from traditional economic measures.

It won't be about ignoring economic growth - that would never happen. But it will be "about broadening the conversation; ensuring that we make progress towards a society that is healthy, secure, sustainable, cohesive, and prosperous".

Okay good. I have some ideas I'd like to share. Of course I do.

Earlier this year, I wrote an Echidna column bemoaning the lack of volunteers in Australia. We are living longer and volunteering less. In Leigh's speech, he confirms depressing aspects of what's happening in our country: "There is a great deal to be done. Measures of community show that over recent decades, Australians have become less likely to join, volunteer, donate and participate."

In the heat of COVID (and yes, I know, COVID's not over but the intensity of government response has passed), Leigh and co-author Nick Terrell wrote and published Reconnected: a community-builder's handbook. They looked at Google Books data on the frequency of "we" and "our" versus "I" and "me" and built a "we-versus-me" index. They discovered that the use of "we" dropped precipitously in the 21^st century.

"Even in the books Australians read, there's signs we're becoming more individualistic, and less community-minded," says Leigh.

"The Australian ethos," says Leigh, "is one of 'we' over 'me' ... a nation that values community and egalitarianism."

But we know this is beginning to fray. We don't even need an index to tell us that. So how do we fix it? Leigh says the best predictor of volunteering is whether someone is asked to volunteer.

Once the "asking" workforce is slashed, that has a knock-on effect.

"The drop in membership of community groups, the decline in religious attendance and the drop in union membership have all reduced opportunities for people to be asked to volunteer."

Why did we stop volunteering? We know some of the reasons. We work longer and older; we are in love with streaming and with our phones; and COVID knocked a whole bunch of people out. You get out of practice and you don't want to go back. I get that. And we can't turn the clock back but we must figure out how to rebuild volunteering.

"We need to remember the value of the 'helper's high' - that volunteering doesn't just bring value to the helped, but also to the helper," he says. Remind people that it's not just worthy, it's also fun.

And on Wednesday night, Leigh reminded us of the establishment of a new centre, right at the heart of Treasury. It's a belter of an idea - the Australian Centre for Evaluation, borne as a result of decades and years of reports, most recently Peter Shergold's 2022 COVID report, which all say governments must adopt better evaluation practices. Which should end up with improved planning and policy. Fingers very crossed.

How will it function? As in, testing, testing, let's see if this thing we implemented is actually working. Or as Leigh put it in his speech, "We need rigorous evidence to give us an accurate picture of the impact - or lack of impact - of programs."

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Oh my god. Imagine if we had governments which actually did that. Apparently we will no longer need to imagine because ACE (such a great acronym) will partner with government agencies for a small number of evaluations each year. They will check out practice and culture across government. Oh happy day. We wouldn't have to wait years before we knew robodebt was a killer. And we might discover more and better ways to get Australians to volunteer. If they could also volunteer for the "yes" campaign stat, that would be excellent.

This kind of research will also mean we can axe the failures promptly and max the programs that work. And we know volunteering works.

It helps boost trust. That, says Leigh, is "fundamental to a strong economy. If people don't trust each other, then commerce falters.

"Social capital and well-functioning markets go hand in hand."

There's a thousand excellent bits of advice from a thousand different experts on how we can work to make this place better - Margaret Mead (misquoted often), Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King. But my deadset favourite is from a work of fiction. Like the best fiction, it's also true: "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not." Sure, The Lorax is a kid's book but it has so much sense for all of us.

Leigh says that when we volunteer, we put ourselves on the same level as others. We share their experiences, and we have a chance to care about the world a whole awful lot.