Recalibrating after COVID-19: why Australia needs to be more inclusive

Did you know that social exclusion affects more than 6.7 million Australians? That’s almost one in four Australians from marginalised groups, including women, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, individuals from diverse backgrounds and people with disabilities, unable to participate in society on an equal footing.

Unfortunately, these marginalised groups have also been some of the hardest hit by COVID-19 and its impacts. For example, many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities have been forced into strict lockdown, shrinking already limited educational and employment opportunities. Many Australians living with a disability have found themselves similarly isolated, often without access to their normal care and support network. Additionally, 76,800 more women than men lost their jobs between March and June, with low-skilled and underemployed women the most affected.

We’re also well aware that it’s not just individuals suffering from Australia’s lack of inclusivity. Social exclusion was costing the Australian economy an estimated $45 billion every year, well before COIVD-19.

Now, as we attempt to navigate Australia’s greatest economic crisis in living memory, we need to consider if we can afford to let this inequity get worse. Or if we should take this opportunity to rebuild Australian society from the ground up.

To examine these questions in-depth, Microsoft has published a new report, Recalibrating society: Imagining a future that leaves no-one behind.

Rethinking Australia’s post-pandemic society

Recalibrating society is the first in a series of reports that Microsoft is publishing in conjunction with our Reshaping Australia Dialogues event series, presented in partnership with The Australian Financial Review.

The aim of the event series and reports is to drive a national conversation about what the pandemic means for Australia’s society, economy, education and healthcare systems, and what we want Australia to look like in the wake of COVID-19.

As challenging as the pandemic continues to be, we believe it presents governments, institutions and businesses an unprecedented opportunity to help create an Australia where inclusion isn’t an afterthought but a fundamental building block.

As Lindsay-Rae McIntyre, Microsoft’s Chief Diversity Officer, says in the report:

“We need to make sure that as we rebuild in the wake of COVID-19, we leapfrog into a better world. And we can only do that collectively, by ensuring our recovery includes everybody.”

Steps for creating a more inclusive society

On a practical level, this means ensuring that people from marginalised groups and others who have most severely felt the impact of COVID-19 have a voice in determining how we pave a way forward. By embedding users’ voices into the initiatives that power our recovery, government organisations can start building a more inclusive Australia.

It also means saying goodbye to one-size-fits-all solutions for things like attendance-based working arrangements that disadvantage people with disabilities and women with care duties, or recruitment practices that favour a certain type of applicant over other applicants.

Government organisations must also take steps to address digital inclusion for the 2.5 million Australian households that currently don’t have internet access, and are therefore unable to access the digital tools, information and access to government services that are critical to social inclusion.

During the initial lockdown, for example, just one in 10 Victorian teachers reported that every one of their students had access to the internet at all times. Just under half said that all their students had reliable access to a connected device.

And finally, we must consider how we measure inclusivity. Without consistent metrics, it’s hard to see our shortcomings or decide on the changes needed to correct them. For a truly inclusive recovery, we need rich, insightful analytics to guide us at every step.

While solving the problem of social inequity isn’t going to be easy, we believe governments, institutions and businesses must work together to do better. Not only is there a strong economic benefit – the economic dividend from a more inclusive Australia is estimated to be $12.7 billion annually – but Australia will be a richer society for it.

To download the Recalibrating society report, watch the webinar or find out more about the Reimagine project, visit our website.