My morning harvest today says a lot about what’s wrong with the way Australia measures success.Tomatoes, zucchinis, an aubergine, and a vase full of dahlias from the garden. Fresh food. Beautiful flowers. No plastic wrapping. No long-distance refrigerated transport. No supermarket mark-up. No chemical cocktails sprayed for shelf life and appearance. No money changed hands. No truck delivered it. No barcode was scanned.But according to the dominant measure of economic progress, that means it adde

If I’d driven to Woolworths and bought imported or industrially grown vegetables wrapped in plastic, flowers flown in from Kenya, and produce grown with synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, that would count as a positive contribution to Gross Domestic Product. The packaging counts. The freight counts. The retail transaction counts. The profit counts. Even the pollution and waste generated along the way are often folded into “growth” in the system.

But stepping outside to pick lunch and dinner from the garden, and cutting flowers for the kitchen table doesn’t. That should tell us something.