ACT is ‘best place to live in Australia’

The ACT is the best place in the country to live, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) latest Regional Well-being report.

The report ranked and scored the territory across eight categories of wellbeing, including access to services, civic engagement, education, jobs, environment, income, health and safety.

The ACT was ranked first above all the states and territories in every category, except environment and civic engagement.

Ben Phillips, a researcher from the University of Canberra’s National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling, said the ACT outperformed the nation in employment factors quite significantly.

“We’ve got an unemployment rate of around 4 per cent,” he said.

“The national average is close to six. We have an employment rate that is several percentage points higher than the rest of the country.”

The result comes despite recent job cuts in public sector.

Mr Phillips said the region had incomes that were roughly 56 per cent higher than the rest of the country, which according to the report put it in the top 2 per cent of all OECD regions.

The report found the average ACT household had a disposable income of $43,670.

The territory was ranked sixth for environment, behind Tasmania, Queensland, New South Wales, Western Australia and South Australia.

But compared with all other OECD regions it was still in the top 9 per cent, with a score of 9.5 out of 10.

The ACT came second behind Tasmania in the civic engagement category, which used voter turnout as an indicator.

Regions with similar wellbeing in other countries included Western Norway, the Swedish capital Stockholm, New Hampshire in the United States and South East England in the United Kingdom.

OECD scores by topic for Australian regions