Building Resilient, Sustainable, Wellbeing-based Economies in Northern Australia

The impacts of Covid-19 since early 2020 on local and wider regional and global economies are widespread across the globe. To address those impacts, different states and territories have developed their response policies. This chapter analyses the response policy developed by the Northern Territory – a northern jurisdiction in Australia, called the TERC (Territory Economic Reconstruction Commission) report. The TERC report highlights how the Northern Territory economy can be rebuild in response to Covid-19. This chapter provides a critical analysis of that report and describes several emerging, sustainable, alternative economic opportunities that could indeed help to rebuild Territory’s economy in line with the local geographical and cultural context. The main argument is that governments have now the opportunity to plan beyond the typical Gross Domestic Product (GDP) – a typical traditional approach, to develop and apply more progressing economic approaches that enhance the well-being of communities. Such holistic economic approaches and policies will help to succeed in pandemic and other natural disaster events in the future which are becoming more frequent. A long-term economic planning, beyond GDP, for supporting local, circular, and well-being based economies is essential to build resilient communities and sustain natural and man-made assets in the future.