Short-term promises being made by the major parties in the lead-up to the election offer nothing more than the illusion of security, writes Dr Bronwyn Kelly.
LAST WEEK, Australian Community Futures Planning (ACFP) released its scorecard report on the policies that three major political parties – Labor, the Liberals and the Greens – are taking to the coming election.
The report is called Election 2025: Assessment of Major Party Policies, and it’s designed to help Australians see at a glance whether or not these parties have designed a policy agenda that will help the nation move towards a future of safety and well-being for all over the longer term.
It’s a unique and very handy report for a number of reasons, including:
- putting all the information voters need about the platforms of these three parties into one place;
- enabling quick and direct comparisons of what’s being offered and not offered by the three parties; and
- allowing voters to compare the short-term and longer-term consequences of the differing policy agendas.
The analysis shows that the agendas of these three parties are likely to result in wildly different outcomes for Australia over the longer term.
Liberal and Labor policies are likely, for example, to:
- significantly reduce safety for Australians (domestically and internationally);
- markedly increase risks associated with climate change;
- create a more unequal, more fearful and less cohesive and inclusive society (and in the case of the Liberals, a more racist society);
- embed a far too narrowly-based economy that’s incapable of offering opportunity and financial security to all;
- cause species extinctions and ecological breakdown; and
- establish more overbearing, secretive and less democratic systems of governance.
The degree to which Labor and Liberal policies are likely to result in these outcomes varies, with those of the Liberals likely to be more adverse than those of Labor. But the policy orientation in both cases is towards outcomes similar to those I just described. In the case of the Liberal Party’s policies it’s likely to be impossible for them to result in a different outcome.
By contrast, policies similar to those being put forward by the Greens have the potential to assist Australians to travel towards a future of safety and ongoing well-being for everyone — if we persist with those policies and give those we elect the support they need to implement them. With that support and persistence, the likely longer-term outcome would be the opposite of what can reasonably be expected from the policies that Labor and the Liberals have included in their 2025 election platforms.
This is the advantage that voters can seize if they choose candidates supporting policies such as those promoted by the Greens.
The report shows those sorts of policies arc towards an Australia with significantly less chance of:
- poverty, inequality and homelessness;
- drudgery in employment and exclusion from education and jobs that will give us life satisfaction;
- exposure to war;
- state intrusion on or revocation of our rights and freedoms;
- starvation and death due to climate change; and
- disempowerment as members of a democratic society.
The chance to avoid all that is an advantage we shouldn’t – and needn’t – miss. And that’s because there’s really no cost to us in the short term if we select those policies in this election.
Given the extraordinary contrast between the types of futures on offer from these three parties’ platforms, it's apparent that there is a big advantage that voters can seize here, although it will require them to think about the future they want before they decide on their vote.
A hard-headed calculation of the likely longer-term outcomes of policies – outcomes likely to be evident in five to ten years – is needed to secure the advantage. Fortunately, though, it can be seized with little or no risk to our current levels of financial security.
A scan of the policies of these three parties shows that there is no need to forego any short-term benefits available in any cost of living measures being offered by these three parties in order to get the better longer-term outcomes available only through policies like those of the Greens.
Or, to put that another way, voters don’t need to sacrifice their long-term interests in order to gather any short-term benefits they might want. All three parties are offering some form of cost of living relief, albeit to slightly different levels and by different means.
But in reality, the quantum impact of an income tax cut here, a fuel tax excise cut there, an energy rebate here, a free doctor’s visit there, is likely to be small, no matter who wins. Even if each party’s promises are acted on, we’re likely to be no more financially secure after the election than we are now. In fact, we’re more likely to be less financially secure.
This is because as far as short term cost of living relief goes, no party is or will be offering it at such a magnitude as to offset the avalanche of costs we will all face (and are already facing) due to failures to provide financial and economic security in the longer term against climate change, overconsumption of natural resources and aggression in our defence policies.
A vote for a candidate or party that offers cost of living relief but does not have policies sufficient to avert these other huge costs (and Labor and the Liberals do not) will entail giving up much more in the longer term than can be gained in the short term.
The costs of climate change, species extinction, ecological breakdown and pollution will touch us all and reduce our financial security within the next decade, even if we are not the ones affected first by fires, floods, mass migration, sea level rise and intolerable heat. These costs will grow very quickly now that climate change has been unleashed, and by 2030 (or probably before the next election in 2028), we are likely to have a very clear and sobering idea of the price we paid by ignoring these costs and by choosing parties that ignored them.
We’ll be able to calculate whether the cost of living relief we got (if any) was worth it. Did it have any positive effect at all on our standard of living? Did it secure our well-being? The likely answer will be that it didn’t even come near it. It will be apparent that those short-term promises were nothing more than illusions of security — bribes attempting to con us into sacrificing our future safety.
Regardless of whomever we each choose to vote for, it’s evident that in voting for policies that disregard the impacts of climate change, ecological breakdown and aggression in defence and the huge long term costs this imposes, we will each be losing much more in the longer term than we might gain in the short term. That being so, it’s a good time to interrogate each candidate’s policy platform, looking for wherever lasting benefits might be on offer.
ACFP makes no recommendations on who to vote for. But boastful professions by politicians of their prowess in economic management should be treated with caution if they’re not matched by policies that give Australians the best chance of dealing with climate change, protecting the natural environment and creating a peaceful world.
For more information on the adequacy of the policies of Labor, the Liberals and the Greens on those matters, see Chapter 2 of the report, particularly the sections under Vision elements 1, 13, 14 and 17.
Dr Bronwyn Kelly is the Founder of Australian Community Futures Planning (ACFP). She specialises in long-term integrated planning for Australia’s society, environment, economy and democracy, and in systems of governance for nation-states.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
Support independent journalism Subscribe to IA.
