The Australian Federal Election date has now been announced as May 3rd, 2025. As such I thought it might be interesting to explore some of the parties and candidates in a series of articles leading up to a final wrap up in the days after the winners are announced.
This is by no means an unbiased viewpoint. I've said many times my political leanings are to the woke left because those people are way better at embracing casual Friday at work (though some of the more extremist left do have to be reminded clothes are still a mandatory requirement).
The obvious place to start is with the two most boring centralist parties pretending to be either left or right but actually doing their best impression of 'cake' - everybody likes cake!
The Australian Labor Party
Otherwise known as the incumbent, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese vying for his second term.
The party is campaigning on seven key points including:
- Helping with the cost of living.
- Free GP visits & even cheaper medicine.
- Cutting student debt.
- Getting you into a home of your own.
- Free TAFE.
- Affordable child care, close to home.
- Support Buy Australian
On the surface none of it sounds bad. Even if you dig into the details it isn't anything that doesn't have some merit. Across the board it's reducing costs that your average Aussie may run into as part of their household budget.
At the same time they're reducing money coming in through reduced taxes and paying subsidies, Labor is also planning to build more housing (1.2 million homes) and child care centres (160 new centres).
While I'm particularly glad to see free TAFE (with plans for making this a permanent arrangement that could really help people retrain in a fast changing job market) there's nothing here to inspire.
Interestingly Labor is playing down their position on climate change (no mention on the PM's own website plan page but does appear on the party's plan page). They're very much in support for investing in renewable energy with eight billion dollars on additional investment.
However, there is no big idea.
Despite being one of the most boring governments I've experienced in a long time, boring is good, and preferable.
The Liberal Party of Australia
If leader of the Liberal Party, Peter Dutton, wanted to differentiate himself from a plank of wood, he failed miserably with his party campaign slogan 'Get Australia Back on Track'. Who's going to argue with that?
They also have a plan with seven key points including:
- Low Inflation.
- Cheaper Energy.
- Affordable Homes.
- Safer Communities.
- Quality Healthcare.
- Build a Stronger Economy.
- Back Small Business.
- Rebalance our Migration System.
- Grow a Stronger Regional Australia.
- Practical Action for Indigenous Australians.
- Cut Government Waste.
Again, there's nothing here on the surface you can really object to. However, there's one detail that shoots the Liberal Party to the bottom of my preferred parties, and that is, building nuclear power plants as part of their cheaper energy platform.
In principle nuclear energy is great, except that nuclear waste is a generational problem. Not just one or two generations either. We're taking many generations, thousands of years, according to the World Nuclear Association.
While it is claimed this can be stored safely and will not be harmful to future generations, I feel that is irresponsible to the extreme. While it is possible to recycle nuclear waste to a degree, it's still doesn't make it a 'clean energy source' in my book.
Until someone can show that nuclear waste can be made completely safe within a minimum of 100 years (and even that is too long for me), I won't support anyone pedaling nuclear energy in Australia. Particularly if that person or party can't say 'yes' they would live next door to a waste disposal facility (keeping in mind this thing is supposed to be safe for thousands of years).
Honestly, reading through the Liberal Party's plan, while it claims to be for families, small business, and the hard-working 'forgotten people', it doesn't speak as directly to them as Labor's plan does.
I feel like a lot of the Liberal's plan is conceptual and speaks to people with money, who like to invest in industries, and aren't as concerned with their household budget.
That said, there is a lot in the details of the Liberal's plan to like for the average Aussie, with an equal amount of yeah, I can see your far right leanings (*cough* police state *cough*) creeping in, and I don't like it. I just hope anyone thinking of voting them in to 'get Australia back on track' has the concentration to read the whole plan and don't give up because it's 'too long, didn't read'.
The National Party
It's easy to miss the National Party since they've formed a long standing coalition with the Liberal party, allowing the two to form a government on a two party preferred ticket. They also have a plan but much of it has been incorporated into the Liberals plan, because both parties are backing a coalition win.
Since the National Party represents regional Australia it's tough for them to win and form a government outright, especially with more Australians living in cities. However being part of a coalition has been a brilliant strategy for them, and a great idea for the Liberals too.
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Obviously my preference is the status quo. However, if the Liberals didn't want to introduce nuclear power into Australia - and stood firm on not doing so - I'd have a hard time making a compelling case not to give them a go.
For me, the last great Liberal Prime Minister was John Howard. I never voted for him but he definitely had a point of view. You knew what he stood for.
As far as I know, we're still heading towards either a narrow coalition win, or the biggest number of independents ever elected and a hung parliament.
Our Prime Minister has said no to forming a coalition with The Australian Greens party who have typically supported Labor more than Liberal, but he may find himself scrambling on election day if he wants to keep his job.
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