Many Australians are said to be ‘switching off’ from election news as this long campaign grinds to an end. There is a sense of boredom, frustration, and perhaps a lack of belief that anything substantial will change regardless of which party forms our next federal government.
But YourLifeChoices sees this election differently. Here is your once in three-years’ chance to vote on the issues that matter most to you and your family – and those that will help you lead a dignified life in retirement.
So we have carefully reviewed the thousands of comments you have shared with us on articles related to policy and defined the following 10 policy areas as those of most interest and concern to our members:
- climate change and renewable energy
- immigration
- retirement income
- royal commission into banking sector
- health including Medicare, PBS benefits
- housing affordability
- taxation, personal and company
- communications – NBN rollout
- employment for mature workers
- is there a Minister for Ageing?
Next we approached the three major parties (Liberal National Party Coalition, Labor Party and Greens) on your behalf and requested they share their policies on these 10 key issues. We asked the campaign headquarters representative to limit their responses to 40 words per item – a total of around 400 words per political party.
Sadly, the Greens did not choose to share their policies. The Labor Party submitted a 3-page document, around 1000 words. The LNP Coalition sent us a 12-page PDF which we can only guess to contain about 3000 words. So in the interests of fairness, we have reduced both parties’ statements to the same length and removed any references to their belief that they have a better policy than their opponents.
So here are the two statements on the above policy points.
Labor Party policies 2016
Coalition policies 2016