Budget 2014: Politicians need to be judged on results

Updated May 16, 2014 12:17:26

Photo: Treasurer Joe Hockey has had to juggle structural economic reform and pre-election promises. (AAP: Lukas Coch)

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Map: Australia

If nothing else is clear from the past few years in federal politics, this is: election promises are often not worth the paper they are printed on.

Maybe it is time to ask for less. All Governments break promises. All Governments do things that they did not take to an election.

At its most benign, even choosing stuff up over conspiracy, circumstances dictate what governments can do.

Changes in those circumstances, whether it be by economic change or decisions of courts, mean governments have to do things they did not talk about in election campaigns to respond to those changes.

And they pay for those broken promises.

Paul Keating was dogged by his statements that tax cuts he had legislated were "L-A-W law" after he delivered the second tranche as superannuation rather than cuts.

John Howard's inventive formulation of core and non-core promises was not enough to forgive a backlash - for a range of reasons - at the election after the tough 1996 budget.

Kevin Rudd paid for turning his back on what he said was "the greatest moral challenge of our time" - the response to carbon pricing.

And Julia Gillard paid dearly for a pledge given in a TV interview in the dying days of campaign 2010 on a carbon tax. And that was just one broken promise.

The Abbott Government's first budget breaks a slew of promises, including pledges he too made in the dying days of a campaign not to cut health or education or touch pensions or the ABC.

That is added to a budget which delivers a less than "budget emergency" like path back to surplus and adding new taxes he said he would not, without first taking them to an election.

Debate, political discourse should be encouraged

So many governments have broken promises over the years that we take them with a grain of salt when they are made.

A budget balancing act

The Coalition walks a fine line as it abandons some election promises but introduces necessary reforms, writes Lyndal Curtis.

But factoring in a lack of trust as a given does not serve the democracy well. It leads to distrust of politicians and disengagement from the electorate.

So is it just the politicians' problem, or are we all - the media and public alike - to blame for what we ask of politicians particularly during election campaigns?

Elections have become a game of "rule in, rule out" proposals or changes across the budget.

Politicians face demands to give categorical answers or face a scare campaign if they do not.

They are asked for certainty in a world which is fundamentally uncertain. Even governments campaigning for re-election - who are in a better position to know what they will face after the poll - cannot predict every twist and turn of an economy open to global forces.

The urge for specific promises and the fear of a scare campaign moves politicians ever more into the realm of tight messaging and denies the opportunities for a real debate about what is needed or what may be needed.

The media (and I include myself in that) has to bear a large part of the blame.

Years of describing any internal party debates as "dissent" or "splits" mean politicians are more reluctant to have a debate, especially in the open.

Debates are part of a way of educating the public about what the problems are and what the options are for addressing those problems.

We should want our MPs to be engaged, to make the views of their voters part of the conversation. And we should know that all the options have been canvassed.

Even ruling out an option is a change for a minister to explain why they are pursuing one course and not another; it's a chance for educating the public.

We should encourage and champion debate. Instead, what the media and to some extent the public does - and what politicians' offices have done for some time - stifles debate.

Federal politicians discuss difficult and important things. We should be open to the complexity of life instead of accepting focus-group tested lines and three-word slogans.

Yet that is what we end up with at the moment, when debate is discouraged for fear of what the reaction might be.

'Any change will make life uneasy for someone'

One recent example is the call for the Labor Party to change in the wake of the election loss but when it began debate about internal reform it was criticised for navel-gazing.

Politicians are also often called on to guarantee one thing or another, often by journalists who in the current climate of rapid change cannot guarantee they will have a job in a year.

So what should we ask of politicians in the lead-up to elections that would mean they did not simply just clam up and hide anything nasty they might be planning.

Twiddles or broken promises?

Welfare payments have been tightened and foreign aid brutally slashed, while education and health spending has at the very least been substantially rearranged, writes Annabel Crabb.

One is not to believe politicians when they say things can be achieved easily or without any pain. Any change is painful for someone. Any change will make life uneasy for someone.

We should ask politicians to tell us what the problems are, to spell out their values in how they would approach them - such as whether they believe in the primacy of public services or whether they believe the private sector should play a greater role.

We should ask if there are specific commitments, tell the public the conditions under which they would be delivered.

Tony Abbott did some of this - making what were described as aspirational promises. Pledging to return defence spending to a greater share of the budget when the surplus reaches a certain point. Pledging to look at more flexible options for childcare but putting caveats on whether those options could be delivered if they meant extra spending.

We should encourage politicians to engage in some old-fashion policy reform.

It is what Labor did with the National Disability Insurance Scheme - pointing out the problems, getting a report on the options for solutions, then discussing it with the sector and through them the public.

It took an electorate, fearful of increases in cost of living, to the point where it happily accepted an extra tax through an increase in the Medicare levy.

Treasurer Joe Hockey too has engaged, singlehandedly, in some old-fashioned policy reform.

He began by describing the problem with what he called the "age of entitlement".

He spoke in broad terms about people doing things for themselves that they could afford without the need of government support.

For anyone who has listened to Mr Hockey in the past two years, the thrust of changes in the budget - although not their extent - would not have come as a surprise.

Unfortunately for him, his leader made many, many very specific promises and pledged to keep them all.

So yes, take politicians to task for not keeping their promises. They should, especially when they have pledged to.

But maybe we should also ask them to make fewer promises and judge them on results.

Topics: budget, government-and-politics, elections, australia

First posted May 15, 2014 07:57:31