AS ELECTION campaigns go, you’ve got to say the 2025 edition has been pretty ho-hum, lacking the excitement of a reform agenda on tax, education and the like or a clear statement about where we are going as a nation from either major party.
They had been working up a head of steam before Cyclone Alfred crossed the Queensland coast on March 8, ruining any chance of an April election date.
And they haven’t been able to recapture the momentum since then, the Opposition Leader Peter Dutton in particular, struggling after a number of gaffs and policy backdowns.
Will that impact the chances of the Coalition winning government? Who knows but the polls certainly think so.
If the polls are correct, the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Labor are on track to win a second term of government which, historically at least, is to be expected. One-term Federal governments are rare in Australia. The last time it happened was in 1931, the theory being that swinging voters don’t like to change their mind after one election because they’d have to admit they were wrong the first time around.
After two terms, it’s open season again.
So, it looks like it might be a Labor win this Saturday, and they may even take enough seats for a majority which looked unlikely a few months ago.
All that is academic at the moment. The job we have in front of us is deciding which of the nine Monash candidates we think will best represent us locally, and which set of policies we think is going to serve us best locally and as a nation.
Funding for a new aged-care facility in Leongatha and making a meaningful start on a new sporting precinct on Phillip Island have been among the local promises bandied around. There’s also been an assurance that there’ll be no high-voltage power line connecting offshore wind to the Latrobe Valley at Waratah Bay.
We hope whichever government or local MP is elected, those three promises at least are honoured, together with universal calls for adequate road funding.
If Labor does win, their next term of government will take them through to 2028, just two years shy of 2030 when their energy target of greenhouse gas emissions 43 per cent below 2005 levels comes home to roost.
At the moment, we’re sitting at 29 per cent below 2005 levels with estimated emissions going up not down in the year to December 2024.
So, how are we going to get there? That certainly hasn’t been explained during this election campaign.
Perhaps it’s time, as the slogan goes, for a bipartisan approach to energy policy so that we can be sure the lights will stay on and bill shock reduced while we transition to the new energy mix.
And when you do vote, make it count. The result locally could come down to how you number your preferences from 1 through to 9.
