Voters call for major parties to address Covid recovery as a key campaign issue in state election
Victoria’s major parties are promising to spend billions on transport, health and other projects but polling suggests voters are angry that one issue is being overlooked.
State Election
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Almost $30 billion in commitments have already been promised as Victoria races towards November’s state election.
Despite making just 13 election commitments the ALP has announced a total of $9.5bn in funding, with all but $500m of that linked to its free kindergarten initiative.
The Coalition’s 87 election commitments will cost $8bn while the Greens initiatives have been priced at $10.3bn.
The data has been released by the Victorian Parliamentary Budget Office’s 2022 Election Commitment Tracker which gives an independent judgement of political parties’ election commitments. With 71 days until early polling opens, health has emerged as a key election issue.
Already the opposition has pledged more than two dozen initiatives including a new Royal Children’s Hospital for Melbourne’s western suburbs.
Opposition Leader Matthew Guy has vowed to shelve the government’s Suburban Rail Loop project, saying billions of dollars saved would be instead redirected to the state’s hospital system.
Labor’s key commitments have also centred around health and education.
Kos Samaras, director of bipartisan polling firm RedBridge, said both major parties would need to address Covid recovery as a key campaign issue.
“It’s clear that many Victorians we speak to have not recovered from the pandemic,” he said.
“Be it financial or mentally, they feel that on both fronts, those in politics are not addressing their need to recover.
“Both parties are failing to articulate a broad, ‘state building plan’, one that addresses the historic levels of financial stress that exists in many of this state’s suburbs and towns.”
Mr Samaras said voters felt disillusioned in the wake of the pandemic.
“To quote one voter ‘it’s as if the pandemic did not happen, that they did not lock us down and they have all gone back to promising which boom gate they are going to remove and what project they are going to scrap because it was someone else’s idea’,” he said.
RedBridge senior consultant Tony Barry said the most successful campaign would give Victorians hope.
“At the moment all Victorian voters are getting is a series of tactical and unconnected policy auctions between the major parties but with no compelling narrative,” he said.
The Victorian PBO is one of only five in the world that independently costs the election commitments of political parties.
Parliamentary Budget Officer Anthony Close said his office monitored all media sources and mad independent judgements on the statements that represent a promise to act if a Victorian political party forms government.
“The ability for Victorians to see regular updates of the election commitments is a unique innovation aimed at assisting them to easily find the policies that may impact them,” he said.
“I see it being valuable to those interested in the policies that each party commits to, whether in detail by linking through to the specific media items or by glancing at the policy areas of interest to them prior to voting.”
Since May 2022, the PBO has assessed over 35,000 media items to identify 121 election commitments to date.
After the election, the PBO will release an independent assessment of each election platform on the state budget, as required by legislation.
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