Aftermath: The campaign dust will settle on major challenges ignored and unimproved

It was Paul Keating, a very long time ago, who noted that it was normal for politicians to declare that each election was the most important in living memory, or something similar, in a desperate effort to galvanise voters and discredit opponents as uniquely threatening to all we hold dear.

Unusually, the 2025 election turned out to be exactly that, except that neither side was overly interested in talking to voters about the ways it was actually important. But now that it’s all said and done, we can reflect on where the contest leaves us on five crucial issues that received varying degrees of focus during the campaign.

Let’s start with the one key issue that received the most attention:

Housing

In contrast to the other issues, the major parties at least admitted there’s a housing crisis. Both had supply and demand policies: Labor is committed to building — checks notes now — 1.3 million homes, including 100,000 homes only for first home buyers, while the Coalition promised to invest heavily in the enabling infrastructure for housing, encouraging more private sector residential construction.

But both were also promising to stimulate demand as well: Labor by basically abolishing mortgage insurance for first home buyers, the Coalition by making mortgage repayments tax deductible for first home buyers buying new homes and allowing them to use their super to buy their first home — both Coalition policies offset by a vague commitment to reduce migration. That’s all good news for lucky homeowners, who will see more billions tipped into demand for homes while supply doesn’t respond anywhere near as quickly.

To be fair to Labor, the government has reacted to the construction industry’s constant pleadings for more investment in trades training to address probably the biggest impediment to greater supply after unadulterated NIMBYism — lack of workers. The industry workforce has grown massively on Labor’s watch — since early 2022, the construction workforce has grown 15%, or 180,000, to nearly 1.4 million workers, making it the second biggest employer across the economy after health and caring services. But we’re still well short of the number of housing commencements happening three years ago.

Post-election verdict? Housing to get more expensive — just the way the majority of voters like it, thanks.

Climate

AKA the global existential issue that dared not speak its name in the campaign, even after the entire election was delayed by a cyclone aimed at Brisbane. To be fair to the Coalition, its signature climate policy — abandoning the transition to renewables and keeping coal-fired power going until it achieved the impressive feat of building seven nuclear reactors on-time and on-budget — evidently tested so poorly in focus groups that the opposition abandoned it on the campaign trail, opting instead for a hastily cobbled together domestic gas reservation policy of the kind the Turnbull government demonised as raging Bolshevism.

Apart from the unusual sight of the Coalition’s friends in the fossil fuel industry slamming their policies, the campaign did nothing to address Australia’s burgeoning status under Labor as the world’s leading fossil fuel exporter — or even the climate deniers’ favourite fallback position, investing in climate resilience. We’re not even prepared to tax fossil fuel revenues properly: the March budget projected average Petroleum Resource Rent Tax revenue of just $1.7 billion a year across the Forwards. Fifteen years ago, the Rudd government was forecasting revenue of between $2-3 billion a year, when gas exports were one quarter of their current volume.

Post-election verdict: Let’s hope it was worth not upsetting WA’s fossil-fuelled elites.

Our strategic position

The bipartisan position in the campaign: nothing to see here, folks. Move along. It’s business as usual, we can still rely on the United States to guarantee our security. And build those Virginia-class subs that anyone who can count knows will never make it here.

There was a moment when it looked like some adults might enter the room on this. The Coalition, to its credit, declared that the uncertainties now facing Australia meant that more defence spending was required, and it would be paid for by giving up Labor’s tax cuts. But the announcement was badly bungled and turned into a trainwreck in which Dutton and Andrew Hastie couldn’t identify what they actually intended to spend the extra money on.

The only definite thing is we’ll be spending billions on yet more, unnecessary, overpriced and expensive-to-maintain F-35s, to the benefit of Lockheed and no one else. The only guarantee in defence spending, it seems, is that US defence companies will get richer from Australian taxpayers.

“We will inevitably use American technology in our own Defence Force,” Richard Marles opined during the campaign, having insisted that “America will continue to be a reliable defence partner.” Ask Ukraine how reliable the US is, Richard. Ask Canada. Ask Denmark.

Post-election verdict: Just how long can major party politicians continue to hide from reality? The US is no longer our defence partner. It’s an angry mob boss determined to extract protection money.

The budget

Plenty has been written about the dearth of fiscal discipline in this campaign. Labor absurdly tried to justify its spending spree by saying they’d extract a few billion in savings from what would effectively be another efficiency dividend on the public service aimed at travel, consultancies and, presumably, office stationery and the International Roast tins in the office kitchen.

Neither side was prepared to admit there’s something unsustainable about spending 26-27% of GDP while we tax ourselves at 23-24%. The figure that should worry everyone is to be found on page 341 of Budget Paper No. 1 this year: net interest to be paid on Commonwealth debt will increase from $18.5 billion this year to $28 billion in 2029. With deficits forecast through into the second half of the 2030s, that figure will only continue to increase rapidly. When the current generation of politicians has departed the parliamentary stage, net interest will still be one of our biggest expenditure programs.

Post-election verdict: As on climate, what a lovely legacy we’ll be leaving future generations. The taxpayers of the 2040s, stuck without submarines but with a burning planet and colossal interest bills, might wonder at just how dumb we were to let it all happen.

Closing the Gap

The only time Indigenous affairs came up in the election campaign was when neo-Nazis booed Welcome to Country ceremonies on Anzac Day, which elicited a bout of non-Indigenous navel-gazing about just what an ordeal it was to have to sit through them. Otherwise, the steadfast bipartisan inability or unwillingness to close the gap in life outcomes between our First Peoples and non-Indigenous Australians remains a taboo subject, especially after the defeat of the Voice referendum confirmed the political wisdom of not bothering mainstream Australia with the facts of our history of colonisation and dispossession.

Yes, Labor unveiled several Indigenous-related policies, while the Coalition hid their policy light under a rather large bushel — one of their two Indigenous-related policies was a direct lift of a Labor one made the day before.

The difference on Indigenous issues is that, for all that housing, defence, the budget and climate are critical issues, and the failure to develop appropriate policies illustrates something broken about the way we do politics and policy in Australia, the failure on Closing the Gap isn’t just one of policy, it’s a moral failure. The persistent gap goes to the very core of who we are in a country founded in colonialism, and reflective not merely of broken policymaking but something broken in white Australians themselves. And few of us will ever reward those who point out such flaws.

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