AusVotes 2013

This list of Coalition policies will be updated with details over time, and costings added as they become available.

Note: The categories have been labelled by the author and are not necessarily identified as such in Coalition documentation.

Aged care

• We will negotiate an Aged Care Provider Agreement with the aged care sector. This first ever Aged Care Provider Agreement, will set the framework for ageing and aged care arrangements in Australia over the next four years and into the future. Taking into account the Productivity Commission Caring for Older Australians report, we will reduce needless bureaucracy in the sector while making sure the sector remains focused on high quality care.

Source: Our Plan – Real solutions for all Australians

Agriculture and fishing

• We will support our fishing industry and review the declaration of new Marine Protected Areas. We will establish genuine consultation with the fishing industry on research and strengthen the connection between science and fishing policy.
• We will provide policy stability and certainty to our live exports trade.

Source: Our Plan – Real solutions for all Australians

Border control / defence

• If elected Prime Minister, the first overseas trip that Tony Abbott makes as Prime Minister will be to Indonesia to renew cooperation against people smugglers.
• We will re-introduce the use of Temporary Protection Visas (TPVs) to deny the people smugglers a product to sell.
• We will immediately give new orders to the Navy to tackle boat arrivals and ‘turn back’ the boats where safe to do so.
• We will give priority in processing to offshore special humanitarian visa applicants, over illegal boat arrivals.
• We will ensure, offshore special humanitarian visa applicants receive priority in obtaining permanent residency in Australia over illegal boat arrivals.
• We will restore responsible defence spending to 3 per cent real growth per year subject to improvements in the Budget.
• We will immediately start the process of acquiring a number of new state-of-the-art unmanned aircraft.
• Within 18 months, we will publish a new defence White Paper with costed, affordable ways to meet Australia’s important defence and national security objectives.
• We will ensure that Australia does not have a submarine capability gap. Within 18 months, we will make the short and medium term decisions necessary to achieve this goal.

Source: Our Plan – Real solutions for all Australians

Child care

• We will help ensure that childcare is more accessible, affordable and flexible, to help families juggle work and family commitments, by getting the Productivity Commission to urgently undertake a major inquiry into the childcare system.

Source: Our Plan – Real solutions for all Australians

Climate change

• We will act immediately to abolish the carbon tax. On day one of a new government– we will instruct the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet to draft legislation to repeal the carbon tax. The Finance Minister will notify the Clean Energy Finance Corporation that it should suspend its operations and instruct the Department of Finance to draft legislation to permanently shut down the $10 billion fund. The Environment Minister will instruct the department to start implementing the Coalition’s Direct Action Plan on climate change and carbon emissions.
• Legislation to repeal the carbon tax will be the first piece of legislation the Coalition will introduce.
• We will put downward pressure on prices by getting the ACCC to make sure that prices do not remain artificially raised when we abolish the carbon tax
• We remain committed to a five per cent reduction in emissions by 2020.
• We will establish an Emissions Reduction Fund of $3 billion to allocate money in response to emission reduction tenders to projects designed to reduce carbon emissions.
• All money spent will be on Australian green projects, not foreign carbon credits, keeping more jobs in Australia.
• We will support projects such as the exploration of soil carbon technologies and abatement, putting carbon back in soils and providing for a once in a generation replenishment of our farmlands.

Source: Our Plan – Real solutions for all Australians

Commonwealth / state relations

• We will significantly increase co-operation with State and Territory governments by reforming the Council of Australian Governments (COAG), rather than using it as a parking lot for tough decisions which are sidelined by political grandstanding. We will get on with the job of clearing the backlog of jobs on the agenda and immediately tackle the top priorities in order to deliver better services on the ground as soon as possible.
• We will focus COAG on a smaller number of core issues and ensure they are resolved quickly. We will reduce the number of COAG committees and require Ministers to show why it is essential their portfolio reforms must be resolved by COAG.
• We will establish a new Commonwealth/State Standing Council on Law, Crime and Community Safety to bring together lawmakers and law-enforcers to develop a national focus to fighting crime – and to report on key issues within 12 months.

Source: Our Plan – Real solutions for all Australians

Communications

• We will do a fully transparent cost-benefit analysis of the National Broadband Network, to find out the quickest and most cost-efficient way to upgrade broadband to all areas where services are now unavailable or substandard.
• We will roll out super-fast broadband using whichever is the most effective and cost efficient technology and we will use existing infrastructure where we can.
• We will roll it out faster to high priority areas.
• We will reject Labor’s push for increased regulation of the media, including the Finkelstein Report proposals for a powerful ‘News Media Council’ to ‘set journalistic standards’ for print and online media.
• We do not support a ‘public interest test’ for assessing media mergers and acquisitions as it would be subjective, susceptible to political manipulation and would lead to uncertainty for media businesses. Current laws and the Australian Communications and Media Authority, as the regulator, provide adequate protection in this area
• We will support freedom of speech, particularly in relation to anti-discrimination legislation. Prohibitions on inciting racial hatred or intimidation of particular groups should be focused on offences of incitement and causing fear but not a prohibition on causing offence.

Source: Our Plan – Real solutions for all Australians

• Coalition policy on the NBN

Competition

• We will review competition policy and deliver more competitive markets because there will be, for the first time in two decades, a root and branch review of competition laws.

Source: Our Plan – Real solutions for all Australians

Disability services

• We are fully committed to helping people with disabilities and their carers and delivering the NDIS as soon as possible in line with the Productivity Commission’s timetable.
• We will establish a bi-partisan parliamentary committee jointly chaired by both sides of the Parliament, with Members and Senators with a strong personal interest in making the NDIS happen. The committee will put the NDIS in place as a united project across party lines.

Source: Our Plan – Real solutions for all Australians

Economy

• We have a detailed plan to build a world-class 5-Pillar economy that will deliver more jobs and generate the real wealth necessary to finance better government services for Australian families.
• We will establish a new Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Council to advise the Executive Government on developing the economy. The Business Advisory Council will be chaired by leading Australian business leader Mr Maurice Newman AC and meet three times a year. It will include, amongst others, representatives from the Manufacturing, Agricultural, Services, Education and Resources sectors of the economy.
• We will get the Budget back under control, start delivering real Budget surpluses, pay down debt and take pressure off the high Australian dollar.
• We will immediately establish a Commission of Audit to identify savings and efficiencies in all areas of government, so we can reduce government debt.
• We will start reducing government debt.
• We will get spending down by fixing the overlap between different levels of government and by reducing the size of the Commonwealth payroll,with a focus on natural attrition, to bring it closer to its size at the close of the Howard Government.

Source: Our Plan – Real solutions for all Australians

Education

• We will put parents, principals and school communities in charge of determining how their school will be run to improve performance – by instilling a ‘students come first’ culture amongst staff and ensuring the delivery of better education outcomes at the local school level.
• We will continue current levels of funding for schools, indexed to deal with real increases in costs and we will ensure that money is targeted based on the social and economic status of the community.
• We will make more investment in science education at primary schools. We will restore the Primary Connections science education program.
• We will continue the National School Chaplaincy Programme in Schools to support the emotional wellbeing of students.
• We will ensure the continuation of the current arrangements of university funding.
• We will achieve better engagement with Asia through a new two-way ‘Colombo Plan’ which sends our future leaders to Asian universities as well as bringing their future leaders here through a scholarship program.
• We will aim to have 40 per cent of high school students studying a foreign language, preferably an Asian language, in year 12.
• We will review and restructure government research funding to make sure each dollar is spent as effectively as possible.

Source: Our Plan – Real solutions for all Australians

Employment

• We will deliver at least one million new jobs; and two million new jobs within the next decade.
• We will provide incentives for employers to employ young people and seniors and take them off welfare.
• We will ensure that people of working age are actually working, preferably for a wage – but if not, for the dole – by reinvigorating the work-for-the-dole program.
• We will introduce a genuine Paid Parental Leave Scheme and help ensure that childcare is more accessible, affordable and flexible – ensuring all families have more choice. The Coalition’s Paid Parental Leave scheme is based on a mother’s real wage, rather than a minimum wage.
• We will give employers the option of ‘opting in’ to managing the administration of Paid Parental Leave to their employees. If they choose not to be the government’s paymaster, payments will be made directly to the employee. This will relieve small businesses of their role as paymaster of the government’s inadequate Paid Parental Leave scheme.
• We will introduce a new Job Commitment Bonus for long-term employees who get a job and remain off welfare for 12 months and a further bonus if they remain off welfare for 24 months.
• We will introduce a new Jobseeker Relocation Bonus for young job seekers who move to take a job.
• We will provide better structured incentives for employers to employ people over 50 years of age.
• We will make work-for-the-dole mandatory for all long-term unemployed welfare beneficiaries under 50 years of age and tighten work-for-thedole requirements.
• We will start suspending dole payments for people under 30 years of age in areas where unskilled work is readily available.
• We will adopt a smarter approach to the disability pension that distinguishes between disabilities that are likely to be permanent and those that are not, which will help to prevent older unemployed people being parked on welfare.
• We will support the Australian Employment Covenant and its many supporting employers to create more opportunities for indigenous Australians to get ahead by actively engaging more indigenous Australians in real jobs.

Source: Our Plan – Real solutions for all Australians

Environment

• We will establish a 15,000-strong Green Army to clean-up the environment.
• We will deliver a State-based one-stop shop for environmental approvals to streamline the environmental approval process, reduce costs for business and boost productivity while retaining current high environmental standards.
• We will deliver on the 10-point plan for the Murray-Darling announced by the Howard Government.

Source: Our Plan – Real solutions for all Australians

Financial services

• We will give priority to the recommendations of the Johnson Report into Australia as a Financial Centre to further grow our financial services industry’s ability to export its world-class expertise to Asia and beyond.

Source: Our Plan – Real solutions for all Australians

Foreign affairs

• We will review the weighting Australia gives to its diplomatic resources including overseasrepresentation, with a view to refocusing foreign policy on the Asia-Pacific region.
• We will enhance US access to bases in Australia and continue to support our close alliance with the US.
• We will ensure future aid funding increases are dependent on AusAid meeting strict performance benchmarks.
• Within two years, we will establish a new two-way ‘Colombo Plan’ to deepen our knowledge and engagement with countries in our region and develop stronger people-to-people relationships by bringing the best and the brightest talent from our region to Australia and taking Australia’s best and brightest talent to countries in our region.

Source: Our Plan – Real solutions for all Australians

Health

• We will protect and strengthen Medicare by restoring the Private Health Insurance Rebate as soon as we responsibly can.
• We will work with the States to ensure their hospitals are managed by local hospital boards. We will put local communities and experts in charge of improving the performance of public hospitals – by creating community-controlled hospital boards to appoint the CEO and manage hospital budgets, by instilling a ‘patient care first’ culture amongst staff and ensuring the delivery of better health outcomes at the local hospital level.
• We will take real action and support better mental health services with Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centres (EPPICs); boosting of basic and applied research into mental health; new headspace sites; better employment opportunities to those with serious mental health problems, boosting outside services that job agencies can provide to clients with mental health issues and a Mental Health Workforce Training Institute.
• We will provide $35 million to help find a cure for type 1 diabetes. This will assist the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation’s Clinical Research Network to fund a significant number of additional patient trials locally and internationally and take a coordinated nationwide approach to diabetes research.

Source: Our Plan – Real solutions for all Australians

Immigration

• We will ensure that our non-discriminatory immigration programme helps those in need and serves our national interest.
• We will make sure that Australia’s refugee and humanitarian resettlement program provides places to those most in need. We will ensure a minimum of 1,000 places are available for women at risk and their dependents and appropriate settlement services are available once they arrive in Australia.

• We will ensure the migration program is skewed towards skilled workers to enable the growth of a more productive and prosperous economy – particularly for those areas where skilled workers are not available and where our industries need to grow.

• Our immigration program will focus on skilled migrants targeting skills shortages and people who can make a contribution from day one in a job.
• If elected Prime Minister, the first overseas trip that Tony Abbott makes as Prime Minister will be to Indonesia to renew cooperation against people smugglers.
• We will re-introduce the use of Temporary Protection Visas (TPVs) to deny the people smugglers a product to sell.
• We will immediately give new orders to the Navy to tackle boat arrivals and ‘turn back’ the boats where safe to do so.
• We will give priority in processing to offshore special humanitarian visa applicants, over illegal boat arrivals.
• We will ensure, offshore special humanitarian visa applicants receive priority in obtaining permanent residency in Australia over illegal boat arrivals.
• We will restore the single case officer appeal process.

Source: Our Plan – Real solutions for all Australians

Indigenous affairs

• We will work with families to ensure all indigenous children attend school every day.
• We will support the Australian Employment Covenant and its many supporting employers to create more opportunities for indigenous Australians to get ahead by actively engaging more indigenous Australians in real jobs.
• We will provide $10 million to fund four trial sites to train 1,000 indigenous people for guaranteed jobs, working with the Australian Employment Covenant and Generation One.

Source: Our Plan – Real solutions for all Australians

• Plan to put sub-department within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet

Industrial / workplace relations

• We will deliver higher productivity growth by rebalancing workplace relations to reduce union militancy and to encourage higher pay for better work.
• We will fully restore the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC).
• We will work within the existing framework and with the independent umpire Fair Work Australia and the Fair Work Ombudsman to restore the balance in workplaces.
• We will establish a Registered Organisations Commission to overcome the inadequacies revealed by Fair Work Australia’s investigation into the Health Services Union.
• We will amend laws so that registered organisations and their officials have to play by similar rules, to make similar disclosures and be subject to similar penalties as companies and their directors.

Source: Our Plan – Real solutions for all Australians

Infrastructure

• Big new projects will be underway within 12 months of a change of government.
• We will develop a rolling 15-year infrastructure plan of national projects and work closely with Infrastructure Australia in establishing project priorities and delivery timetables. This will be a Commonwealth and State government plan and will be revised every five years.
• We will strengthen the role of Infrastructure Australia, improve its governance and make it more transparent and accountable, as well as a more effective adviser.
• We will require all Commonwealth-funded projects worth more than $100 million to undergo a cost-benefit analysis by Infrastructure Australia to ensure the best use of available taxpayer monies.
• We will require Infrastructure Australia to publish justifications for all its project recommendations.
• We will prioritise projects based on a proper cost-benefit analysis.
• Within 12 months of election we will announce infrastructure priorities and construction timetables in consultation with the States.
• We will ask the Office of Financial Management to examine an Infrastructure Partnership Bonds Scheme to encourage billions of dollars of additional private investment in infrastructure projects, so that we can get more things done.
• We will start the detailed planning necessary to build new dams.

Source: Our Plan – Real solutions for all Australians

Law and order / emergency services

• We will stand up for communities so that people feel safe in their streets. We will establish a new national Safer Streets program and expand the use of CCTV cameras in crime prevention and detection.
• We will establish a new Commonwealth/State Standing Council on Law, Crime and Community Safety to bring together lawmakers and law-enforcers to develop a national focus to fighting crime – and to report on key issues within 12 months.
• We will work with the States and Territories to improve Australia’s capacity to respond to natural disasters and emergencies both domestically and internationally for better and faster deployment of search dogs nationally by creating an Australian Search Dog Framework.
• We will provide $10 million support to assist surf life saving clubs buy needed equipment and to tackle drowning black-spots.

Source: Our Plan – Real solutions for all Australians

Regulation

• We will cut government red tape costs on businesses and community groups by $1 billion a year.
• We will deliver a State-based one-stop shop for environmental approvals to streamline the environmental approval process, reduce costs for business and boost productivity while retaining current high environmental standards.
• Where possible we will replace burdensome regulatory reporting requirements with independent audits backed by penalties for organisations that fail to comply with set standards.
• Every Cabinet submission will once more contain a regulation impact statement that will quantify the compliance costs imposed and matching compliance cost cuts.
• Every year, there will be a Deregulation Report tabled in the parliament and two sitting days will be dedicated to the repeal of redundant legislation and review of regulations.
• Responsibility for deregulation will be assumed by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet so that deregulation and productivity will have a whole-of-government focus.

Source: Our Plan – Real solutions for all Australians

Small business

• We will give employers the option of ‘opting in’ to managing the administration of Paid Parental Leave to their employees. If they choose not to be the government’s paymaster, payments will be made directly to the employee. This will relieve small businesses of their role as paymaster of the government’s Paid Parental Leave scheme.

• We will allow small business to send one payment directly to the Australian Taxation Office for superannuation and then the Australian Taxation Office will do the rest, if that’s what small business would prefer.
• We will achieve an annual growth rate in the numbers of small businesses of 1.5 per cent – the same rate the Howard Government was achieving. We will then be adding more than 30,000 new small businesses each year. That’s double the rate achieved under the current government.
• We will extend unfair contract protection currently available to consumers, to small businesses.

Source: Our Plan – Real solutions for all Australians

Superannuation

• We will allow small business to send one payment directly to the Australian Taxation Office for superannuation and then the Australian Taxation Office will do the rest, if that’s what small business would prefer.
• We will support our veterans by properly indexing the Defence Force Retirement Benefits and Defence Force Retirement and Death Benefit military superannuation pensions and we will deliver this in our first Budget.

Source: Our Plan – Real solutions for all Australians

• Cancel the the low-income superannuation concession, which reduces to zero the normal 15 per cent rate applied to super contributions.

Source: The Age

• Scrap the $500 co-contribution for workers earning less than $37,000.

Source: Daily Telegraph

Taxation

• We will fund personal income tax cuts for individuals and families – without a carbon tax.
• We will deliver a modest cut in company tax – funded from savings in the Budget.
• We will abolish the mining tax.

Source: Our Plan – Real solutions for all Australians

Trade

• We will take real action to increase economic activity, strengthen our trading relationships and grow a stronger economy by fast tracking Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with China, Indonesia, Japan and India amongst others.
• We will strengthen our diplomatic relationship and trade ties with India and boost mining exports by exporting uranium to India.
• We will act immediately to deliver a level playing field for Australia’s manufacturing businesses with more effective anti-dumping measures. We will crack down on overseas producers who don’t cooperate with anti-dumping investigations. We will strengthen enforcement of the provisions of the World Trade Organisation Agreement on subsidies and countervailing measures. We will transfer anti-dumping responsibilities from Customs to the Department of Industry.

Source: Our Plan – Real solutions for all Australians

Transport

• We will contribute $1.5 billion to get the M4 East (WestConnex Project) underway in Sydney to complete the east-west corridor.
• We will contribute $1.5 billion to get the East- West Link road tunnel underway in Melbourne to link the Eastern Freeway and Western Ring Road and we will further improve the Geelong Princes Highway.
• We will contribute $1 billion towards the upgrade of the Gateway Motorway in Brisbane and we will develop the Toowoomba Range crossing.
• We will contribute $400 million and get the duplication of the Midland Highway between Hobart and Launceston done in Tasmania.
• We will contribute $5.6 billion to complete the duplication of the Pacific Highway from Newcastle to the Queensland border.
• We are committed to the Perth Gateway project and will make further road infrastructure commitments in South Australia before the next election.

Source: Our Plan – Real solutions for all Australians