Has the Liberal coalition been truthful in it’s promises?

With the blindsiding defeat of the Labor Party by the Liberal coalition, and subsequent leadership chaos within the Labor party, it is important to look forward a week after the election and try to understand where exactly Australia does stand. How is the environment going to fair, where will Aussie jobs come and go, and where will Australia stand on the world stage.

Under the Liberal government, many have been pointing out the seeming lack of official policy on Climate Change. For sure, in none of the 3 leader debates did Scott Morrison officially discuss any permanent Liberal environmental policies, though was insistent on the fact that Australia was decreasing its carbon emissions every year. And while the official Australian government site is quite optimistic on Australia’s carbon emissions, not everyone agrees. Australia, for the last four years has been increasing its carbon emissions output, and despite the years before that being marked by significant decreases in emissions output, this growth if continued would mean Australia would not meet its obligations under the Paris Climate Agreement. Beyond this, the ensured development and operation of the Adani mine means that Australia will continue to contribute to worldwide carbon emissions even if the growth of national carbon emissions was reduced.

At the same time, a major standing point was the job prospects which the Adani mine would create for the people in Queensland as well as how many jobs coal would create in total. However, despite the large amount of arguments to and fro about this issue, many people have been blinded to the truth of coal jobs in Queensland. The Adani mine, which was once slated to create 10,000 jobs is now looking to create 200 at most. Furthermore, the even larger Chinese Stone open cut mine meant to be developed nearby has been abandoned. Meant to provide the state with 3,000 jobs, this mine was abandoned due to China’s decreasing reliance and interest in coal. Even with these lack of jobs created by what was touted as an incredibly important job industry by the coalition, the effect on the state could be huge. Tourism is a huge industry in Queensland and relies on a pristine environment and unique Flora and Fauna. Even rumors of the creation of these mines have hurt tourism in the state and could lead to jobs being lost that can not be recuperated by the neutered coal mines.

Finally, the Liberal party has been quite flippant with Australia’s stance in the world. It sees itself stuck between the arguments of China and the US, Australia’s largest trade partner and Australia’s most powerful ally respectively. However, rather than try to use its connections to both in an attempt to foster peaceful relations, or work to create alliances and trade with other nations to negate any possible degradation in relations between the two powers, the Liberal government has seen it fit to twiddle their thumbs and antagonize important neighbors like Indonesia with flippant changes on our Jerusalem policy. Even further, the refugee health crisis on Manus island and Nauru will have most likely soured relations with close allies like New Zealand, who have proposed easy fixes to the issue many times but have been struck down.

Overall, flippant or otherwise just plain thoughtless actions and policies have lead to the Liberal party either going against their promises or just downright ignoring them. These three failures of promises haven’t even gone into the complete failure of their tax cuts promises caused by an extremely likely delay of them. In the end, despite winning the election by a solid margin, their failure to keep their promises may lead to instability in the party from the get go of parliament.