Introduction

The Parliamentary Budget Officer is required to publish a report after each general election that details and aggregates the budget impacts of the election commitments made by political parties. This report must cover the commitments of the major parliamentary parties and may cover the commitments of the minor parties and independents if they choose to be included.¹ One independent member of parliament, the independent member for Indi, Dr Helen Haines MP, chose to be included.

The Election commitments report for the 2022 general election:

1. uses the 2022 Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Outlook report as the baseline for the costings of election commitments
2. incorporates costings of all the election commitments of each party that, in our best professional judgement, would have a material impact on the Australian Government budget over the 2022–23 Budget forward estimates and medium‑term periods
3. shows, for each party, the individual impacts those election commitments would be expected to have on the Australian Government budget over the 2022–23 Budget forward estimates and medium‑term periods
4. shows, for each party, the total combined medium‑term impact of those election commitments on the key budget aggregates as a share of gross domestic product
5. presents full costing documentation for all election commitments, with the exception of those commitments that are specified as providing capped levels of funding
6. presents the distributional impacts of individual election commitments, where parties that have previously requested those impacts as part of a PBO costing outside of the caretaker period have elected to retain them. One party, the Australian Greens, elected to retain distributional analysis for 3 of their commitments.

Further details on the requirements for, and approach to the preparation of, this report are presented at Appendix I. All table and chart data for the report are available on the PBO website, along with guides to the report and its costings which make it easier for different readers to locate the information of interest to them.

At a glance

The Election commitments report presents the budget impacts of the policy platforms for all major parties (the Coalition, Australian Labor Party and Australian Greens), as well as any minor parties and independents who choose to be included in the report. The independent member for Indi, Dr Helen Haines MP, elected to be included.

The report includes a summary of each party’s platform and budget impacts of each election commitment, against the 2022 Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Outlook baseline. Financial implications are estimated over the period to 2032–33 (the medium term), and there is documentation for each costing, matching the nature of each commitment. In some cases, this includes distributional impacts of commitments (such as by state or income bracket).

The report includes commitments expected to have a material impact on the Australian Government budget. In the lead-up to the election, the PBO identified and assessed almost 2,000 relevant election commitments and determined that 314 of these met the criteria for inclusion in this report. Of those items, 41 are commitments by the Coalition, 154 by the Australian Labor Party, 99 by the Australian Greens, and 20 by the independent member for Indi.

The Election commitments report helps Parliament and the public hold parties to account by creating a record of all the promises made during an election and their impact on the budget. The process evens the ‘playing field’ by giving non-government parties and independents access to costings and supports further policy debate.

For more information on this report, how to interpret the underlying costings, and how to read Australian Government budget papers, see the introductory guides available at Guide to the budget.