The social welfare scorecard: how the parties stack up

Will this election create a fairer more egalitarian society? Not so far, according to an assessment of the social policy options being touted by the major parties.

In fact, on current indications a Coalition victory may make it worse and the ALP just maintain the status quo. After a careful assessment of what was on offer, and scoring the various policies, the results are quite scary. Of the 90-odd social policy areas of need identified, at least 50 are yet to rate any mentions, 15 are negative divisive proposals and only about 30 of the actual policies on offer are possible contributors to social well being.

The list below has been scored in a summary fashion to offer an overview of the net gains and losses of social, rather than individual wellbeing. The low levels of items to be included in major party scores are a general indictment of the lack of social policy relevance in current election agendas. The sum of positive and negative scores indicates the problem: the ALP scored +4.5 in total out of a possible +80 plus; the Coalition didn’t even make it into positive figures with a total score of -10.5.

The selected items do not include those areas that are strictly economic — they are many and much is said on them elsewhere. They covers those initiatives that can undermine or feed into social wellbeing, resilience and social cohesion. In these areas, little is happening and the long list of omissions below is not comprehensive.

The basic scoring criterion was fairness in the standard Australian sense of a fair go for all, which means looking after those who do not share in the good fortune of most others. We looked closely at gender, and indigenous needs, but recognise many missing items from other areas and groups who also miss out on their fair share of public resources: like the creative arts, cultural diversity and other social needs.

There will be many arguments about defining fairness but most would agree that overly large unfair gaps between haves and have nots need good social policy remedies. Research shows unfair inequalities can be toxic to the wellbeing of all and damage social cohesion.

The score has three categories of promises/policies on the fairness of their social impact:

1. Divisive scare tactics; populist, scapegoating policy announcements or statements
2. The missing possible social measures that would make Australia fairer to all that are not mentioned by the major parties
3. The current policy promises that could be seen to have some social fairness impact.

I have omitted to score the Greens — while they’ll certainly have influence, the comparisons would not have worked. The Greens have fairness/equity built into every policy; no scapegoats except maybe the odd polluters. Their influence will also be limited to those areas where the major parties disagree and the policies below suggest this is not going to occur often.

The first group includes 15 dog whistle scare items — ‘yes’ scored as -1; a split yes/no was scored at 0.5 if there were mitigating factors. The second covers 10 social policy categories: for example, indigenous issues have had no mentions, with multiple sub items in each which obviously showed no scores as yet. There are 40 or so items, but hopefully more may yet emerge to give the lists more balance.

Group 3 includes the actual policy announcements in areas deemed to be potentially socially positive. These were scored as follows:

• Undermines equity/fairness = -1
• Maintain current inequities (no difference) = 0
• Some positive indication = 0.5
• Makes it fairer/redistributes = +1
• Too hard to assess = ?