Major party election commitments

Key points:

The 2025 Election Commitments Report (ECR) shows the individual and combined budget impacts of the election commitments announced by each of the 3 major parties: the Australian Labor Party (Labor), the Coalition, and the Australian Greens (the Greens).

The report includes election commitments with a material impact on the Australian Government budget. It shows how the platforms of the parties, if fully implemented, would change the budget position, relative to the starting point presented in the 2025 Pre‑election Economic and Fiscal Outlook (PEFO).

Compared to PEFO, and if fully implemented:

  • Labor's platform would result in slightly smaller underlying cash deficits across the 2025‑26 Budget forward estimates (2025‑26 to 2028‑29) and medium term (2025‑26 to 2035‑36).
  • The Coalition's platform would result in an overall smaller underlying cash deficit over the forward estimates, but would result in larger deficits by the end of the medium term.
  • The Greens' platform would result in larger underlying cash deficits across the forward estimates and medium term.

In the lead‑up to the election, over 2,000 relevant election announcements were assessed. The Parliamentary Budget Officer determined 622 of these met the criteria for inclusion in this report.[5]

Of these, 63 were made by Labor, 214 made by the Coalition and 345 made by the Greens.[6],[7]

The 2025 ECR includes the individual and combined budget impacts of the election commitments announced by each of the 3 major political parties (Labor, the Coalition and the Greens).

The report adds to the information published by parties about the financial impacts of their election commitments, taking a medium‑term perspective and presenting a view of the impacts on the budget for all major parties on a comparable basis. Box 1 explains the wider fiscal perspectives and some key concepts used in the report.

The rest of this section provides additional high‑level information about the aggregate budget impact of party platforms over the forward estimates and medium term.

More detail on the budget impacts of each major party's election platform is provided in the following chapters and in the summary tables at Appendix A (Labor), Appendix B (Coalition), and Appendix C (the Greens). Individual costing documents are available in the 2025 Election Commitments section.

The requirements and the methods for preparing the report are at Appendix E. Related terms are explained in the Glossary in this report, which draws from the PBO's online budget glossary.

Box 1: The Election Commitments Report – key concepts and interpretation

This report complements the information about the financial impacts of election commitments published by parties during the election campaign by providing a wide range of information over a longer time period.

The report presents budget impacts over the 2025‑26 Budget forward estimates period (the budget year plus the next 3 years) and the medium term (the budget year plus the next 10 years).

Across both time horizons, we present results for 3 different aggregate budget balances – the underlying cash balance, headline cash balance, and fiscal balance – and on government debt to provide a more complete picture of the financial impacts.

When people talk about the budget surplus or deficit, they are often talking about the underlying cash balance. Each of the 3 balances presented in this report focuses on a different type of financial information, but no one of them provides all the potentially relevant financial impacts. In particular, the headline cash balance is the only balance to show the upfront impact of government loans and equity injections.

The report describes the impacts of individual commitments, and parties' platforms as a whole, on the budget surplus or deficit. Throughout the report, an 'improvement' in the budget balance makes the deficit smaller, and a 'deterioration' in the budget balance makes the deficit larger.

The financial impacts presented here are 'point in time' estimates of the commitments as announced during the election campaign and the assumptions outlined in each costing. Where these policies are subsequently implemented, their financial implications may change for reasons including updated budget parameters, changes in behaviour, and the finalisation of policies during further consultation and detailed design stages.

 

[5] Election commitments included in the report must be public, specific, and have a material impact on the Australian Government budget. This includes commitments for additional expenditure that would be material but have a net zero impact because the party specifies that it would be offset by savings. For more information see Appendix E – Report Requirements and Methodology.

[6] Because commitments are primarily those identified by parties, this number is affected by the way that parties choose to group their commitments. For example, making fewer more highly aggregated commitments with many subcomponents would result in a lower number of commitments.

[7] The Greens’ total includes a costing of the interactions between commitments in their platform identified by the PBO.