EDITORIAL: Major parties’ sugar-hit policies will leave sour taste in voters’ mouths

Anthony Albanese says he will beef up Medicare with an $8.5 billion bulk-billing plan.

Peter Dutton says he’ll do the same, and chuck in an extra $500 million for good measure.

The Opposition Leader promises a Coalition government would offer low and middle-income earners a one-off tax offset of up to $1200.

An hour later the Prime Minister says every Australian will get an automatic $1000 tax deduction, no questions asked, no receipts needed.

Labor says it will slow net migration to 260,000 next financial year. The Coalition says they’ll slash it by another 100,000 on top of that and further lower the number of student visas on offer.

On Monday, it was housing’s turn.

Labor has promised to spend $10b building 100,000 homes exclusively for first-time buyers and says the Federal Government will back the same cohort to buy a home with a deposit as low as 5 per cent, while avoiding lender’s mortgage insurance.

The Coalition’s plan would make mortgage interest payments tax deductible for first-time buyers of newly built homes.

At the halfway mark of this election campaign, both major parties have thrown a mishmash of pitches against the wall in the hope something will stick.

In their desperation not to concede any points to the other side, both have clamoured to match or better one another’s policies.

The result is a confusing jumble of policies which, though they may differ in the vehicle of their delivery, are near-identical in that they will accomplish very little except to provide voters with temporary sugar hits and further blow out our ballooning national debt, while failing to do anything to address the challenges facing this country.

The temporary tax breaks won’t do anything to provide the structural reform our taxation system needs, nor will it do anything to address bracket creep.

The housing policies will likely both drive up prices for everyone, while doing little to boost supply.

You get the feeling they’re making it all up as they go, focused only on giving the electorate the election bribes they believe they’ve come to expect and demand, while utterly failing to do anything real.

Rightly, voters are confused and turned off by the entire useless spectacle.

How can they be expected to know — or care about — the difference between two equally uninspiring options on offer?

Labor appears still chastened by its embarrassing Voice defeat. Better to promise a lot of expensive nothing than it is to show bravery and risk another humiliation.

And the Coalition, after having unexpectedly found themselves back in contention early on in the campaign, have completely dropped the ball. They’ve offered nothing of significance, instead choosing to mirror the Government’s playbook of fiddling around the edges instead of offering the electorate the opportunity of any major reform.

It’s electoral populism of the most frivolous and stupid variety. And as it becomes further entrenched in our expectations, it’s future generations who stand to lose the most.