EDITORIAL: Stage set for battle between future and familiar in Federal election

With Budget week done, the countdown has officially started to the 2025 Federal election.

Both Prime Minster Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton seized on the occasion as an opportunity to present voters with the first iterations of their election pitches.

Labor are pinning their hopes on convincing voters to embrace a “Future Made in Australia”.

They want Australians to buy into their vision of the nation as a high tech, innovative, clean energy superpower and a leader in advanced manufacturing.

It’s a vision that will cost big, with tax incentives worth close to $32 billion on the table until 2041 to turbocharge critical minerals processing and green hydrogen production. The Liberals have derided the tax credit scheme as “corporate welfare”, and “billions for billionaires”, risking the wrath of the mining industry in doing so.

But Labor says if we want to be part of this “transformative” opportunity, there’s no time to waste.

“If we hang back, the chance for a new generation of jobs and prosperity will pass us by — and we’ll be poorer and more vulnerable as a consequence,” Treasurer Jim Chalmers said this week.

So far, the Government’s message has played well in the resource States of Queensland and WA, both crucial to Labor’s re-election hopes. They’re hoping their pitch of an Australia that makes stuff will help win them back favour with the blue collar workers who have deserted them in droves at successive elections.

And while Labor are looking to the future, the Liberals are looking to the past.

They’re promising to get Australia “back on track” — back to a time of affordable electricity and when owning a home wasn’t just a far-off dream for most.

To get there, Mr Dutton has pledged to cut the permanent migration program by a quarter to 140,000 for two years then gradually increase it, and similarly cut the number of refugees Australia takes in each year. Labor plans to reduce net overseas migration from the post-COVID peak of 528,000 in 2022-2023 to 260,000 this financial year.

Mr Dutton also wants to implement a two-year ban on foreign investors and temporary residents buying existing houses while also capping international student numbers and make those who switched providers to extend stays pay higher visa fees.

That tinkering could free up as many as 100,000 homes over the next five years, the Coalition claims.

Another key plank of the Coalition’s plan to resurrect the Great Australian Dream of homeownership is to allow first homebuyers to access up to $50,000 of their superannuation to crack into the market.

Mr Dutton says he’s still committed to a nuclear future for Australia, but details on that policy failed to materialise before the Budget as was anticipated. Both parties have made clear they’re committed to gas through to 2050 and beyond.

Voters will decide which pitch is more enticing — a future-focused Australia at the vanguard of a new economy, or the familiar comforts of the past brought into the present day.