By Jono Searle/AAP, Lukas Coch/AAP, Mick Tsikas/AAP, The Conversation
Election promises are a mainstay of contemporary politics. Governments cite kept commitments as proof they can be trusted, while oppositions pounce on any failure to deliver.
But beyond the politics, campaign pledges are also central to representative democracy. They telegraph what to expect from a party in government and create a moral obligation for it to follow through.
Democratic governments across the globe fulfil, on average, roughly two-thirds of their promises, but most voters believe it is far fewer. Since voters will punish governments for breaking promises, it’s vital they have accurate information on their government’s record.
We set out to provide Australians with that information through RMIT’s Election Promise Tracker. We assessed 66 major promises made by Labor before the last election.
By presenting evidence through an interactive timeline that follows all the twists and turns since 2022, the tracker allows voters to form their own judgements during the 2025 campaign.
Tracking election promises
Our team compiled a long list of promises during the last election campaign by scouring public statements made by both major parties.
For this, we kept to the definition of an “election promise” used by the Comparative Pledges Project, a research network that employs a common approach to studying promises.
After the election, we narrowed Labor’s list to 66 promises — based on newsworthiness, coverage of policy areas and, later, feedback from the audience of ABC News.
Source: labor-made-plenty-of-promises-at-the-last-election-did-they-deliver