Do Politicians Have to Keep Their Election Promises?
Why don’t politicians always keep their promises? Let's explore...
Nope. And in a way, that’s a good thing! (Bear with us here).
Let’s break it down by the different promises they might make.
1. Bringing in new legislation
We’ll start here because it is the primary function of our parliament. For a proposed bill to become law, it must be passed by a majority vote in BOTH the House of Reps and the Senate.
It’s pretty rare for the party holding the majority in the House of Reps to also hold the majority in the Senate. This means that the party ‘in government’ (the party with the Prime Minister who made promises in the lead up to the election) can’t automatically have their bill passed.
Politicians need to negotiate with the Senators holding the ‘balance of power’ in the upper house (those who can bring their party up to a majority vote there), buuuut sometimes, they can’t.
In that case, election promise = unfulfilled ❌
2. Following through on a call to action from the public
The obvious example for discussing this is Albanese committing to “the Uluru Statement in full” after Labor won the election in 2022.
Some changes in Australia need to actually go to the public — in this case, it was a change to Australia’s Constitution. While Albanese advocated for establishing a Voice to Parliament, the Australian public ended up saying no, so the final decision reflected what the majority of our population wanted on that issue.
Once again, election promise = unfulfilled ❌
3. Committing to funding
Well, this is actually the one that a major party should be able to follow through on. One of the responsibilities of the party holding government is that they get to decide how money is allocated in the budget.
In their party meetings leading up to an election, you’d assume that the members all agree on their priorities, and will therefore agree once they get into government. That’s most often the case.
Allocating money does take time, though. Some funding can be pledged to be rolled out over a number of years, sometimes over more than 3 years. Since a parliamentary term only lasts for 3 years, if the opposition wins the following election by getting voters on side for different priorities and election promises, those funding allocations can then be scrapped by the incoming government (the same can be done for laws, if both houses are in agreement to overturn something).
In this instance, election promise = somewhat unfulfilled ❓
Why have we designed a system that makes it so hard for politicians to follow through?
These rules are in place so that things don’t get tyrannical. While it can be frustrating that things don’t get done, or take ages to come to fruition, it’s pretty peachy knowing that our political representatives in Australia don’t get free reign to bring absolutely anything in, and that things can be overturned if the Australian public disagrees with the decisions of the previous government.
What about political integrity?
Great question! Shouldn’t all politicians strive to be respected for keeping their promises?
Unfortunately, that’s not always the case—but they know integrity matters. Few things lose voters faster than broken promises. Politicians should be held accountable for delivering on their commitments and using their position to negotiate and advocate for change.
That’s where your engagement is crucial! Politicians can only get away with a lack of integrity if we let them.
Emailing MPs, speaking up on social media, attending protests, and, most importantly, casting informed votes all send a clear message: the public cares about political integrity.
