SYDNEY (AFP) – Australia’s new leader Anthony Albanese has promised big changes after nine years of conservative rule, from stepping up climate action to boosting indigenous rights and cracking down on political corruption.
Here are five key policy shifts to expect from the centre-left Labor Party leader after voters dumped Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s conservative Liberal-National Party coalition:
Climate
Mr Albanese promises to “end the climate wars”, an allusion to a decades-long mining-or-climate debate in a country dependent on massive fossil fuel exports but a victim of ever fiercer fires, floods and droughts.
Australia’s new government will cut carbon emissions by 43 per cent by 2030 from 2005 levels, he says. The current promise is to lower emissions by 28 per cent in that time, largely through technological advances – some as yet unknown.
Labor also promises to boost renewables, offer discounts for electric cars, help build community-owned solar power and battery projects, and tighten up a mechanism to ensure polluters keep their emissions below historical levels.
However, it has made no promise to close coal mines, or even to stop opening new ones.
Indigenous rights
Australia’s new government promises to call a referendum on changing the constitution to extend indigenous rights as a “priority”.
Labor vows to carry out proposals set out in a document called the “Uluru Statement from the Heart”, crafted in 2017 by a gathering of more than 250 indigenous representatives.
Indigenous campaigners want a “Voice to Parliament” guaranteeing that First Nations people are consulted about policies that will affect them.
“We will be even stronger, more cohesive and more proud if we do this, if we recognise that our history didn’t begin in 1788. It’s 65,000 years of the oldest continuous civilisation on the planet,” Mr Albanese said on the campaign trail.
