Australia Votes - Compare the policies

Australians will vote in the Federal election on the 21st August.  I wrote in my last post (here) about the Checklist that the Australian Christian Values Institute has developed to compare the major parties contesting the election. I was critical of the checklist because:

• It is simplistic and reductionist
• It omits many policy areas of significance
• The assessment of the parties seems to be arbitrary and inaccurate

A more useful tool is the website that has been created by the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL).

The site is called 'Australia Votes' and attempts to compare the key policies of the major and minor parties. The greatest advantage of this site is that it simply presents parallel information from the various parties in key areas; for example:

• Homelessness and housing affordability
• School Funding
• Access to assisted reproductive technology (ART), IVF and surrogacy for singles and same sex couples
• Climate change
• Freedom of religion

Of course, you will still need to sift through the words of the parties to make a judgment about what they are planning to do (and there is plenty of 'spin'), but the advantage of this resource is that you can assess the policies of the parties for yourself.

Other resources & links

'Dispelling Myths About 'Boat People' HERE
'How Should a Christian Vote' Michael Jensen (& John Dickson) HERE