After Labor’s victory in the 2022 federal election, they were left to pick up the pieces of a deeply broken country, smashed to pieces by a decade of Liberal mismanagement. Sadly, Labor has not delivered the socialist utopia so-promised by Article 4 of their national constitution. Neither have they, in our view, delivered us a fully robust social democratic program.
We have heard all too often the rebuttal that Labor has had only three years to deal with a decade of Liberal mismanagement. So let us review what they have done in the past three years.
Gone are the days of Gough Whitlam, where a Labor leader would deliver sweeping changes in a scant three years before being deposed in an untimely manner by the CIA. What Anthony Albanese has delivered are timid steps in the right direction. It goes without saying that we are glad that we are not governed by the Liberals with their atomic pipe dream. If the Liberals were elected to power at the federal election, they would have undoubtedly undone the meagre progress Labor has achieved.
However, we are unsure if Labor is truly aware of the severity of the crises that we are facing right now: an existential threat of climate collapse, a system that treats housing as a commodity rather than a right leading to skyrocketing rates of homeleness, rising costs in basic necessities and healthcare, an epidemic of femicide, a lack of justice for First Nations peoples after 200 years, and an ongoing genocide unfolding in Gaza. We are left to ask, is small piecemeal progress all you have to offer?
Despite their recent resounding victory in the 2025 federal election, it remains unlikely that they will deliver the sweeping changes that we so desperately need. We have seen Labor unwilling to listen to their rank-and-file and even their own National Platform. It remains on you as a vigilant citizen to hold them to account for the continued goals they have promised.
Housing
In a cost-of-living crisis, housing has always been one of Labor’s most pressing electoral issues. Their election campaign included a hefty promise of $10 billion to build 100,000 homes for first-home buyers, and to set a 5 per cent mortgage rate for first-home buyers.
However, Labor doesn’t have a promising track record when it comes to building houses. A similar policy called the Social Housing Accelerator, established in June 2023, cost $2 billion dollars and resulted in the construction of “at least” 119 houses. This includes 68 in NSW and 38 in Queensland, according to data from February 2025. If, during three years of government, Labor is capable of producing 119, then they are woefully ill-equipped to uphold the 100,000 additions that they have promised.
Labor’s Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) is one of its keystone policies, costing $500 million per annum with the objective of building 40,000 homes by 2029. This is also projected to fall well short of expectations, but isn’t quite as dismal: as of February 2025 there are 977 dwellings in NSW currently under construction, while over in Victoria there are 2,292. The remainder of Australia has 2,172 under construction. The HAFF has listed over 350 homes as ‘completed’, in a list that includes purchased houses alongside constructed houses. Meanwhile, the Labor government has yet to repeal negative gearing, a crippling policy introduced by the Liberals, or the Capital Gains Tax (CGT). Clare O’Neil, former Housing Minister, deflected pre-election criticism by claiming that Labor’s focus is on “supporting renters, helping homeowners”. CGT and negative gearing have been a distasteful topic to Labor for many years, having cost them the election in 2019, and many in Labor consider demand reforms for housing political poison. It remains to be seen whether, following their considerable victory, they will feel remotely impelled to touch the policies that they have hitherto persistently neglected.
Healthcare
Labor’s first term in Government post-COVID has forced them to reckon with the realities of a struggling health system buckling under pressure, giving them ample reason to enact urgent reform in healthcare.
Labor introduced their Building A Stronger Medicare policy in 2023. In a bid to encourage general practitioner (GP) bulk billing, Labor increased indexation for the GP Medicare rebate, and delivered the largest investment in bulk billing incentives in 40 years. The bulk billing rate in December 2024 was 77 per cent, down from 85 per cent in pre-COVID 2018.
Despite incentives, more than two thirds of GPs, according to the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP), will refuse to exclusively bulk bill; many still charge higher ‘gap fees’ to compensate for rising infrastructure costs. Labor has not increased the Medicare rebate in their 2025-26 Budget, nor provided sector-wide reform, meaning many Australians will continue to find GP visits inaccessible and expensive.
To take pressure off emergency departments, Labor has opened 87 Medicare Urgent Care Clinics (UCCs) since 2023, which have received, in total, 400,000 visits from Australians. However, the Australian Medical Association and RACGP have critiqued UCCs, saying that their efficacy has yet to be researched and the $227m spent on them would be better spent on general practice.
In addition to GPs and hospitals, Labor attempted to deal with the mental health crisis. Mental health is the most common presentation in GP clinics, and is also the leading cause of death among young adults. Labor’s 2023-24 budget included valuable initiatives such as $260.2 million in funding for people with severe mental illness who are ineligible for the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), and $91.3 million to increase the psychology workforce. However, according to mental health peak body Mental Health Australia, Labor lacked a “long-term funded roadmap for reform”. Labor’s second term 2025-26 budget was shamefully absent of any new policy or funding to combat the mental health crisis.
Overall, Labor have attempted to revitalise a struggling primary healthcare system through piecemeal incentives and programs. They have made some advances in bulk billing and provided better access to urgent care, but delivered exceptionally little in terms of mental health and systemic, long-term healthcare reform.
Disability and the NDIS
The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) has been one of Labor’s most contentious policies. The NDIS has undoubtedly given support to the most vulnerable amongst us, but one must sit with the uncomfortable truth that the heart of disability support is market-based strategies? In the 2025-2026 financial year, the NDIS is set to cost approximately $50 billion. Given that it cost $32.5 billion in 2022-2023, it is likely to grow significantly over the coming years. In the 2024-2025 financial year, NDIS comprised 1.7 per cent of Australia’s gross domestic product (GDP).
Over 700,000 people are registered for the NDIS, which is projected to rise to a million people by 2032. Legislation passed in 2024 under the Labor government saw a major slash in funding and efforts to reform by improving the timeframe for approving rules, and a move from absolute support to majority support for rule changes for people with disabilities that might have significant impacts.
The difficult balance is to spend enough money to fund NDIS and adequately support the hundreds of thousands of Australians who benefit from it while preventing a budget blow-out. Labor’s goal for this financial year was to reduce the growth rate from 12 to 10 per cent, which they have achieved, spending $700 million less than forecast. From 2026 onwards, they plan to have the growth rate stabilise at 8 per cent. An audit conducted by the Australian National Audit Office in 2023 found that, on a broad scale, it was “partly effective”, “largely fit for purpose” and recommendations from previous audits had been “partly implemented”. The National Disability Insurance Agency agreed with all 13 of the recommendations given in this audit, except for one recommendation that “The Australian Government aligns the fraud control requirements for the National Disability Insurance Agency with those of non-corporate Commonwealth entities.”
Industrial Relations
Attempting to live up to their name, the Albanese Labor government has taken to reforming the industrial relations system. They have delivered much needed progress that is albeit slow and piecemeal. Their industrial relations reforms are of their stronger offerings as a government, although that is hardly a high bar considering the dismal state the Liberals left industrial relations in.
The national minimum wage was raised from $21.38 an hour in 2022 to $24.10 an hour in 2024. These raises to the hourly rates were also accompanied by raises to award rates. Here, Albanese did not cave to the fearmongering of business over the wage-price spiral, something that could not have been expected given that the COVID-19 pandemic wiped out 14 years of real wage growth. However, the Albanese Government has not yet acceded to widespread calls to abolish junior rates, a system that allows those under the age of 21 to be paid less than the minimum wage.
The Secure Work, Better Pay amendments to the Fair Work Act passed in 2022 placed gender pay equity and anti-discrimination as an objective of the Act, prohibited pay secrecy, and abolished the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) and the Registered Organisations Commission (ROC). The Construction, Forestry, and Maritime Employees Union (CFMEU) was granted a brief period of respite with that last one.
These amendments also opened up more opportunities for collective bargaining across different employers, a small step towards reclaiming sector bargaining. The amendment introduced the “single-interest stream” which allowed workers with common interests to engage in collective bargaining where it is in the public interest to do so.
Independent Senator David Pocock, who held the balance of power in the Senate, poked holes in the amendments by introducing restrictions on the proposed arrangements and excluding the building and construction industry from multi-employer bargaining.
The 2023 Closing Loopholes amendments to the Fair Work Act compelled firms to pay labour hire the same rates as their own employees under an enterprise agreement. This reform addressed the rampant use of labour hire as a way to cut labour costs by large transport and mining companies.
This package also amended the Commonwealth Work Health and Safety Act criminalising ‘industrial manslaughter’, making it easier to prosecute employers negligent in protecting their workers. The amendments also made it a criminal offence to intentionally underpay employees.
Closing Loopholes also made a first step into tightening the definition of an employee. Road transport owner-drivers and digital platform workers became ‘regulated workers’, allowing the intervention of the Fair Work Commission (FWC). It’s time to unionise your Uber driver!
Closing Loopholes No. 2 redefined the meaning of casual employment and importantly gave the employee the ability to provide notice to their employer after six months of employment that they wished to become a permanent employee should they believe they no longer fit the definition of casual employment. Employers are then obligated to respond to the employee within 21 days accepting the change or denying it with justification.
The amendment also redefined employer and employee to crack down on instances of ‘sham contracting’, where employees are incorrectly classified as contractors for the purposes of withholding benefits they would be otherwise entitled to.
Also introduced was the ‘right to disconnect’, the ability for an employee to reasonably refuse to respond to out-of-hours contact. The impact of this policy so far is that the average amount of unpaid overtime has in fact fallen.
Another small gain was the ability of the FWC in issuing exemptions to right of entry permits for union officials to worksites they suspect of wage theft. This remains a far cry from the unfettered ability of a union to set up shop in any workplace they pleased.
Perhaps most hopeful is the rise in union membership with a 12.5 per cent increase (200,000 members) from 2022 to 2024. In real terms this meant union density grew from 12.5 per cent to 13.1 per cent. Union membership grew the most amongst young workers.
The path forward to combat the entrenched neoliberal structures that favour the bosses over the workers requires not just increased union membership, but an increase in the militancy of the membership. The Labor government could do well to encourage this by paving the way for sector-wide bargaining to return. There is no doubt that a Liberal government has every intention of undoing these changes. Like many other aspects of the Albanese Government’s policies, we’re not saying no, but we’re asking is that all you can do?
Femicide
Over the past three years, Australia has seen a major increase in femicide. Femicide is the murdering of women by a man on the basis of misogynistic ideologies. Gendered violence can happen in the form of domestic violence (DV), sexual violence (SV), and general abuse. With an appalling high number of 103 women killed in 2024, it is notable that Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has still not deemed this as a national emergency.
In the 2022 federal budget, the Labor government invested $3.4 billion into the National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children 2022-2032. This was approximately 0.5 per cent of the budget dedicated to the safety of over half the population.
When the 2023/24 federal budget was released, the Labor government promised to dedicate $925.2 million into providing victim-survivors with support to leave domestically abusive relationships. This policy implementation, while well-meaninged, is only beneficial for a short period of time (8 to 12 weeks). In 2024, What Were You Wearing (WWYW) organised an array of rallies across Australia. PM Albanese attended the rally in Canberra, interrupting the rally and forcing the organisers to let him speak on the issue. This created many concerns around him silencing the voices of victim-survivors.
Whilst these implementations are a good step forward for the eradication of the femicide epidemic, Albanese needs to call it what it is before the government can even begin to productively address the issue.
Climate Change
Labor has been playing tennis with climate change policy these last three years, and doing it quietly. Labor has chipped away at smaller climate change policies which are arguably developing the infrastructure for broader climate action: almost $200 million in reef protection policies up to 2050, $20 billion to ‘modernise and rebuild’ Australia’s energy grid, and funding for 2,500 apprenticeships in new energy sectors.
We’re still signed on and ‘committed’ to the Paris Climate Agreement of a 43 per cent reduction in climate emissions by 2030, which shouldn’t feel like an achievement but unfortunately is in our current climate. According to RMIT Australia, the only environmental election promise which has been ‘broken’ by the Government over the last four years has been the recovery of 450 gigalitres of water for South Australia from the Murray-Darling Basin.
Climate policy is a key case of underpromising and delivering exactly. Labor has continued to approve new coal and gas mines, including the expansion of four coal mines last year.
The Paris Climate Agreement was never and will never be enough to create meaningful change in the prevention of global warming. With majority leadership, Labor is hoping to make actionable change on their commitment to 82 per cent renewable energy in Australia by 2030. There is no evidence that this is plausible, feasible, or realistically a priority in the eyes of Labor.
It is easy for the policy being passed by the Labor party to be perceived as a victory when the opposition have essentially no grounded or realistic policy which will reduce emissions or make any active change towards genuine environmental protection. While there is still much to do to abate the existential climate crisis, we can hope that the Labor party is able to (climate) change their policies dramatically for the better, and soon.
First Nations
Where else to start with First Nations policy than the failed Voice to Parliament referendum of 2023. A marquee promise of their 2022 campaign, it was appalling and unsurprising to watch Labor let misinformation and fear-mongering shake their referendum campaign so deeply that the supposedly introductory policy to the Uluru Statement from the Heart was so devastatingly smited.
We’ve seen no progression as to any of the three key parts of the Uluru Statement from the Heart from the Labor Government. In the 2022-2023 budget, $5.7 billion was invested in First Nations policy, predominantly focused on remote housing, educational access, and the ‘Closing the Gap’ Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
The Labor Government’s turn towards the economically focused ‘Closing the Gap’ initiatives fails to comprehend the deep emotional wounds which keep First Nations in a cycle of disenfranchisement. As of 2024, five of the nineteen policies outlined in the official ‘Closing the Gap’ were on track to be reached in any capacity. First Nations incarceration rates continue to rise, with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island prisoners rising in numbers by 15 per cent over the 2023-2024 period.
We are also still a fractured nation. There has been no attempt from the Government to acknowledge the damage done to First Nations communities from the horrific and vulnerable way they were exposed to vitriol and retraumatisation due to the failed referendum. Labor allowed Peter Dutton and the Liberals to stomp all over the last federal election with their vows to lower the Aboriginal flag, remove the First Nations ambassador position, and excise the Welcome to Country from Government proceedings.
Labor broke their election promise of establishing a Makarrata, or truth-telling, Commission having not established one by the 2025 federal election. It would seem in 2024, Albanese was already getting cold feet.
Money is not a bandaid. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities need a much deeper and more holistic approach to Truth, Treaty, and Reconciliation if we are to ever expect to “close the gap”.
AUKUS
AUKUS is the trilateral agreement between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States to acquire nuclear-powered submarines, which began in 2021 under the Morrison government. It is estimated to cost a whopping $368 billion, for us to buy three submarines outright and build another eight. Australia has struck a deal with the U.S. to purchase three Virginia-class submarines in the meantime, because it’ll take decades to build the ones that the government has ordered. That means that when we do get the submarines that Morrison was so keen on, they’ll already be out of date.
Where we could be spending these hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on issues like the cost-of-living crisis or climate change, our government has chosen to spend it on the military. And although Morrison is no longer in charge, Albanese has no less enthusiasm for the initiative. His government has increased AUKUS funding to $18 billion over five years, so that the projected cost is now around $375 billion. The current defence budget is around $59 billion per annum and represents 6.6 per cent of the government’s total expenditure.
While the Group of Eight have supported AUKUS, a number of academics signed an open letter in 2023 arguing that “the public case for AUKUS has yet to be made with any degree of rigour or reliability.” Meanwhile within Labor itself, there is widespread opposition in the rank-and-file. Groups like Labor Against War and various Labor parliamentarians have opposed nuclear submarines and called for the party to alter its stance on nuclear submarines.
In the run up to the 2025 federal election rank-and-file Labor member and Convenor of Labor Against War Marcus Strom vowed that the rank-and-file “will insist that a returned ALP government sink AUKUS and put it on the pile of bad Scott Morrison ideas, which we should have done in 2022.”
Palestine
Labor has been delicately managing to offend just about everyone in their response to the Palestinian genocide and the impacts that have been felt in Australia. Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong have steadfastly denied recognising Palestine as a state with rights to self-determination and to not be massacred by Israel.
While they have called for an immediate ceasefire and unhindered aid access, they haven’t done much more. Labor refuses to commit to sanctions against Israel, to cut ties with them or to support the Boycott, Divest, Sanction movement. They do not call out the genocide that is taking place, and whatever statements they do make urging Israel to exercise ‘caution’ they do so in the company of other Western nations.
Labor has taken no decisive or substantive action on Palestine or offered anything other than verbal support for the Palestinians, while continuing to support, affirm and partner with the occupying state of Israel. Despite the recognition of the State of Palestine being in Labor’s National Platform, they have failed to do so while in government.
Since the 2025 federal election Labor’s trend of verbal support and substantive apathy has continued. While Foreign Minister Penny Wong signed a joint statement with 22 other countries to call for immediate resumption of aid to Gaza on 19th May, 2025, she did not go so far as to threaten sanctions in the case that Israel ignored the demand. Her failure to do so was criticised by former frontbencher Ed Husic.
When Labor parliamentarians choose to stand up against the timid views of their caucus colleagues, they are pushed to the sidelines like Senator Fatima Payman or demoted like Anthony D’Adam MLC. Payman eventually left the party altogether after no longer being able to accept the caucus binding to a morally incongruous position. Despite Labor’s rank-and-file support for Palestinian liberation, federal Labor cannot bring themselves to listen to either their rank-and-file or their own National Platform.
The election has made Labor even more emboldened to undermine the genocide in Palestine, interpreting the sweep of Labor seats and loss of Greens seats as an indication that Australian people do not care about the genocide. As University of Sydney students can attest, this is patently untrue. Labor’s track record of ignoring the atrocities in Gaza and appeasing the Israeli government is an indictment to their ineptitude and moral spinelessness.
Taxation
The Labor Party claimed victory in the 2022 Australian Federal Election, after almost 7 years of The Liberal Party playing roulette with their leaders. Now, they’ve claimed an even greater victory in 2025. With Australia about to embark on an eight year Labor term, we must deep dive into their taxation reforms over the past 3 and a half years and determine whether meaningful progress has been made, or will be made.
2022-2023
Labor’s Budget from 2022-23 did not contain major tax changes, but sought to begin “Budget repair work,” by creating a fairer taxation system and avoiding adding inflationary pressures to the economy.
The Government began with the difficult task of fiscal repair with $28.5 billion in budget improvements. Their main aim was to close tax loopholes to ensure multinational companies paid their fair share of tax in Australia and improve integrity through higher levels of tax compliance.
Multinationals operating across borders shift profits to low or no tax jurisdictions to avoid paying tax in Australia. To combat this and improve transparency, the Labor Government introduced a multinational tax integrity package centred at raising around $1 billion over four years. They also aimed to extend compliance programs for tax avoidance, shadow economy and personal income tax, raising $3.7 billion over four years. In turn, they worked with international communities to reform the international corporate tax system and better address the challenges arising from digitalisation and globalisation.
The Government did not announce any personal tax rate changes. The Stage 3 tax changes were to commence from 1st July 2024, as previously legislated by the Coalition in 2018 and 2019. Labor expressed concerns that these cuts were going to disproportionately benefit higher-income earners. The 2022-23 October Budget ceased the low and middle income tax offset (LMITO) to the 2022-23 income year, instead replaced by a low income tax offset (LITO). The March 2022-23 Budget increased the LMITO by $420 for the 2021-22 income year so eligible individuals (with taxable incomes below $126,000) received a maximum LMITO up to $1,500 for 2021-22 (instead of $1,080).
Since there was no extension of the LMITO, low-to-middle income earners saw their tax refunds from July 2023 reduced by between $675 and $1,500 (for incomes up to $90,000 but phasing out up to $126,000), all other things being equal.
2023-2024
In the 2023-24 Budget, the Government did not announce any personal tax rate changes. The Stage 3 personal income tax cuts were to commence 1 July 2024 as previously legislated. The 32.5 per cent marginal tax rate was cut to 30 per cent for the $45,000 to $200,000 tax bracket while The 37 per cent tax bracket was entirely abolished.
Medicare levy thresholds across all categories increased, with the medicare levy exemption. Eligible lump sum payments in arrears (money that is owed and ought to have been paid earlier) were exempt from Medicare levy for low-income taxpayers provided they satisfy eligibility requirements. This change commenced from 1 July 2024.
Labor introduced BEPS Two Pillar Solution start dates to address base erosion and profit shifting. They introduced a 15 per cent global minimum tax rate for large multinational enterprises, introduced on 1st July 2024. Further, a measure proposing denying tax deductions for payments related to intangible assets held in low or no-tax jurisdictions, discontinued in 2023-24. This measure, initially intended to prevent significant global entities (SGEs) from exploiting intangible assets in low-tax jurisdictions, is now being replaced by the implementation of OECD’s Pillar Two Global Minimum Tax and Domestic Minimum Tax.
While once again no mention on personal tax cuts, that does come in due time. At this time the Government was facing significant budget deficits and rising national debt, projected to exceed $1 trillion in the 2025-2026 financial year. They were also reevaluating the stage 3 tax cuts to provide more equitable relief across different income brackets which required additional time for policy development. To address these challenges, the government prioritised fiscal responsibility and a delay in substantive tax cuts. Most of all, they were being strategic ahead of elections. Labor timed the personal tax cuts for the 2025 March Budget, 2 months away from the Federal election, to bolster public support and remind the Coalition that the public don’t want their conservative rhetoric staining the nation. Clearly, it worked.
2024-2025
The 2024–25 Budget marked a notable shift in focus for the Labor government, blending short-term relief with longer-term industrial strategy. The extension of the $20,000 instant asset write-off offers continued support for small businesses, but it’s largely a holdover or a steady measure rather than bold reform.
Running from 2027-28 to 2040-41, the introduction of major tax incentives for critical minerals and renewable hydrogen signalled a more interventionist approach, aiming to grow Australia’s sovereign capacity in clean energy and high-value manufacturing.
In contrast to the more reactive, crisis-focused budgets of the early 2020s, there was also a tougher stance on multinational tax avoidance, with a new penalty from July 2026 for global firms undervaluing royalty payments. Interestingly, Labor scrapped its earlier plan to deny deductions for payments to tax havens, possibly indicating a more pragmatic shift in certain areas. They’re band-aid measures, but are laying groundwork for structural reforms.
2025-2026
The 2025-2026 Budget that was handed down in March centred around the cost of living crisis. Their tax cut reforms were ‘modest,’ but were to be taken in stride with the extra funding for medicare and PBS schemes. For now, Australian taxpayers will receive further personal income tax cuts from 1 July 2026. Labor’s main changes are in the $18,201 to $45,000 wage bracket which previously experienced tax rates of 16 per cent. The Government has reduced the rate by one whole percentage point to 15 per cent which will start on 1 July 2026, and continue decreasing to 14 per cent by 1 July 2027. At 15 per cent if you earn over $45,000 there’ll be a tax cut of $268 a year, and at 14 per cent, a tax cut of $538. Chalmers argued this tax cut would deliver the largest relative benefits to workers on lower incomes. Maybe tax the rich a little more instead of relying on marginal tax cuts. You’ve got three years to do it.
There was much more we could have said about Labor’s actions (or lack thereof) over the past three years. We have not touched on Albanese and Jason Clare’s education policy and reforms, although do stay tuned for part two to the feature The Tale of the Corporate University, we will have a lot to say there. Neither have we touched on other aspects of Labor’s foreign policy, Labor’s performance on advancing queer rights, other aspects of Labor’s environmental reforms (to be specific, the torpedoing of the environmental protection agency), and their ambition to revitalise the domestic manufacturing industry.
We do not have a naïve hope that one day Labor will wake up and suddenly do the right thing. It is absurd that we have to affirm that a Labor government is preferable to a Liberal government, but the true change we need will not come from above but from all of us engaged in collective struggle.
Editor’s Note: Mehnaaz Hossain is a member of the Australian Greens, Victor Zhang is a member of the Labor Party, NSW Branch
