VOTERS are being invited to decide this election on issues that polls say they feel matter most: the economy, workplace laws, John Howard's promised retirement. Some of those are indeed important but they are not the only issues facing Australia that voters should be informed about before polling day. Far from it.
Only the Greens have been making much of the most glaring foreign policy issue: that Australia has troops at risk in a war whose justification has been a long-running piece of improvisation by the Coalition. Nor have we heard much about the AWB scandal, although it has been a year since the Cole inquiry recommended prosecutions against 16 individuals. These are issues the Coalition has motives to portray as water under the bridge. But they should be further debated and scrutinised because there are clearly similar challenges ahead and we need to know governments will be properly advised by the public servants, intelligence agencies and defence chiefs.
Is support of the US alliance sufficient ground for committing Australian troops to war when the cause is otherwise unclear or contested? Would Australia get involved in an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities? One respected defence analyst, Professor Hugh White, of the Australian National University, has predicted the Western effort in Afghanistan will fail without a tenfold increase in resources and indefinite commitment. So what do our leaders believe success looks like in this campaign?
Defence is another tacit truce area. Labor says it will honour the equipment contracts entered by the Howard Government, despite the evidence that some of these - notably the $6 billion-plus Super Hornet fighter fleet - were signed by the Minister for Defence, Brendan Nelson, in the teeth of advice from the relevant service chiefs, and are at an early stage when cancellations are possible without huge cost. Nor is Labor making much of the Howard shift to the "army first" school of defence, promoting the role of expeditionary forces, when this has been consciously fashioned in large part to disparage the "Defence of Australia" doctrine forged in the Hawke-Keating era.
There are many big foreign policy questions that will be arcane for most voters, such as nuclear proliferation and the export of uranium. But many will wonder why so many crises have erupted closer to home in recent years. Can Australia do more to guide and help the young nations from East Timor to Fiji? Is Alexander Downer's self-proclaimed "tough" approach to Pacific leaders the answer? Will either side of politics tell us whether it would follow the successful New Zealand trial of a Pacific Islands guest worker scheme? What would a Labor government do about the so-called Pacific solution for asylum seekers?
Domestically, no party has expressed interest in a cities policy, yet Sydney in particular displays the consequences of neglect and poor planning. As we have argued previously, state governments are no longer able to finance the public transport needed to ensure sustainable, liveable cities for the coming century. The Commonwealth will have to step in. The Coalition and Labor have announced urban transport projects, drawing on funds from the AusLink program. These are welcome but they are piecemeal, devised with at least as much attention to the electorates they affect as to the general community. A cities policy would place essential transport infrastructure at the heart of a planning and environmental policy to improve life in our cities in a time of rapid growth and climate change.
The need for constitutional reform has also been sidelined, even though both parties continue to promise more intervention in areas that are nominally state responsibilities, such as health and education. As the Coalition was seeking to demonstrate its undiminished vigour before the campaign officially began, the Prime Minister made a point of announcements that crossed the constitutional boundary: the Murray-Darling plan and the takeover of Devonport's Mersey Hospital were two noteworthy initiatives. The first has been stymied - so far - by state objections. The second was well intended but hastily thought out and, without further elaboration, risks making the federal-state health muddle worse. Perhaps that is the Prime Minister's plan - to make the shortcomings of the existing arrangements plain for all to see so there will be widespread backing for root-and-branch change. But the need for change is already broadly acknowledged on all sides. Labor has made a vague gesture in this direction, appointing an advisory group, but no concrete proposals have emerged in this campaign. What are the plans of the main parties?
Hardest of all for either side to discuss is the ever-growing influence of money on our politics: without copious campaign donations, parties and candidates struggle to be heard. With them, there is always the doubt that influence has been bought. Where independents (the late Peter Andren prominent among them) have managed to overcome this, they have contributed enormously to the diversity and effectiveness of parliament. A new government, of either stamp, could impress voters by limiting the scope of money politics.
