Keeping score for the environment this election

During this election, the Wilderness Society has been working to inform our members, supporters, and the public about the choices before them this Saturday, August 21.

Click here to see our scorecard and find out how to vote for the environment this Saturday.
View a more detailed version of our final scorecard (69Kb PDF)

As part of this process, we assessed the environment policies of the Greens, Labor and Liberal-National Coalition to promote an independent assessment of the parties and their conservation policies.

Early on in the election, we wrote to the Labor Party, the Liberal-National Coalition, and The Greens requesting a set of responses to the environment policy priorities we identified as crucial for a healthy Australian environment.

Each party received our Federal Election Priorities paper, and were asked what they proposed to do in terms of conservation policy commitments and agendas for environmental protection. The Greens and Labor replied as requested, but the Liberal-National Coalition did not reply until just three days out from the election.

For each party, we assessed their response against:

•     What each party has committed to for the environment,
•     Their demonstrated past performance,
•     Their position and commitments specifically related to our environment policy priorities, and
•     Whether their party position is positive for the environment versus taking Australia backwards.

Based on this criteria, parties were awarded a tick for good policy, a half mark for moderate policy, and a cross for bad policy.

The Wilderness Society is politically non-aligned, and approached this exercise in an open-minded and unbiased way. We recognise that there is no pure scientific method that can be used to assess party policies, and that any number of approaches could be used. The Wilderness Society believes that its assessment process has been as objective and accurate as possible, with a view to keeping the process reasonably simple, explicable and most importantly ensuring the results are easily understood.