Crikey will be holding the government to account for its various election promises and this is the start of that process…

Economy

Budget surpluses

Cap GST at 10 per cent

Future surpluses to fund super liabilities

Keep interest rates lower than under Labor

Tax

No new taxes or increased taxes

25 per cent tax discount for small businesses with a turnover of less than $50,000

Health

Medicare rebate to be lifted to 100 per cent of scheduled fee for all GP visits

$10 loading for doctors for after-hours consultations

$200 million for Alzheimer’s support

Education

$1 billion for school projects ($700 million for public schools, $300 million for struggling private schools)

A new network of 24 technical schools to promote trade careers

$800 tool voucher for apprentices

$31.3 billion for all schools, linked to having flagpoles and introducing plain English report cards

$20.3 million for child literacy

$2.1 billion for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education

Families in isolated and remote areas to receive $162.5 million for boarding school and distance education programs

Voluntary student unionism

25,000 fully funded university places

Industrial relations

Encourage more contracts and restrictions on union access to the workplace.

Extra $12 million to boost the Office of the Employment Advocate

$2 million for pilot program to provide small business access to mediation services

Legislation to give greater recognition to independent contractors

Enforce cooling-off periods in industrial disputes

Communications

Sell Government’s 51.05 per cent stake in Telstra

Consider a fourth commercial TV network

Ease cross-media and foreign ownership media laws

Freeze cost of a 50-cent stamp for three years and keep Australia Post in public ownership

$14 million for the ABC to extend and improve radio services over the next four years

Community radio stations to be given an extra $8.2 million

Defence/security

Two extra patrol boats to protect the oil-rich north-west shelf

Australian forces to remain in Iraq until their job is done

Support for pre-emptive strikes

Elite police teams to fight terrorism to deploy in South-East Asia

Immigration

Mothers and children allowed community detention

Cut 4000 more islands from Australia’s migration zone

Allow 9500 temporary protection visa holders to apply to stay in Australia permanently

Environment

$2 billion package to save rivers and combat salinity

$100 million program to create national research hubs for top environmental scientists.

No ratification of Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas

$75 million for Solar Cities trials

Regular greenhouse compliance checks for business

Forests

Add more than 170,000 hectares to current reserve system

An extra $50 million to buy private land, research alternatives to clear-felling, save the Tasmanian devil and improving forest workers’ skills

Scrap use of 1080 poison in forests by December 2005

Up to $5 million to assist with development of best-practice pulp mill

$10 million to help softwood industry set up pine plantations

Families

30 per cent rebate for out-of-pocket child-care expenses

Extra $300 a year for stay-at-home mothers

Grandparents able to receive child-care benefits

Seniors

$500 tax cut for workers aged 55 or older

$100 annual payment to pensioners

$200 extra payment to self-funded retirees

Indigenous affairs

No apology to the stolen generation

Extra $46.5 million for indigenous affairs

3 million for better phone and internet services to indigenous communities

Leadership

Howard promises to stay leader for as long as the party wants him