This time last year, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was jubilant. Having just won 94 of the 150 seats in the House of Representatives, Labor had its best result in terms of seats since 1943.

In his victory speech, Albanese said:

[…] I know there is still much more to do to help people under pressure. That is why it means so much that in these uncertain times, the people of Australia have placed their trust in Labor once again.

The times would only go on to become more uncertain. The war in Iran, the Bondi terror attack and the rise of One Nation’s vote have all thrown up new issues for the government (and the country) to deal with in the past 12 months.

So what has the government achieved in the past year? How has it performed on its key election promises and the issues most important to people?

What mattered most to voters?

Despite its historic outcome, the 2025 election was something of a lukewarm endorsement. Labor’s primary vote share was around 35%, only a few points higher than the Liberal-National Coalition under Peter Dutton.

Polling before the election suggested the issues on people’s minds were cost of living (57%) and managing the economy (22%), as well as the quality of healthcare (31%), crime (23%) and climate change (23%).

After the election, when voters were asked to name their most important issues, economic concerns still dominated, expressed as anxiety about cost of living (36%), housing affordability (8%), taxation (10%) or economic management (12%). Climate change and the environment were still top of mind for 17% of people.

Immigration, which has now become more important, was only of primary importance to 6% of people.

Cost of living and the environment

Labor made a lot of promises during the campaign – around 63, according to the Parliamentary Budget Office. This analysis will look primarily at the biggest of those.

Many were oriented toward the concerns people were expressing, especially around the economy. For the first time since 1987, voters believed Labor would make the better economic managers, showing their messaging was well targeted.

On cost of living, progress is visible, though mixed.

With relatively high inflation and interest rates, cost of living was and is an issue that cuts across many policy areas. The war in Iran’s effects on fuel prices have made people’s lives and the government’s job harder since 2025.

In terms of directly putting money in people’s pockets, Labor promised tax cuts over the next few years, which are in train. Modest rebates to energy bills continued until the end of 2025.

On the environment, the government passed previously stalled legislation to create a national Environment Protection Agency and invest more heavily in conservation. These efforts are ongoing, and don’t go far enough for environment groups.

Education, wages and childcare

On education costs, Labor enacted a 20% reduction of students’ HECS debts on June 1. Similarly, 100,000 free places in vocational education per year to train more builders and nurses were made permanent.

Less directly, alongside unions, Labor lobbied the Fair Work Commission to increase the minimum wage beyond inflation. Labor also provided funding to age care providers to pay higher wages and leave entitlements as determined by the commission.

For eligible families, promised subsidies for childcare began in January 2026.

Health

Albanese spent much of the 2025 campaign focused on health, waving his Medicare card around at every opportunity.

Labor promised, and has acted, to deliver policies such as cheaper medicines, improved access to telehealth, and free mental health support.

The government’s signature health promise was improved access to bulk-billed GP visits, aiming for 90% to be bulk-billed by 2030. As out-of-pocket costs for primary care continue to rise, the government made little progress after the election, with rates staying around 72%.

From November 1, however, expanded access to incentives for GPs began to flow, with an uptick to 81% by January 2026.

Whether these incentives are sufficient to equitably meet the public’s needs has been questioned by the sector.

Funding negotiations with state governments to improve health service provision have recently been concluded, but are always fraught. Although not a major election issue, upcoming reforms to the NDIS will place extra strain on this relationship.

Read more: Tightened eligibility and cuts to plans: what the NDIS changes mean for participants

Housing

Access to affordable housing has been hotly debated since COVID and will require sustained action at all levels of government to address.

The rise of One Nation’s vote throughout 2025 and 2026, and increased focus on social cohesion since Bondi, have crossed over into this debate. Playing to the exaggerated link between immigration and housing affordability, the government promised to restrict foreign purchases for two years during the election campaign.

Albanese also promised assistance for first home buyers through government-backed 5% deposits and loans. These have seen some uptake, though house prices have risen higher for eligible properties in major cities, limiting their usefulness.

Promises were also made about investment in infrastructure to enable delivery of more affordable housing and continue investment in social housing. Progress is slow. The federal government is working to reverse decades of underinvestment by delivering around 55,000 new low-income homes by 2030.

But unmet need (and their own target) is much higher, and long-term commitment is not guaranteed. During the 2025 campaign Albanese promised Labor wasn’t planning to revisit changes to tax settings such as capital gains and negative gearing floated in the 2019 campaign.

However, he has recently been trying to draw a link between intergenerational inequity as a threat to social cohesion and moves to water down these policies.

In this way, anxiety about cherished but debated Australian values may be the impetus for unexpected economic reforms.

Overall, the Albanese government has been working to fulfil its modest promises and address people’s pressing concerns.

However, whether the government can continue to do so, and whether what it promised to do is enough, is unclear.

Australians are persistently anxious about the present, and pessimistic about the future. The government will need to work hard to persuade people it’s doing enough. It has two years until the next election to do so.

Pandanus Petter is employed at Australian National University with funding from The Australian Research Council.

Few things matter more to us than our eyesight. We fear losing it even more than some life-threatening conditions.

Yet for many New Zealanders, access to routine eye care remains out of reach. This is despite the wide-ranging impacts of vision loss for both individuals and society.

It limits opportunities for work and study, raises the risks of traffic accidents and falls, and is linked with higher rates of depression and dementia. Globally, the annual cost in lost productivity has been estimated at nearly NZ$700 billion.

What’s more, it is mostly avoidable. More than 90% of vision loss can be prevented or treated with simple, cost-effective care such as glasses or cataract surgery.

In dollar terms, providing funding for spectacles and eye examinations for New Zealanders could provide a $36 benefit for every $1 spent.

If Aotearoa matched Australia’s public funding policies for community eye care, allocating just 1.2% of its health budget could fund 2.4 million eye examinations and 60,500 pairs of glasses. Current funding delivers eye care services to 25,000 children for about 0.02% of the health budget.

With the government now deliberating its 2026 health budget, our preliminary research looks at what it could cost to make routine eye care a reality for all New Zealanders.

A plight out of sight

Anyone reading this article in New Zealand through a pair of $2 reading glasses isn’t alone in choosing cheap solutions to improve their vision. As many as one in four Kiwi patients may be skipping or delaying specialised eye care because of the cost.

Routine eye examinations and spectacles are delivered almost exclusively by optometrists in private practice, with very little public funding to offset the costs.

This places New Zealand behind other countries, including Australia, the United Kingdom, Ireland and the United States, which fund routine eye care for some or all of their population.

For Kiwis needing financial support for eye care, options are limited. The children of Community Services Card holders can access up to $287.50 for an eye test and glasses via Enable New Zealand.

People on low-incomes can apply for a $280 loan from Work and Income New Zealand, which must be repaid. Spectacles are not currently available in the public sector. Despite advertised “$0 eye tests” and discounted spectacles, the reality is that eye examinations and spectacles remain unaffordable for many.

Optometry services provide more than a new pair of frames. Regular eye examinations are essential to detect and treat progressive conditions such as glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy which are asymptomatic in their early stages.

By excluding this preventative eye care from the public health agenda, New Zealand is leaving some communities to live with an avoidable burden.

In particular, eye care services are two to three times less accessible for Māori and Pacific people than for other New Zealanders.

One recent study found that in an inner-city Auckland community with a high Māori and Pacific population, half of residents with vision loss had never had an eye examination, while three-quarters had never been prescribed custom spectacles.

Should NZ adopt Australia’s model?

If New Zealand seeks a fairer model for eye health, policymakers have only to look across the Tasman.

In Australia, all citizens and permanent residents are eligible for Medicare-funded, comprehensive eye examinations delivered by optometrists.

Around one-third of its population uses these services every year. Uptake is highest among older adults, while additional policies target Indigenous Australians, for example via state-funded spectacle subsidies.

If New Zealand saw similar uptake, we estimate that adopting a comparable model would cost around $349 million a year, funding approximately 2.4 million eye examinations.

An additional $13 million would deliver around 60,500 spectacles to people who need them the most. Even this generous costing is comparable with other health investments, such as the Labour Government’s 2023 proposed investment of $390 million to extend free dental care to approximately 800,000 19–30 year olds.

Universal funding is not the only option: more targeted approaches could prioritise those at greatest risk of avoidable vision loss.

For instance, our analysis indicates that public investment of $89 million could subsidise approximately 760,000 examinations for Community Services Card holders who are most likely to need financial support.

Just $37 million would fund eye care for children under 15 years, aligning with universal dental and GP services for this age group. At the other end of the age spectrum, around $166 million per year would support eye care for older adults, who have the greatest need.

This investment would arguably be more effective than the $61 million proposed within the 2020 health budget to fund one-off “eye health checks”, for which there is no evidence of population-level benefit.

Healthy eyes should not be a luxury. New Zealand can and should include eye examinations and spectacles within its health expenditure.

Preventative eye care is a cost-saving investment that will reduce the societal and economic impacts of vision loss. For policymakers, it as an opportunity to invest in an area of health that has remained out of sight for too long.

Lucy Goodman receives funding from the Health Research Council of New Zealand.

Jacqueline Ramke has received research funding from the Health Research Council of New Zealand, Buchanan Charitable Foundation and the New Zealand Association of Optometrists.

Pushkar Silwal has received funding from Health Research Council of New Zealand.