Australia’s 47th parliament formally opens on Tuesday, marking the first time Anthony Albanese will stand up in the House of Representatives as the nation’s prime minister.
The new parliament will look very different to the last. Labor will have 76 members on the floor of the chamber, while the Coalition’s numbers have shrunk to just 58. The crossbench will be the largest in history, with 16 MPs, including four Greens.
It will also be a more diverse parliament, and one with more women. About 40% of the new parliament is female after 58 women were elected to the lower house, including 19 new MPs, while at least a dozen newly elected MPs come from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.
As Albanese, his senior ministers and Labor’s 17 new MPs find their feet after the election held just 63 days ago, here is what we know so far about the new government and its priorities.
The purse strings are tight
Barely a day has gone by since the election when Albanese has not mentioned the “trillion dollars worth of debt” inherited from the Coalition.
The government has been fending off calls for new spending, including on pandemic measures, and is set to continue its hard line on new spending as it works out how to fund its election commitments and improve the budget position.
The finance minister, Katy Gallagher, made plain this week that she and the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, were already telling ministers to curb their enthusiasm when it came to big spending ideas.
“Any cuts are always difficult … [and] the easiest way is not to spend in a sense. This is the message I’ve been giving ministers, who obviously have a lot of great ideas, a lot of big ideas about what they would like to do,” she told the ABC’s 7.30 program.
Expect budget restraint to also be a key theme of the economic statement Chalmers will make to parliament on Thursday, with the government already warning of “confronting” economic times ahead.
The government is in a hurry
Labor has measures it wants to legislate as soon as possible, and plans to introduce a range of bills in the first parliamentary fortnight.
Its first order of business is a new climate change bill to legislate a 43% emissions reduction target for 2030, along with a new reporting and monitoring regime.
It also plans to introduce legislation for 10 days’ domestic violence leave, the abolition of the cashless welfare card, legislation to establish Jobs and Skills Australia and its aged care reform bill.
It has also begun consulting in earnest on a bill to establish a federal anti-corruption commission, which it has pledged to introduce as early as September.
It wants to collaborate – with limits
How the government handles its legislative priorities will be a test of Albanese’s commitment to do politics differently, after he declared following the election he wanted to see a more inclusive parliament.
Negotiations with the Greens on the climate bill are off to a rocky start, with the prime minister suggesting the government is not for turning on its 43% emissions reduction target, which the minor party says is not good enough.
However the climate and energy minister, Chris Bowen, says he is prepared to consider “sensible” amendments to the legislation, and has been in discussion with the crossbench and the Greens in the past week.
After getting crossbench MPs offside with a cut to staffing entitlements, the government has sought to restore some goodwill with the independents by agreeing to ensure they have fair representation at question time, allocated speaking time and input into parliamentary debate.
The attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, is also consulting the crossbench on the new integrity bill in a series of roundtables that have been welcomed by the independents.
It’s reform-minded
Albanese has made clear he will not “waste a day in government” and has also spent a fair amount of time talking about the need to redress the past “decade of inaction” overseen by the Coalition.
Climate and energy are key policy areas where the government is looking to make major reforms, but jobs and skills, manufacturing, childcare and aged care are all in line for a policy shakeup.
The prime minister has also set out an ambitious plan for establishing an Indigenous voice to parliament, vowing to hold a referendum in the current term of government, potentially as early as next year.
It also has plans for a new national reconstruction fund, a revamped emergency response fund, and a new national centre for disease control, all ambitious projects that will require an enormous amount of work to be set up in the next three years.
It also wants consistency
Not everything has changed with the change of government, with Albanese also stressing he intends to be “orderly” in his approach to the role.
The prime minister’s flurry of international visits after winning the election was focused on showing that Australia’s geostrategic position in regards to the US and China remained largely unchanged, despite also spruiking the country’s changed climate change policy that is now more in line with that of our allies.
Albanese has made several key changes to departmental secretaries – including appointing Glyn Davis as head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet – but there has not been a wholesale cleanout, with the heads of Treasury, Health, Home Affairs and Defence among those to stay on.
The Albanese government has also chosen to extend the terms of the country’s top military chiefs by another two years, leaving Angus Campbell in charge of the Australian defence force.
The government has indicated it won’t be breaking any election promises, including on stage-three tax cuts which it has supported in full, saying repeatedly that it intends to do what it pledged before the election.
Given much of Albanese’s election pitch was framed around a “safe change” strategy, it is clear the prime minister doesn’t intend to ruffle too many feathers – at least for now – as he sets his sights on preparing to win a second term in 2025.
