When Anthony Albanese addressed Labor’s national conference in August 2023, he had some choice words for progressive voters considering a vote for the Greens.
“They are the blockers – we are the builders,” he said.
At that time the Albanese government was locked in negotiations with the minor party over the Housing Australia Future Fund (Haff) bill, and it wasn’t going very well.
The Greens had the temerity to team up with the Coalition to delay the bill, and got more credit than the prime minister would have liked for the $2bn for social and affordable housing he announced midyear. The Greens won another $1bn before finally relenting in September.
This year, Albanese was determined negotiations would go differently when it came to the government’s Help to Buy shared equity scheme.
The Greens started with substantial demands including reforming negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions.
In February, Albanese declared the Greens could vote for the bill or against it, signalling there would be no protracted negotiation – they should vote on its merits.
And that’s where Labor’s position stayed all year as the Greens repeated their tactic of voting with the Coalition for delay, and Albanese stoked another round of double-dissolution election speculation.
Before the final sitting fortnight, the Greens substantially reduced their demands: now they wanted 25,000 social and affordable homes, and guarantees that homeowners who tip over the income threshold wouldn’t face stiff repayments. Still, no change from Labor.
Then on Monday, the Greens announced they would pass it anyway. So, what happened?
The Greens’ housing spokesperson, Max Chandler-Mather, told reporters on Monday that the “only thing that has changed” between last year’s stalemate and this year’s is that “Labor has decided they would rather have a fight with the Greens”.
In other words, the Greens blinked because they genuinely thought Labor would be bloody-minded enough not to offer them anything, and they didn’t relish the prospect of voters being invited to blame them for the housing crisis.
The Greens are trying to hold on to their base of older post-material voters who value their stance on social issues such as the environment, while also aggressively positioning the party as the party of renters.
There are signs in recent elections that the balancing act is a difficult one. The party is treading water: forward a bit in the Northern Territory election, with their first pickup of a seat; back a bit in the Australian Capital Territory, with the loss of two; up a fraction in Queensland, but losing a seat due to loss of Liberal preferences.
Labor believes the Greens’ three inner-city Brisbane seats are all at risk at the federal election.
On Monday the Greens leader, Adam Bandt, denied a vote decline, quoting positive results in NSW’s Sydney and Richmond councils and Victoria’s Merri-bek.
But there have been other signs of moderation in the final parliamentary fortnight that point to jitters internally about whether extreme tactics will backfire on the party.
The Greens also dropped their demand for a climate trigger in return for support on Nature Positive laws, instead asking only for a ban on native forest logging in return for support on environment laws.
It feels like the party believes it has found the right issues to campaign on – the ends – but is not sure its voters support it on the means of holding government legislation hostage.
In parliament, Labor and the Greens fight like cats and dogs. In the community, people can’t understand why two notionally leftwing parties can’t get along.
And what a difference a year has made for Chandler-Mather personally.
In 2023 he became the highest profile first-term MP this parliament, going toe-to-toe with the prime minister in question time in a form of asymmetric warfare, and winning billions in the process.
He expressed wild-eyed idealism including writing in Jacobin that passing the Haff would “demobilise the growing section of civil society that is justifiably angry” about poverty and housing unaffordability.
But this year, not only did he come away with nothing, Bandt would have us believe that it was Chandler-Mather’s recommendation to the party room to capitulate and pass both housing bills.
If so, what an exercise in political power by Albanese this has been. What an education he has handed Chandler-Mather to turn the man he once accused of displaying a Maoist approach into a pragmatist. How humbling.
Chandler-Mather appeared outraged and hurt on behalf of renters at Monday’s press conference.
One suspects that the Greens have decided that this time discretion is the better part of valour, in parliament.
But in the electorate they will let their righteous anger burn because their only means to effect change now is out there, with the renters and other voters they say Labor has dudded.
Paul Karp is Guardian Australia’s chief political correspondent
