The Greens have stared down Anthony Albanese’s “bluff and bluster” about a possible double dissolution election over stalled housing legislation, voting with the Coalition to delay the Help to Buy bill.
Earlier on Tuesday the prime minister twice refused to rule out Labor calling a double dissolution over housing and environment bills, replying, “Well, we’ll wait and see,” when it was suggested Labor would fare poorly in such an election.
Shortly after 3pm the Greens, Coalition, One Nation, Ralph Babet, David Pocock and Lidia Thorpe all rejected a government attempt to bring the Help to Buy shared equity scheme to a vote.
The Greens proposed a two-month delay to allow for negotiations, despite the fact the government has refused to horse-trade in return for cutting negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions.
The Greens leader, Adam Bandt, told reporters the government needs to “stop bulldozing and start negotiating”.
“It just beggars belief that the prime minister would rather see this bill fail than negotiate an outcome.”
Ahead of the vote Albanese had ratcheted up the pressure on the Greens and Coalition at a press conference in Sydney.
Albanese said the Senate was this week considering housing legislation, a bill to create an Environmental Protection Agency, and the Future Made in Australia program, which creates production tax credits for critical minerals production.
“Now, on all of those three things the Greens and the Coalition are blocking,” he said. “Labor is the builders, we’re the reformers. We’re the political party getting things done.
“If the Greens and the Liberals and Nationals in their new ‘Noalition’ want to continue to vote against legislation, that will be a matter for them.”
Asked what would happen if the Senate rejected the Help to Buy scheme, Albanese said the government would “continue to advocate for this”, accusing the Greens and Coalition of blocking “commonsense reforms”.
He targeted the Greens housing spokesperson, Max Chandler-Mather, arguing the party’s opposition to housing bills was due to his “immaturity and spite”. “[He] says he supports more housing but never will vote for it.”
When asked if he would consider a double dissolution, Albanese said: “The Greens, of course, in 2009, everyone remembers when the Greens blocked climate legislation.
“They blocked the [carbon pollution reduction scheme] … they decided they were just going to be blockers.”
He added: “I’ll tell you a way to avoid a [double dissolution]. It’s for the Coalition and the Greens to vote for legislation that they support. There’s nothing in the legislation, on the nature positive act, that they say they’re opposed to.”
The implicit threat repeats a tactic Albanese deployed in mid-2023 when the Coalition and Greens delayed Labor’s housing Australia future fund bill. At that time Albanese said government legal advice indicated that delaying key bills could constitute a failure to pass, that would provide a trigger for a double dissolution.
The Greens have downplayed this possibility, pointing to the required three-month window between each failure to pass and questioning the government’s legal advice that delay constitutes such a failure.
The ABC’s psephologist, Antony Green, has suggested it may be too late for Help to Buy to fulfil the three-month requirement.
For there to be a DD election, the dissolution of the House and full Senate must take place by 25 January. The election would be in March. How you can meet the 3 months delay requirement of Section 57 to get a DD trigger between now and January is beyond me. #auspol
— Antony Green - elections (@AntonyGreenElec) September 17, 2024
But in June the Coalition and Greens voted to delay build-to-rent tax changes, another potential trigger if it were reintroduced. In 2016 Malcolm Turnbull requested parliament be recalled using an obscure mechanism called prorogation, allowing an extra sitting of parliament ahead of a double dissolution election.
Bandt said it would be “unprecedented” to argue sending a bill to an inquiry constituted a delay, rejecting the possibility of a double dissolution as “bluff and bluster” and “political posturing”.
A double dissolution would have to be called by 25 January, six months before the House of Representatives is due to expire.
Since February Albanese has insisted that the Greens should vote on the help to buy shared equity scheme on its merits, refusing to engage with the minor party’s demands.
Chandler-Mather defended the party’s tactics, arguing that the bill is “a rare opportunity where we have leverage to push the government to realise the scale of the housing crisis”.
He told Guardian Australia it “would be a great tragedy if the prime minister’s personal dislike of the Greens saw him reject good ideas” including rent caps, building public housing and tax changes.
“Regardless of what the prime minister says the Greens remain ready to negotiate a plan that provides genuine, real relief to the millions being smashed by this devastating housing crisis, but we won’t accept a government bill that will drive up house prices for the 99.2% of renters who won’t get access to the scheme.”
