On the Labor vs Greens housing stoush
Rosemary Bedford writes: As Labor and the Greens actually share some ideals, like social justice and fairness for the “underdog”, I’ve never been able to understand why Labor constantly paints the Greens in a poor light.
I agree with Rachel Withers, it seems to be due to an irrational hatred of the Greens blinding them, and specifically Albanese, to the idea that Labor could give an inch or two without losing face. It seems churlish, even childish, to be so inflexible.
Maryanne Watts writes: Of course Labor should be negotiating with the crossbenchers, especially the Greens. They are willing to take office on the back of preferences from the Greens.
Julia Gillard passed more legislation, and much better legislation, while in minority government because she had to negotiate. The current Labor government should be viewing her as a role model and negotiating with the crossbencher to establish meaningful, helpful legislation.
Helping 40,000 is nice, but what about the other 410,000? Is there anything there that might help them? At this point not everyone is going to be able to buy a house. The fastest growing cohort of homeless people is women over 55, and I would bet that even with a government guarantee the banks would not put up the rest of the loan for single people of that age.
Peter Monie writes: Of course Labor should negotiate with the Greens. The prime minister is behaving like a puerile little boy, making enemies of many in his own party. Grow up, Albo.
I despair until next year when we will have a minority government — negotiation will be vital. Albo could do it when he was leader of the house during the Gillard government. Why not now?
Peter Barry writes: The Greens appear increasingly intransigent and appear to be doing internal somersaults over contentious progressive issues. Nevertheless, most of their economic policies have a strong rational basis and aim for valid long-term solutions.
Labor knows that negative gearing is unfair and counterproductive, as is the capital gains discount. They know that carbon credit offsets are largely spurious and counterproductive. They know that the rollout of renewable energy has slowed to a trickle and that even the feeble target for 2030 will not be reached. They are a dismal shadow of what voters expected, cowed by big business and fossil fuel interests.
They should use the Greens as a cover to do what they know should actually be doing.
Is Albo the new ScoMo?
Andrew Bonnell writes: The focus on personalities is fun, and, yes, this government’s cautious incrementalism can be maddening. So is the position on AUKUS. But the legislative record of Albo’s government is clearly different from the do-nothing ScoMo gang, who were only interested in ridiculous culture wars and giving money to mates. There have been improvements in industrial relations, gender equity, measures to support wages growth, etc.
Every centre-left government will disappoint many of its supporters, but the Morrison government set such a low bar for achievement it is subterranean.
Margaret Callinan writes: It was probably the wrong question for Rachel Withers and Patrick Marlborough to debate. Clearly they are two very different men. I’m certainly enjoying the absence of frenetic headlines about the latest outrage from the oaf-narcissist, but if you’d asked: “Will Australians be better off after Albo than ScoMo?” then the answer is shaping up to be, “No!”
They’re a tie on the sovereignty and financial disaster that is AUKUS and foreign policy. On getting things done otherwise, ScoMo’s lazy, incompetent “not my job” attitude is probably not such a bitter pill to swallow as Albo’s lack of spine to get things done while he is in a position to do so. And Albo is shameful in not standing up to support the International Court of Justice on the genocide that is happening in Palestine, both in Gaza and the West Bank. That is moral failure.
Bring on a hung Parliament!
Elisa M writes: A while back, there was a cartoon (in The Saturday Paper? I forget) [Editor’s note: Yes it was, here’s the cartoon in question] that illustrated the difference between Morrison and Albanese.
Morrison approaches a homeless man and goes past him, ignoring his pleas for help completely. Albanese approaches the homeless man and says something like “Yes, I understand and sympathise, because, you know, I grew up in social housing…” And then he continues on his merry way.
