2 weeks Ago By David Crowe
There seemed to be some warmth in the wi-fi in Parliament House on Monday when Housing Minister Clare O’Neil caught up with Greens MP Max Chandler-Mather to try to negotiate a deal on a new program to help homebuyers get into the market. The conversation was online, with O’Neil in Canberra and Chandler-Mather in Brisbane, and by all accounts it was cordial. There was no bickering, and no shouting match – but, unfortunately, no deal.
A house divided: (Clockwise from top left) Adam Bandt, Anthony Albanese, Peter Dutton, Clare O’Neil and Max Chandler-Mather. Credit: This wasn’t the first attempt by Labor and the Greens to find common cause on one of the biggest problems facing the country. With the housing crisis growing steadily worse, O’Neil and Chandler-Mather met four weeks ago to see if the Greens might vote for the homebuyer scheme, known as Help to Buy.
That followed months of earlier talks. In the end, it turned out to be a slow trek to an impasse. Now the time for cordial conversation is well and truly over.
Labor is furious with the Greens over the delay in the Senate this week on a policy that Anthony Albanese promised at the last election. Help to Buy is only a small answer to a vast problem, given that it would help only 10,000 or so homebuyers each year, but something is better than nothing. And the Greens made sure Labor got nothing.
“It is problematic for the Greens to see Labor making any progress on housing before the election,” says one Labor figure. The closer the election, the less room for compromise. The truth is that Labor and the Greens are dialling up the diatribes because their relations have never been worse.
Labor and Green politicians used to display more goodwill when they passed each other in the corridors of Parliament House, but there is more sniping these days at this basic human level. The political rivalry is intense: the Labor primary vote has slumped, which means everyone is speculating about minority government, which means the Greens are playing for the balance of power. No wonder the prime minister is grumpy.
Albanese put his temper in the spotlight in an interview with Patricia Karvelas on ABC Radio National on Thursday morning when he complained that her questions were “not terribly clever” because she wanted to know if changes to the tax rules on negative gearing were on the agenda. He wasn’t rude or intemperate, but he wasted a big part of the interview. In fact, questions about negative gearing are central to the debate.
The Greens want Labor to reverse course on tax policy and break an election promise, which would deliver a political gift to Peter Dutton, by agreeing to scrap these concessions for property investors. There is no sign Albanese would take that leap, so why grumble about a question? Not that Albanese has cornered the market in crabbiness. Greens leader Adam Bandt has been so enraged at his press conferences that he may one day need medical help.
Dutton grew very touchy about questions on the ABC’s 7.30 program in February when the host, Sarah Ferguson, asked about his political performance..
