Latest news with #Labor-Greens
Sydney Morning Herald
21-07-2025
- Politics
- Sydney Morning Herald
Labor faces internal housing battle in PM's heartland
With proud Marrickville resident Anthony Albanese in The Lodge, Sydney's inner west has become the centre of Australia's political universe. It's also the centre of one of the more pressing political issues of our time – how to build more housing in a central part of Sydney which has historically been pathologically opposed to development. The area is full of progressive Labor-Greens voters fully supportive of high-density, affordable housing in every suburb – barring their own. It's the kind of place where people read Ezra Klein's Abundance book for fun. Little surprise then that there are a multitude of views around how best to build, baby, build among influential Labor figures in the PM's own backyard. The council, led by ambitious Labor mayor Darcy Byrne (a good mate of Albo) objected to Premier Chris Minns' Transport Oriented Development scheme and, in May, revealed its own plan to boost density, which involves buildings of six to 11 storeys clustered around Ashfield, Marrickville, Dulwich Hill and Croydon. Loading Cue fury among some residents' groups in those suburbs, disgruntled at having to bear the brunt of the council's density reforms. They pointed to the fact that the inner west's leafier areas such as Balmain, Rozelle and Annandale were spared the brunt of the development. To be fair, none of those suburbs is on a train line. Earlier this month, local Labor MP Jo Haylen, who was a minister in the Minns government before that silly business with taking chauffeured cars to a boozy birthday brunch, wrote to Byrne to voice those residents' concerns. Some of the suburbs slated for the most development sit in her Summer Hill electorate. In a letter seen by CBD, Haylen urged Byrne to 'give serious consideration' to the feedback on the plan provided by her community.
Sky News AU
30-05-2025
- Politics
- Sky News AU
‘Anathema to Labor': ALP veteran Graham Richardson warns the Albanese government not to rely on Greens support to pass legislation
Former NSW Labor senator Graham Richardson has warned the Albanese government should not rely on Greens support to get its legislation through the Senate. The Albanese government received a boost on Friday with the AEC confirming there would be a slim Labor-Greens majority in the Senate. From July, federal Labor will hold 28 seats in the 76-member upper house, with the Greens holding 11. The results mean the Albanese government will be able to pass legislation without the support of either the Coalition, One Nation, or any of the six other members of the crossbench, provided they gain the support of the Greens. Speaking to Sky News Australia on Friday, Mr Richardson said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was now in a 'very strong' position and provided he doesn't make any major missteps he could go down in history as 'one of the great Labor leaders'. However the former Hawke and Keating government minister and powerbroker of Labor's powerful NSW right faction said it would be foolish for the government to be too reliant on the Greens. 'You can't be reliant on the Greens because they're a mob with their own set of policies, some of which are anathema to Labor,' Mr Richardson said. 'The idea that you can always partner with them is nonsense - they are difficult to manage as a partner in political terms, very difficult. 'You've got to keep your eyes open and see where your opportunities might.' The former Labor powerbroker said the election result had made it 'very difficult' for the Coalition to regain government. 'I think they've got a big worry on their hands,' he said. 'Their own base is eroding, and that's a big problem for them. 'You've got to hang on to your base if you're ever going to govern. You can't govern… if you keep dropping your base.' The senate results also delivered One Nation two additional senators after the party succeeded in winning the final senate spots in NSW and WA, which along with the re-election of Malcolm Roberts, increases the size of Pauline Hanson's party to four.
Sky News AU
05-05-2025
- Politics
- Sky News AU
Federal Election 2025: Greens leader Adam Bandt talks up minor party's balance of power in the Senate while his own seat in doubt
Greens leader Adam Bandt is speaking to reporters as he remains at risk of losing his seat of Melbourne to Labor candidate Sarah Witty. The Greens have lost two seats and gained another as its leader's future in parliament is under threat from a massive Labor victory in the 2025 Federal Election. Housing spokesperson Max Chandler-Mather was ousted from the seat of Griffith and LGBTIQA+ spokesperson Stephen Bates lost in Brisbane. However, the Greens have been expected to hold Ryan and the balance of power in the senate, with potentially 11 seats in the upper house. This could give the Labor-Greens cohort the power to pass legislation without consulting other members of the crossbench.
Daily Mail
03-05-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Jubilant Penny Wong's cryptic swipe at her critics after her Voice gaffe almost derailed Albo's landslide election win
Penny Wong has made a defiant Acknowledgement of Country on election night, after her Voice gaffe caused campaign woes for Labor earlier in the week. Wong sparked a furore on Wednesday by predicting that the Voice - a separate indigenous body with powers to influence government legislation - will still be introduced despite it being voted down 60 per cent to 40 per cent in a 2023 referendum. 'We'll look back on it in 10 years' time and it'll be a bit like marriage equality,' Senator Wong told the Betoota Talks podcast. 'I always used to say, marriage equality, which took us such a bloody fight to get that done, and I thought, all this fuss... It'll become something, it'll be like, people go "did we even have an argument about that?"' Her backing for the indigenous body came just three days after Anthony Albanese ruled out any attempt to bring back the Voice, telling the leaders' debate: 'It's gone... I respect the outcome (of the referendum), we live in a democracy.' Albanese was forced to respond to Wong's comments and reassure voters that he was not planning another referendum, while the foreign minister made an apparent backflip, telling SBS, 'the Voice is gone... the prime minister has made that clear, and the Australian people have made their position clear, and we respect the result of the referendum.' After Labor swept to victory in Saturday night's election, Wong took the stage at a Labor party in Sydney to introduce Albanese. She made a point of performing a brief Acknowledgement of Country in her speech. 'The power in our 26 million people from more than 300 ancestries... from the oldest continuing civilisation on the planet and I acknowledge the traditional owners, friends we love this country,' she said. Albanese then performed another Acknowledgement of Country in his own speech. 'I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet,' the Prime Minister said to cheers from supporters. 'And I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet.' The Voice campaign was a major blow for the Labor government and Albanese, who hitched his legacy to the proposal. He went to the 2022 federal election with the referendum promise, spoke about it in his first speech as the PM and campaigned tirelessly for most of 2023. Wong's podcast interview earlier this week was seen as a political gift to Peter Dutton, who quickly accused the foreign minister of 'letting the cat out of the bag'. 'Under a Labor-Greens government we see this secret plan to legislate the Voice and Penny Wong has let that cat out of the bag,' Dutton said. 'People will be opposed to that because they thought they sent a very clear message to the Prime Minister that they didn't want the Voice.'
News.com.au
02-05-2025
- Politics
- News.com.au
How likely, and scary, is the prospect of a minority government after the election?
ANALYSIS Spend a week on the road with any politician and certain phrases, through sheer, merciless repetition, will bore their way inside your skull, to be embedded there permanently. You find yourself mentally completing the candidate's sentences. You hear a question, during a press conference or an interview, and know exactly how the candidate will answer it before they open their mouth. This is an inevitable part of the political process. The boffins who run election campaigns know that to reach as many voters as possible, their candidate's lines must be repeated again and again and again and again and again and again and again. Which is annoying, when you're absorbing every word spoken, but also illuminating. You pick up on patterns. Granted, they're usually pretty obvious. We could talk about a dozen of these key, incessant phrases from the last week of Peter Dutton's campaign, but for the purposes of this article we'll choose one: 'a Labor-Greens government', or if you prefer, its close variant 'an Albanese-Bandt government'. Mr Dutton has constantly, constantly sought to raise the spectre of a minority Labor government beholden to the Greens. The idea is to convince Australians that voting for, say, Labor's Rebecca White in the Tasmanian seat of Lyons is almost tantamount to supporting Greens leader Adam Bandt. 'If the Prime Minister is re-elected, it is only with the Greens in cahoots,' the Opposition Leader told ABC Radio on Friday. At other points in the campaign, Mr Dutton has expressed worry about Australia ending up with a 'European-style' composition of MPs in parliament, with small factions like the Greens or Teals able to hold legislation hostage. How probable is a minority government? According to the polls, both public and private, Anthony Albanese may well retain his majority after the election, which would stave off the minority government bogeyman for another term and render the rest of this article moot. This would be in line with most of Australian history. Before 2010, we had gone about seven decades without any minority government holding power. But Mr Albanese could also slip under the 76 seats required for a majority in the House (75 would be enough if he could convince a crossbencher to become speaker). On the other side, a Coalition majority government was only a quite faint possibility even when Mr Dutton led in the polls, because the Liberals and Nationals are coming off such a low combined base. He would need to flip more than 20 seats. A more readily achievable objective, for Mr Dutton, is to pull roughly even with Labor on seats and then convince some crossbenchers, probably a combination of the Teals, to vote with him on confidence and supply. Put aside both majority government scenarios. What happens, after Saturday night, if neither side has won outright? Say Labor has 74 seats and the Coalition has 72. The specific numbers don't matter so much as the fact that they're in the same ballpark, and are under the threshold for a majority. Both sides would then go to the crossbench seeking enough votes, in the House, to guarantee confidence and supply. That means, if a no confidence motion occurs, at least 76 MPs must be committed to oppose it. And the same number must be willing to vote for appropriation bills, which enable the government to spend money. Whichever major party can add enough support to reach 76 will form a minority government. It's important to recognise what that would not guarantee. The crossbenchers would essentially be agreeing not to bring down the government, and little more. They would not be agreeing to support all government legislation. And they would be free, during the post-election negotiations, to demand concessions from both Mr Albanese and Mr Dutton in exchange for their support. That is what happened back in 2010, when Julia Gillard offered up things the Greens and country independents wanted, and convinced them to support her over Tony Abbott. How scary is the minority government scenario? When Australia has a majority government, almost all negotiation happens either within the governing party or in the Senate. All that usually matters in the House is whether everyone in the biggest party – Labor, for these past three years – votes the same way. The Senate is more diverse; it is incredibly rare for any party to hold a majority in that chamber. So that is where policy debates erupt most fiercely, and where deals are made, and concessions offered, to get things passed. Running a minority government would require Mr Albanese or Mr Dutton, whichever of them were prime minister, to conduct similar negotiations in the House as well. So a Prime Minister Dutton, for example, could not implement his proposed cut to the fuel excise without convincing enough crossbenchers in both the Senate and the House to support it. What I'm dancing around here is the logjam argument – the idea that a minority government would be hamstrung and unable to get anything substantive done. It's a fairly weak one. Yes, there would be another annoying step to overcome every time the government wanted to pass legislation; the crossbenchers in the House could not simply be ignored. That might lead to more horsetrading. You can mount a credible argument that it would slow things down. But it would not require a fundamental rearrangement of how the Australian parliament functions. These same negotiations already happen in the Senate. They're routine. And of course the minor parties would argue that giving them more influence over legislation, and more leverage at the negotiating table, would enable them to better represent the interests of their electorates. They'd frame it as a good thing. The other argument against minority government, and the one Mr Dutton has favoured in these closing days of the campaign, is that it could have a radicalising effect on whichever major party is in charge. If Mr Albanese's survival as a second-term prime minister hinges on the goodwill of the Greens, he will make concessions to them, implementing policies outside the mainstream. That is the theory of the case being offered by Mr Dutton. Hence all the talk about a 'Labor-Greens' or 'Albanese-Bandt' government. The hypothetical inverse, here, would be a Dutton government propped up by One Nation. Or to adopt the parlance, a 'Dutton-Hanson government'. For what it's worth, which is for you to judge, minority governments are not all that rare when you look around the world. Many countries in Europe, and indeed our neighbour New Zealand, use a version of proportional representation, which makes it extremely difficult for any one party to reach a majority. Those nations still function. They still get stuff done. But the concerns about minority government are rooted in reality, and worth thinking about before you cast your ballot today.
