Inside Politics: A 2024 fire sale, ‘something big’ needed on cost of living

Published Nov 28, 2024, 6:00 PM

This week was the last sitting week of the parliamentary year, and there is speculation the Prime Minister will call an election early in 2025, meaning it might have been the last parliamentary session of the Albanese government, full stop.

So what legislation did the government get through this week? And more broadly, how well positioned is it, going into an imminent election campaign?

Joining Jacqueline Maley to discuss is chief political correspondent David Crowe.

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From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. This is inside politics. I'm Jacqueline Maley. It's Friday, November 29th. Well, it's all over. This week was the last sitting week of the parliamentary year. There is speculation the Prime Minister will call an election early in 2025, meaning it might have been the last parliamentary session of the Albanese government. Full stop. So what legislation did the government get through this week? And more broadly, how well positioned is it going into an imminent election campaign? Has the Dutton led opposition done enough to make itself a credible alternative to the labor government? This week, we dive into the state of play at the end of 2024, pushing into an election year. Joining me to discuss is the globe trotting David Crowe, our chief political correspondent, who is back from his South America jaunt to various summits with the Prime minister. Welcome home to the pod, David.

It is very, very good to be back. Jackie.

David, before we get into anything, I just wanted to ask you a little side question about travelling with the Prime Minister. I just wanted to get a sense of how Anthony Albanese handles these international summits. Like, does he seem comfortable in the role of international diplomat? Is it possible to get a sense of the leaders that he has a rapport with? What's his sort of level of competence and comfort in those in those environments?

He's quite relaxed, quite personable. He gets along well with people like Joe Biden as US president. They've had a good relationship ever since Anthony Albanese was elected prime minister. They met within days of the last election. Justin Trudeau, he gets along with, you can see from the way the summits go that he has very cheerful, joking conversations with people like Emmanuel Macron. The French president mixes with the group. Well, he had what looks like a fairly relaxed conversation in the group sessions with Chinese President XI Jinping. Yeah, he can have fairly relaxed conversations with most leaders there. There's nobody in that group where there's a strained relationship at the moment. Yeah.

Not at the moment. It's fascinating. Thank you for that. And now heading back home. Let's talk about the final parliamentary sitting week. It was obviously the last of the year. And the government had a lot of legislation it wanted to push through. It was like a, you know, like a fire sale. Everything must go. So what did the government get done this week, David?

Well, it's made a lot of progress, mainly on housing.

Well, thousands of first home buyers are closer than ever to co purchasing a property with the government.

The labor is on the up revelling in yesterday's win on housing policy.

We've laid the foundations for a big change to how housing works in our country. We are going to need a second term to continue that critical work.

And the government, it.

Wanted the week to be about things that matter to ordinary folks in the real world. And so it really needed an outcome on housing and it held the line. The Greens accepted that they should help there.

Today, the Greens can announce that we'll be waiving through Labour's two housing bills after accepting.

So housing was probably, I think, the biggest success. The government's also got a deal with the coalition on social media age, the the age limit of 16. Now that's becoming more controversial the more people look at it.

Mental health advocates have warned lawmakers of potentially devastating consequences for our kids if the planned age restrictions for social media are bungled.

But there's an outcome the government can point to, a result it's made some progress on the future Made in Australia package. It's also got, you know, progress in its mind on migration because it's got three bills agreed with the coalition, rushed through the Senate to the dismay of the Greens and the crossbench. But it's done. And the government wants to go to the next election with a position on migration that is firmer. Yeah. I mean, I think this is part of something that's happening around the world. At the same time, they had to acknowledge that they couldn't get enough progress on donations, law reform, on the nature positive package. But and some things like tax credits for miners, they're quite comfortable with not getting done this year. They actually want a debate about it next year because this is where they think they're wrong footing the coalition. We'll see how that plays out at the election. But labor is saying we're giving a tax credit to miners in Western Australia. Peter Dutton is denying that benefit. And they're hoping that that will hurt Peter Dutton in those West Australian seats. Yeah.

In terms of things they don't want to talk about, they've obviously delayed their gambling advertising legislation. They've just sort of put that in the too hard basket and they've dumped their misinformation disinformation bill. Is that right?

Yes. So there are things where they said they would move and they've been unable to move. And I think that highlights this big question of are they simply too slow? They now find at the end of 2024 they're just not getting things moving through fast enough. They can blame the Senate sometimes, but a lot of the timing is up to them and misinformation. They couldn't get it nailed down and they've dropped it. And gambling. They didn't even put a bill to parliament because they just couldn't commit. And that looks like weakness to gambling advertising reform advocates.

Yeah, I mean, it's particularly odd given that Albanese, of course, in the past has been manager of opposition business and management of government business in the House. So he's he's the guy who pushed stuff through and got stuff done. I want to talk about housing legislation, first of all, because as you say, it was the government's big win, the build to rent and the rent to buy schemes, which are easily confused. This was a big capitulation from the Greens, wasn't it? Why did the Greens back down and decide to support this after all?

I think the key admission from the Greens is that from here on, they're going to campaign to prevent Peter Dutton becoming prime minister for a lot of this year. The arguments in Parliament have all been about the Greens versus labor. It's been about the Greens criticising labor much more so than the coalition. And there's this been there's been this perception that it's much more about the fight between those two parties. And that can cost labor government at the next election. And that becomes a very dangerous scenario for Adam Bandt as the Greens leader. If he suddenly is put in a position where it looks like he's actually undermining the ability of either the Greens or Labor to make headway at the next election, and he's actually helping the conservative side of politics. So there's this strategic decision. We will accept what the government is being put forward on housing and that will go through. Now, bear in mind there's another aspect of it. The two bills have some practical benefits on housing. The Greens objected to them, not because there was anything in the bills themselves that they really, really disliked. They just wanted a rent freeze and a massive new government agency to build more homes, things that weren't in the bill. So they used the stalling of the bills to argue about other things. And I think that tactic only works for a certain amount of time. I was surprised, actually, two months ago, when the Greens voted with the coalition to delay these housing bills. Again, the two months have passed with no change, no result, just more argument. And I think that actually was starting to really hurt the greens.

I mean, up until a point, because before that point they were able to posture and pose themselves as the sort of, you know, the party that cared about these issues and deeply wanted a result for people who are struggling with housing affordability. Yes. Let's move quickly to the social media under-sixteen band, because that was sort of, you know, almost universally sort of supported, not quite, but almost. It won't come into force for another year. So the cynic in me says, okay, Anthony Albanese gets a win. He gets to go to the next election saying, look at me. Parents of Australia, I've done this to protect your children. But then he doesn't actually have to face any questions or criticisms about when the ban is actually implemented. And it might have, you know, there might be a lot of problems with implementing it. Is that me being too cynical?

No. I think the cynicism is justified, even though, you know, I've certainly read some of the work about young Australians and mental health and social media, and I think there's a legitimate debate about what should be done. But here we've got a bill that doesn't tell us technically how it's going to be done. It's got the broad objective of the age 16 being the cut off age and everybody younger than that being banned. Social media companies are expected to implement that, but we don't know how the detail is going to be worked out over the next year. So yes, Anthony Albanese goes to the election telling parents I've acted on this. In reality, he lifted the policy from the coalition because they were out earlier. And on this podcast, you know, a while back we had David Coleman from the liberals talking about why he had come up with this idea. It's now been borrowed or stolen by labor to put into practice. But it goes through with bipartisan support. But it has been interesting that on the crossbench, people who liked it, like Andrew Wilkie, have admitted to Backflipping and now have reservations about it. And people in the coalition emerged very late in the day. Only a couple, but including Bridget Archer from Tasmania, to say, hang on a minute, we're not sure this is going to work. So the more people look at it, the more they have questions about the practical aspect of it. Even though I think there's very broad consensus that the social dangers are there and the social dangers need some kind of response.

Yeah. I mean, it's world leading legislation in the sense that no one else in the world has tried to do this right to, to, to to institute a ban and basically put the onus on the big tech giants to police it. And Elon Musk himself, you know, the owner of Twitter or now X has come out and criticized it. Right.

Yeah. And of course, I mean, the vested interests of the social media world are going to argue against it and say it's unworkable. But I think this is a classic example where sovereign governments have to assert authority to private industry players to tell them things have got to change. Whether this change will work is a technical issue. But there are also moves in some of the US states, for instance, to try and act in a similar way. So I think it's part of a move in countries around the world to try and get an outcome. But it'll suffer from being a kind of a patchwork where every jurisdiction seems to be trying something different. Yeah. And I guess there will be this level of brinksmanship next year when somebody like meta Group led by Mark Zuckerberg might say, look, sorry, this isn't going to work. We're pulling out of Australia.

Yeah. All eyes will be on Australia then. But Anthony Albanese doesn't have to worry about it until after the election. I want to zoom out and talk more generally about how well placed the government and the opposition is to enter an election season. Let's go to the government first. Has this been a good week for them in that sense that they can go, okay, we've cleared the decks, we're ready to go. We've got all these wins on the scoreboard.

I think housing is a good outcome for them and probably social media too, in terms of having an outcome. But I think a lot of this week is a blur. And bear in mind, it's also been about this at times, very ugly debate in the Senate with Lidia Thorpe, Fatima Payman, Pauline Hanson and so forth.

Senator Hanson has worn the burqa in this place. Maybe it's time that she pack her burqa and go to Afghanistan and talk to the Taliban. If that is not racist, what is it?

It would not be good enough for anyone.

But the blur itself, with so much stuff happening in Parliament in one week, means if you went up to an ordinary voter and said, well, what do you think about the results the government got in Parliament this week, they might be stumped. You know, in terms of coming up with what the big takeaway is, because, you know, if you try to get 20 bills through the parliament in a single week, people may not remember any single one of them. That means something to them in the real world. And I think that's where the government may not be so happy in the end with how things have gone this week.

But then I guess that's what election campaigns are for as well, right? To say, look, we did this on housing. We did this on the Building Australia initiative, which again, I think most voters probably have no idea what that means. Yeah. I want to ask about the opposition. What are the government's weaknesses that the coalition will hone in on during an election campaign? And is the coalition now in its own position to be able to offer itself credibly to the Australian people as an alternative government?

Well, the the attack lines from Peter Dutton have been very clear that Anthony Albanese is weak. And so an indecisive and sort of playing on the fact that they're slow to respond to, to things and get the judgment wrong. That's the attack line against Anthony Albanese personally. And I think that that does highlight that the challenge for labor is to produce more results faster and come up with something really concrete for ordinary voters, because Peter Dutton is working with very fertile political ground because of the hardship at the household level, with inflation up, interest rates higher, but also, I think with real wages being lower, even though real wages have increased in the most recent times, They're still down over the course of this term. So at the next election, he can tell households your incomes are lower than they were when you voted Labour in at the last election. That's a really powerful line. And so he's got a lot to work with there.

We've already seen him sort of test out that line, which is a little bit borrowed. Well, very much borrowed from the Trump campaign, which is are you better off than you were three years ago? And, you know, on purely economic basis, households can say, no, I'm not. Whether or not they blame the government for that will be another matter, I suppose.

But the other thing also, there's so much to talk about on on that front, because Peter Dutton's had a very quiet week, all the noise and fury has been in the Senate and on some of the bills he's been barely visible. And of course he's biding his time before he tells Australians what he will offer them. Because it's not just about what's happened in Parliament. Labor knows this. They've got to come up with a future offer. They can't go to the election saying, look at what we've done for you in Parliament last year. Vote for us. They've got to craft some new housing measures and new other measures for the cost of living to convince voters to stick with them. But Peter Dutton at the moment has the nuclear policy super for housing. The cupboard is pretty bare for him in terms of what he offers households, and he's running out of time to communicate what he's got. And I think that's the big challenge for Peter Dutton. In our polling, it's 50 over 50, but if you look at that, it's actually very difficult to read how that's going to play out in the intensity of an election campaign, because Peter Dutton and the coalition have made big gains through the course of this year, but they now end the year at the moment with 50 over 50. How that changes during the campaign is really hard to guess. It could go either way.

I mean, you had a story this week where Anthony Albanese told the labor caucus, you know, that to campaign hard over summer, basically, you know, not not to have a break, but to to keep reminding people that they should be voting for Labour, you know, in the upper house and the lower house next election. Will the coalition be doing something similar, and what kinds of things are they likely to offer in terms of new offerings to, to the electorate for the next election?

I'm very interested in where they're going to move on migration, because at the moment their policy doesn't stack up. They say they're going to cut migration. At the same time, they opposed the caps on overseas students, which are one way of managing the migration intake. That means they've got to come up with some specific mechanism of their own to bring the migration numbers down. That's their stated policy. But we don't know what mechanism that they'll use. Yeah.

And they basically say I mean, it's complicated, but they basically say we will cut immigration harder than Labour has or Labour will.

Yeah, yeah. And it's impossible to do that without a pretty mean Mechanism because you've got to turn people away, whether it's students or skilled workers. The humanitarian intake, the family reunion, it becomes very harsh. Yeah. And they're yet to reveal how that would be done. And I think they would struggle to go to the election saying, we'll tell you later how we're going to make those cuts, because that is just a very easy attack line for Labour to go to ethnic communities in Australia. Multicultural Australia and say, you know how you want to bring family members out? Peter Dutton's going to say no.

Yeah, yeah. And that could be actually disastrous. You know, for some of those marginal electorates that the coalition needs to win back. Yeah. The PM was criticised last election campaign for being too small target in his focus. Do you think he'll do the same again or will he be bolder? Will we see any bold ideas from him and indeed from the coalition?

I think there was a moment, maybe two months ago, where there was an open question about how bold labor labour might be. That was when negative gearing seemed to sort of get put back on the agenda, because we knew, thanks to our colleague James Massola, that they were working on it in Treasury. We reported that we talked about it on this podcast. They've retreated from that. That's not on the agenda. That indicates that they don't want to pick a fight where they might lose. They're worried about the superannuation tax changes they've got because they fear a scare campaign. That's like the scare campaigns on tax that they got in 2019 that cost them government. Really. So caution is the overriding kind of vibe from the government at the moment. And they're probably going to continue that through to the election. But they must have something that's future looking. On the cost of living.

Yeah, it's going to be fascinating to see because, as you say, you know, globally, I suppose it's a very uncertain time. We have a lot of economic uncertainty. We have a lot of security, geo security uncertainty. So it's probably not a time for big, bold ideas that rock the boat, but at the same time, they have to promise or offer something to voters. It's fascinating, and we will pick it up again next week. And thank you very much, David, for being with us as usual.

Jacqui, it's always good to talk.

To you. Today's episode of Inside Politics was produced by Kai Wong with technical assistance by Tom Compagnoni. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills. Inside politics is a production of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. If you enjoy the show and want more of our journalism, subscribe to our newspapers today. It's the best way to support what we do. Search the age or Smh.com.au forward slash. Subscribe. I'm Jacqueline Maley, this is inside politics. Thanks for listening.