Anthony Albanese has trumpeted the government’s legislative success for making a “difference” for Australians, but denied parliament’s last-week bill rush means Labor is preparing the way for an early election.
The Senate passed 31 pieces of legislation on Thursday evening – and a total of 45 this week – which the finance minister, Katy Gallagher, described as “extraordinary”, although not a record.
After a late-night Senate sitting close to midnight approved 31 bills, the House of Representatives returned on Friday morning to finally approve 11 of those that required amendment including the Future Made in Australia package and the social media ban on under-16s.
Albanese said that bill meant that “platforms now have a social responsibility to ensure the safety of our kids is a priority for them”.
“We’re making sure that mums and dads can have that different conversation today, and in future days,” he told reporters in Canberra. “We’ve got your back, is our message to Australian parents.”
Albanese said the government knew “the real value of what happens in here is the difference that it makes to people’s lives out there”.
He pointed to legislation “holding supermarkets to account to get fairer prices at the checkout”, and housing bills increasing supply of build to rent properties by 80,000 and helping 40,000 Australians buy a home through Labor’s shared equity scheme.
But the prime minister acknowledged that the government had “more work to do on cost of living”.
Despite Labor’s legislative successes, enabled by a deal on 27 bills with the Greens and a further four passed with Coalition support, the government still has business unfinished on electoral and environmental laws.
Albanese said that after consultations across the parliament Labor “particularly thought that the Coalition were going to support the agenda to take big money out of politics”.
The government’s bill would cap receipt of donations at $20,000 and impose spending caps of $90m for federal campaigns and $800,000 for local electorate campaigns.
Albanese said the bipartisan path of seeking Coalition support had “become a cul-de-sac” so Labor would now “look for other paths and roads to success”.
The comments signal that the special minister of state, Don Farrell, now needs to win Greens and crossbench support for the reforms, despite their initial hostility that the bill entrenches the financial advantages of major parties.
Despite Albanese nixing a deal between Tanya Plibersek and Sarah Hanson-Young on Nature Positive laws, the pledge to create an Environmental Protection Agency is still Labor policy and the bill remains on the Senate notice paper.
The shadow environment minister, Jonno Duniam, accused the government of “walking both sides of the street”.
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“They don’t want to say their EPA is dead but the prime minister killed off a deal on it for the second time,” he said in a statement.
The comments indicate the electoral danger of the Coalition continuing to campaign against the reforms, especially in Western Australia, unless they are formally dropped, which will also be a consideration for Labor evaluating whether to retain its commitment to cut tax concessions on big super balances.
Asked if he was clearing the decks for an early election, Albanese replied: “Not at all. What we’re doing is getting things done.”
Among the legislation passed on Thursday and Friday was a trio of migration bills allowing Australia to pay third countries to take non-citizens, expanding powers to prohibit items including phones in immigration detention, creating criminal penalties for not cooperating with deportation and the power to blacklist visa applications from designated countries.
Asked how soon Australia could begin paying countries to take non-citizens and if he could guarantee deals would only be struck with signatories to the refugee convention, Albanese replied: “We’ll implement our legislation.”
Albanese said he valued multiculturalism but his government had “inherited an immigration system that wasn’t fit for purpose”.
“On Peter Dutton’s watch, there was a huge spike in the number of protection visa applications onshore,” he said.
“We had three reviews into the migration system … from senior respected authorities in this area – all of them said that the immigration system that we inherited was a mess, so we have to clean up a whole range of issues.”
