Climate change top of the agenda as Labor kick-starts new parliament with four bills

Anthony Albanese will map out his government’s priorities when the new parliament sits next week, introducing four bills that will to seek to enshrine a 2030 emissions reduction target, legislate 10 days of domestic violence leave, mandate nurses in aged care homes, and create a new jobs and skills agency.

The most contentious will be Labor’s climate change bill, which will lay down a challenge to the Greens to back the Albanese government’s 43 per cent emissions reduction target by 2030 or side with the Liberals and Nationals to reject it. The 47th parliament will sit for the first time on Tuesday.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will use the first week of Parliament to introduce four bills that deliver on Labor’s election promises.Credit: Flavio Brancaleone

The Greens, which campaigned on a much more ambitious 2030 target of 75 per cent, did not reach a final position on the bill after the partyroom met to discuss the issue on Wednesday, opting instead to endorse leader Adam Bandt to begin formal negotiations with the government.

Bandt attacked Labor’s target as “weak” in a statement following the partyroom meeting, where members expressed their concern the bill lacked enforcement mechanisms and the drafting would act as a barrier to ratcheting up the target.

“We will engage in good faith negotiations with the government, and we hope the government will drop its insistence on having a weak target and opening more coal and gas,” Bandt said.

Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen has remained firm that Labor has a “mandate” for its 43 per cent target, but indicated this week he was open to finessing the bill to allow the target to be ratcheted up by future governments without requiring the legislation to return to parliament.

“If there are good-faith ideas to make the government’s intent even more explicit, then we’ll take those on board,” Bowen told the ABC.

Albanese said Australians voted for change and the first actions of his government would “make a real difference”.

“Cleaning up 10 years of mess and mistakes will take more than 10 weeks, but these are important first steps towards fixing aged care, protecting vulnerable Australians, addressing the challenges in our economy and working with our friends and allies to confront the challenges and opportunities from our changing climate,” the prime minister said.

Labor will introduce an aged care bill to mandate that residential aged care facilities have a registered nurse onsite 24 hours a day, and it will seek to amend the Fair Work Act to mandate 10 days of paid domestic violence leave under the national employment standards, which would cover about 8.5 million Australians. The Fair Work Commission had already made a similar, preliminary decision granting the right to 2.7 million workers on industry awards.

A fourth bill will seek to establish an independent agency called Jobs and Skills Australia to provide advice on the country’s workforce and skills needs.

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