Once the arch inquisitor of Senate estimates, famed for mercilessly grilling ministers and hapless bureaucrats, the Penny Wong of the 47th parliament has fewer opportunities these days to unleash the inner attack dog.
But the foreign minister dispensed with the diplomatic gloves on Thursday morning and launched into an excoriation of Greens housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather, the Griffith MP who is the ballast of the minor party’s brinkmanship over Labor’s signature $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund.
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young walks past independent senator David Pocock and Foreign Minister Penny Wong in the Senate on Thursday.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
“Let me talk to you about the Greens’ spokesperson on housing. He has had a taste of the media spotlight. Your spokesperson on housing is now prioritising media attention from stunts and obstruction over housing for women and kids fleeing domestic violence. How shameful,” Wong fulminated on the floor of the Senate.
“This man’s ego matters more than housing for women fleeing domestic violence and older women at risk of homelessness ... What sort of party are you?”
Wong withdrew the remarks, but there’s no denying Chandler-Mather has become a focal point of Labor fury, as the government and Greens glare eyeball to eyeball over the housing package languishing in the Senate. Hanging in the balance is Labor’s election pledge to use the fund to provide $500 million a year in returns to get 30,000 social and affordable homes built over the next five years.
The Greens argue the fund is a pitiful attempt to address the housing crisis, and are withholding support unless the government tips in substantially more funding for social and affordable housing every year and negotiates rental freezes with states and territories. That Chandler-Mather snatched his inner Brisbane seat from Labor’s Terri Butler at the 2022 election is salt in the wound of the government’s indignation.
Piling pressure on the Greens was Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie, who along with her colleague Tammy Tyrrell has agreed to back the legislation. On the cusp of tears, she pleaded with the Greens to support the bills.
“We can’t hold this back. I know this is not perfect. But people out there need a roof over their heads. So for goodness sake, please can we just get a start on this? I don’t want to hold them back any further,” Lambie said.
As Labor and the Greens scramble for the high moral ground, the politics is pungent. Wong’s evisceration followed an attempt by Labor to bring on a motion to guillotine debate and force the bill to a vote on Thursday morning after the Senate had considered it for less than an hour. It tried the same thing on Wednesday evening.
With neither side willing to give ground, the motion was doomed to fail, but Labor was quick to seize on the optics of the Greens siding with the Coalition to oppose the move, conjuring the spectre of the same unholy alliance that defeated the Rudd government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme in 2009.
Until now, the Greens have proved a reliable facilitator of the government’s agenda, helping to pass its signature climate and energy bills including imposing price caps on gas producers and enshrining Labor’s legally binding climate target.
But, as opposition Senate leader Simon Birmingham quipped: “It’s always unfortunate to see lovers having a fight isn’t it?”
“It didn’t sound like a policy debate. It sounded like a personal attack. It sounded like a big sledge against the Greens. It sounded like the two of you falling out of love with one another,” Birmingham said as he observed the proceedings.
The government is more than happy for its base – and voters – to know that it won’t always go to the Greens for support.
“You have ganged up to deliver this result and we will not let you forget it,” Finance Minister Katy Gallagher warned, dubbing the Greens, Liberals and Nationals the “anti-housing alliance”.
For his part, Chandler-Mather brushed off Wong’s attack. He professed a willingness to negotiate but made clear the compromise would need to come from Labor’s end.
“It is genuinely remarkable that we have to fight this hard when the government can find $4.2 billion for a budget surplus, when they can find $254 billion for the stage three tax cuts, but they can’t find a few extra billion dollars to invest in public and affordable housing in the middle of the worst housing crisis in a generation,” he said.
With Labor defeated in its bid to speed up a vote on Thursday, the Senate showdown is poised to resume when the upper house sits again in June.
Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis from Jacqueline Maley. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter here.