Greens ramp up attacks following PM’s double-dissolution threat

The Greens are ramping up their attacks on the Prime Minister after his big election threat, accusing him of panicking when he doesn’t get his own way.

Green senator Sarah Hanson-Young has accused Anthony Albanese of being “bullish” after he threatened to dissolve both houses of parliament in an early election.

The Prime Minister made the threat after the government’s Help to Buy Bill failed to pass the Senate on Tuesday, with both the Greens and the Coalition voting against it.

Senator Hanson-Young said on Wednesday the Greens wanted to “to work with the government to actually make this a policy that works for people”.

“This Bill doesn’t deal with the real crises,” she told the ABC.

“We want to work with the government to do that. We have given the government an extra two months to negotiate with us on this piece of legislation.”

Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young has accused Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of being ‘bullish’ and ‘bulldozing’ his government’s agenda through parliament. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Help to Buy would allow first-home buyers to purchase a property under a shared equity scheme.

It is a policy the Greens have run with, but they say the Albanese government’s plan would not go far enough and have called for negotiations.

“Why be so bullish about this?” Senator Hanson-Young said.

“The Australian people don’t need a panicked prime minister who wants to press the exit button because he can’t get his own way.

“They want a government that’s willing to work across the parliament.”

She said Australians expected a functional parliament, which “requires more than just bulldozing your way through”.

The government’s Help to Buy and Build to Rent bills are key to its plan to tackle soaring housing costs across the country.

If Help to Buy is passed, the government would foot up to 40 per cent of the funds for a new home.

Meanwhile, Build to Rent aims to boost the construction of rent-only developments through tax incentives.

The Senate knocked back the legislation earlier this year, sending it to an inquiry for further scrutiny.

But the probe failed to garner support of the opposition and the Greens, with the Coalition saying it perpetuated a “rent forever” approach to housing and the Greens saying it would do nothing but give tax handouts to property developers to build homes nobody can afford.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s threat of a double-dissolution comes as a raft of legislation is held up in the Senate. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Mr Albanese demanded the stalled Help to Buy Bill be passed on Tuesday.

Asked if he would call a double-dissolution if the legislation was not passed, he said the government would “wait and see.”

“I’ll tell you a way to avoid a DD (double-dissolution), it’s for the Coalition and Greens to vote for legislation that they support,” he said.

The housing laws are not the only government legislation held up in a senate constipated by political blustering on all sides.

The Greens have said they are unsure if they will support the government’s nature law reforms without a so-called climate trigger -- a mechanism that would allow mining projects to be canned on the grounds of environmental concerns.