Allegra Spender splits with teal colleagues on high-rise housing
Wentworth MP Allegra Spender says she supports housing of ‘all different shapes and sizes’ after Victorian independents opposed Premier Jacinta Allan’s plan to build high-rise residential housing.
Wentworth MP Allegra Spender has split with her teal colleagues in saying she supports housing of “all different shapes and sizes” after Victorian independents had opposed Premier Jacinta Allan’s plan to build high-rise residential housing.
Looking to the upcoming federal election, Ms Spender said she would be “willing to work with anyone” in the event of a hung parliament, leaving the door open to striking a deal with the Coalition if it could show it was “even half serious on climate” and a 2030 emissions target.
In an address to the National Press Club on Wednesday, Ms Spender also called for tax reform, action on housing and the winding back of Labor’s industrial relations agenda, arguing that the Fair Work Act should ultimately be “modernised and replaced”.
Following revelations that teal MPs Zoe Daniel and Monique Ryan had opposed high-rise housing developments in their Melbourne electorates, Ms Spender said she supported the construction of more housing and the nation could build to a “density that really, really works”.
“I support housing of all different shapes and sizes, but it has to work for the community.”
Pressed on her political leanings, Ms Spender said she would decide what side of politics she supported if the crossbench was left holding the balance of power based on major party numbers and a willingness to negotiate.
“I’m really clear that climate is incredibly important to me, it’s incredibly important to my community,” she said. “My community expects to drive climate action and, frankly, I think it’s unacceptable the Coalition pretends they care about climate action when they are saying they won’t have a 2030 target.
“That is unacceptable, ridiculous. But let’s see what comes out of any negotiations because people really want to be in power.
“If it comes up in those negotiations, that’s really up to the Coalition to say if they’re serious; if they’re even half-serious on climate, what does it mean? And what does it mean for 2030?”
The independent MP, who snatched the blue-ribbon Liberal seat from the party at the 2022 election on a platform of integrity in politics and climate change action with the backing of Climate 200, said she was “tech agnostic” when it came to nuclear power.
“This is about, how do we transition in a way that’s right for the environment and right for the economy,” she said.
She said businesses were being hamstrung by “byzantine award rules”, and Labor’s industrial relations reforms were an “ideological zero-sum game” that had come at the “worst time of high inflation, low unemployment”.
She also defended her actions when she approached the Australian Financial Review to request Climate 200 founder Simon Holmes a Court be removed from the paper’s covert power list, declaring the suggestion that the businessman was pulling the string was “insulting to women”.
“I have a problem with this idea that women like myself get here and there’s someone covertly hiding behind us, pulling all the strings,” she said. “I’m a woman of my middle ages, I’ve spent 10 or 15 years running companies. I’ve got three kids, I’ve got a life that I’m trying to run here.
“And I feel this insinuation that somebody is out there pulling the strings is insulting to me.
“I think it’s insulting to women around Australia who are saying we make up our own minds …. Women, we make up our own minds. It’s a thing.”
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