Albanese vows to leave ‘nothing on the field’ in bid to defeat Coalition

Labor has gained Senate approval for laws to ease student loans for three million Australians by scaling back the indexation of their debts, as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese vows to leave “nothing on the field” in the campaign to win the next election.

The government has also passed laws to back a $16 billion funding boost for public schools and a $3.6 billion wage increase for childcare workers in the latest stage of a fraught negotiation in the upper house.

But the Greens are holding out for changes to the government’s “Nature Positive” plan, which aims to set up Environment Protection Australia to regulate new projects, in a last-minute tussle over the scale of the powers to protect wildlife and native forests.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese hailed the government’s success on two housing bills after the Greens agreed on Monday to support the Help to Buy and Build to Rent schemes.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Albanese used a private meeting with Labor caucus members on Tuesday to signal his hope that the party can maintain its majority at the next election, while urging colleagues to campaign over the summer.

“I’ll leave nothing on the field to make sure we continue as a majority Labor government,” the prime minister said, according to a caucus spokesman.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton told colleagues the Coalition was in a strong position and said the government was “faltering” because its decisions were making things harder for families.

While the Coalition has sought to block most of the government’s agenda in parliament this week, it has agreed to changes to political donations laws in an outcome some crossbenchers see as a deal to help the major parties at the expense of community independents.

The electoral reform would require faster disclosure of donations and cap the amount a candidate could receive from a donor at $20,000, while also setting an $800,000 limit on the amount a candidate could spend in a single seat.

Labor has passed several other bills after talks with the Greens and the crossbench, although the additional money for public schools will flow only when Education Minister Jason Clare finalises negotiations with each state.

The change to student debt, passed by the Senate on Tuesday night, responds to an outcry earlier this year when loan amounts jumped by 7 per cent to keep up with inflation. The new indexation will take in the slower growth in wages, with the benefits likely to be seen before the end of the year, at a cost of $240 million over four years.

The Australian Taxation Office will automatically apply the changes for 3 million people with HECS-HELP debts, backdated to June 1 last year. The government calculates that someone with a student debt of $27,000 will have about $1200 cut from their loan.

Young Australians will have to wait, however, for additional changes that could cut their debts by 20 per cent and raise the income threshold that triggers HECS-HELP repayments because Labor says the bigger reform will take place only if it wins the election.

The Coalition is opposed to the 20 per cent discount Labor is offering.

Albanese hailed the government’s success on two housing bills after the Greens agreed on Monday to support the Help to Buy scheme for home buyers and the Build to Rent tax changes for housing investors, turning his sights on the Coalition for blocking government bills.

Labor MPs raised no concerns during Tuesday’s meeting about the government’s retreat on gambling advertising – a reform that has been shelved indefinitely – but MPs have said privately they are disappointed with the decision.

The Greens have expressed concern about the government’s Nature Positive policy to set up Environment Protection Australia to oversee the regulation of new projects and their impact on the environment.

While Greens spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young has held talks with Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek on potential amendments, the government has rejected a request for a “climate trigger” in the law to block projects that increased carbon emissions.

The Coalition is opposed to the EPA, which means the government must secure the Greens’ support to deliver on its 2022 election promise to set up the agency.

While the terms of a deal are yet to be finalised, expectations are high that a deal can be done after the Greens dropped their demands for the climate trigger, as well as a crackdown on the forestry industry.

The Greens are seeking further measures to regulate development and protect nature, but the government is wary of a scare campaign by the Coalition in the mining state of Western Australia, as well as over the timber industry in Tasmania.

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