Disclaimer: I’m here from /all and not Australian, so there’s a nonzero chance I’m talking out of my ass.
Meaningful change or nothing? Blame labor all you want, the greens voted against an improvement.
It’s not pretty, but from my limited knowledge it seems that voting down the bill was the best course of action. A small party’s goal in a two-party system is to twist the major parties’ arms and force them to effect meaningful change, however the party’s constituents define meaningful change to be. Jumping at the first sign of progress and allowing Labor to claim they’ve solved the housing crisis would defeat any chance of a real solution, establish precedent that Greens will back off from their demands for breadcrumbs and throw the ball in the Liberals’ court after Labor’s bandaid bill predictably fails to accomplish anything. If the Greens wanted to provide something better than a Labor majority both for housing and in general, it seems to me that rejecting the bill was the optimal course of action.
It’s not pretty, but from my limited knowledge it seems that voting down the bill was the best course of action
The thing is, they didn’t vote down the bill. They stalled it by a few weeks while they extracted concessions out of Labor, then Labor secretly dropped the concessions and tried to pass the original bill, then the Greens forced them back into presenting the improved version with yet more improvements. Then they passed it.
It was a long term investment fund anyway, so not a short-term fix, so delaying it by a few weeks isn’t a big deal, especially if the end result is better. Plus, the version that got passed actually changed from having a maximum spend per year to a minimum. So its short term benefit was actually improved by the Greens delaying it.
Like ziltoid101 said (I think) there is a balance. If the greens vote inline with labor every time then they are too weak - why vote for them. But if they block everything then they are preventing progress.
I feel like they have been too far in the second part but thats just, like my opinion man.
Can we please just agree that Dutton is batshit crazy.
to me $10 billion for social housing is a massive win and huge progress over previous governments, the greens demanding cherries on top by blocking it right up until the last minute in the middle of a housing crisis is a joke, they took credit for forcing labor to go around them and give money directly to the states as well
the greens are free to pick their battles, in my opinion they picked the wrong one, for that after 15 years of preferencing the greens above labor they are now behind it
So… (spoiler alert for everyone who is only up to the June 2023 episode of APH in the Vice article):
In September 2023 the $10B housing bill was passed by Labor and the Greens.
Bit of a shame Labor held back for so long on the Greens amendments, but Labor did show here they can work around the inevitable delays of robust parliamentary discourse by approving interim funding for housing in June to get things started while the details of long term funding were nutted out the crossbench.
So OP’s claims that this vote by the Greens is “unforgivable” is basically propagandist bullshit, because the Greens passed a solution only months later…
Disclaimer: I’m here from /all and not Australian, so there’s a nonzero chance I’m talking out of my ass.
It’s not pretty, but from my limited knowledge it seems that voting down the bill was the best course of action. A small party’s goal in a two-party system is to twist the major parties’ arms and force them to effect meaningful change, however the party’s constituents define meaningful change to be. Jumping at the first sign of progress and allowing Labor to claim they’ve solved the housing crisis would defeat any chance of a real solution, establish precedent that Greens will back off from their demands for breadcrumbs and throw the ball in the Liberals’ court after Labor’s bandaid bill predictably fails to accomplish anything. If the Greens wanted to provide something better than a Labor majority both for housing and in general, it seems to me that rejecting the bill was the optimal course of action.
The thing is, they didn’t vote down the bill. They stalled it by a few weeks while they extracted concessions out of Labor, then Labor secretly dropped the concessions and tried to pass the original bill, then the Greens forced them back into presenting the improved version with yet more improvements. Then they passed it.
It was a long term investment fund anyway, so not a short-term fix, so delaying it by a few weeks isn’t a big deal, especially if the end result is better. Plus, the version that got passed actually changed from having a maximum spend per year to a minimum. So its short term benefit was actually improved by the Greens delaying it.
Like ziltoid101 said (I think) there is a balance. If the greens vote inline with labor every time then they are too weak - why vote for them. But if they block everything then they are preventing progress.
I feel like they have been too far in the second part but thats just, like my opinion man.
Can we please just agree that Dutton is batshit crazy.
to me $10 billion for social housing is a massive win and huge progress over previous governments, the greens demanding cherries on top by blocking it right up until the last minute in the middle of a housing crisis is a joke, they took credit for forcing labor to go around them and give money directly to the states as well
the greens are free to pick their battles, in my opinion they picked the wrong one, for that after 15 years of preferencing the greens above labor they are now behind it
So… (spoiler alert for everyone who is only up to the June 2023 episode of APH in the Vice article):
In September 2023 the $10B housing bill was passed by Labor and the Greens.
Bit of a shame Labor held back for so long on the Greens amendments, but Labor did show here they can work around the inevitable delays of robust parliamentary discourse by approving interim funding for housing in June to get things started while the details of long term funding were nutted out the crossbench.
So OP’s claims that this vote by the Greens is “unforgivable” is basically propagandist bullshit, because the Greens passed a solution only months later…