Wong in full flight on housing attack as Labor, Greens scramble for moral high ground

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 debated the bill for less than an hour. It tried the same thing on Wednesday evening.

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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.

In a riposte to Wong, Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young declared the government’s mandate did not extend to the Senate, where the minor party holds the balance of power, and denounced the motion as a “stunt”.

“It is a sick joke, that this government continues to pretend that they are dealing with the housing crisis, while gambling everything on the stock market,” Hanson-Young fired back.

“This Senate works best when we stick to the issues and stay away from the personal jibes.”

Observing the spectacle was leader of the opposition in the Senate, Simon Birmingham.

“Well, it’s always unfortunate to see lovers having a fight isn’t it?,” Birmingham quipped.

“You know government ministers are feeling the pressure when they start to personalise the debate and we saw there in Senator Wong’s contribution that it was a personalisation of the debate targeting, in particular, the Greens housing spokesperson.

“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.”

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.