Federal Election: Anthony Albanese sharpens attacks on production tax credits in pre-election pitch
Dan Jervis-BardyThe West Australian
Fri, 29 November 2024 4:03PM
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Dan Jervis-Bardy
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese reacts during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra, Tuesday, November 26, 2024. (AAP Image/Lukas Coch) NO ARCHIVING Credit: LUKAS COCH/AAPIMAGE
Anthony Albanese will sharpen his attacks on the Coalition’s opposition to production tax credits for miners as part of a pre-election pitch to WA voters that will ramp up during a visit to Perth next week.
The opportunity to rush the $13.7 billion worth of concessions through Parliament — in the face Peter Dutton’s opposition — has emerged as a powerful motivator for the Prime Minister to return to Canberra for February’s sitting rather than go straight to an early election.
Mr Albanese ended the parliamentary year on a high after passing 45 bills in a chaotic final sitting week, including world-first laws to ban children under-16 accessing social media and setting up his signature Future Made in Australia agenda.
While laws to create a Federal Environment Protection Agency and reform political donations are still unresolved, Mr Albanese has indicated passing the tax production credits is his biggest remaining legislative priority this term.
Amid the bedlam in the Senate on Thursday, the laws passed the lower house just three days after their introduction to Parliament.
The 10 per cent tax credit on costs for critical minerals refining and processing and $2 per kilogram tax incentive for green hydrogen production won’t be offered until 2027-28.
However, the Government believes passing the laws quickly amid resistance from the Coalition sends a powerful message to voters in mining states WA and Queensland.
Speaking in Parliament House on Friday morning, Mr Albanese said it was “astonishing” the Coalition opposed a policy which by design “rewards success”.
Resources Minister Madeliene King — WA’s only Cabinet minister — said the tax breaks were the “largest package of support ever provided by a government to the resources sector”.
Mr Albanese will renew the tax credits dispute when he travels to Perth late next week.
The visit will likely see Mr Albanese shoulder-to-shoulder with Roger Cook for the first time since the Prime Minister intervened to spike a deal on the EPA amid pressure from the WA Premier and the State’s miners.
The Prime Minister downplayed the influence of Mr Cook’s lobbying, claiming he shelved the laws because Labor didn’t have the numbers to get it through Parliament.
As revealed in The West Australian, Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek had agreed a deal with the Greens and independent senator David Pocock before Mr Albanese stepped in late on Tuesday.
But even if that deal hadn’t been nixed the Government might have come up short in the Senate given ex-Labor senator Fatima Payman — who loomed as a potential deciding vote — was no guarantee to support it.
While Labor ministers are publicly maintaining the EPA is still on the agenda for next year, insiders privately admit it could be too politically risky given the threat of a major backlash in WA.
With Parliament wrapped up for the year, Mr Albanese will use the coming weeks to sharpen his election message, including at more US-style campaign rally events like the one he used to launch Labor’s pledge to slash HECS debts by 20 per cent if re-elected.
Mr Albanese even road-tested a new campaign slogan on Friday, telling voters “we have your back”.
Senior Labor sources said the re-election pitch had three core elements: what the Albanese Government has achieved in the past three years, its “offering” for a second term and the risk of Mr Dutton as Prime Minister.
The West understands the Greens will also focus increasingly on Mr Dutton — rather than Labor — as the minor party pivots its political strategy after a string of poor performances at elections around the country.
The final week flurry of legislative activity, particularly the passage of long-stalled housing bills, has injected new confidence into Labor MPs who were beginning to question the Government’s direction and the Prime Minister’s own political judgment.
One Labor MP said Mr Albanese had managed to get the “game back on track”, but cautioned the summer could throw up “curveballs”, such as bushfires and any immediate consequences from the start of the Trump administration.
The Coalition also heads into the summer break upbeat, level or ahead of Labor in most major opinion polls less than three years after Scott Morrison led to it to a thumping defeat.
One senior Liberal MP argued that while Labor managed to pass a pile of bills in Parliament’s final week, none would immediately address the main issue facing Australians — cost of living.
The MP said the Opposition was in a “solid position” but nobody was getting complacent, adding “you won’t find anyone going overseas on holiday” over summer break.
“It is going to be a restless summer,” they said.
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