The Point Live: Coalition continues to tank as parliament enters its final week. As it happened.

Greens senator Barbara Pocock has spoken on the rental affordability crisis:

Australia is in a national housing crisis that is spiralling out of control and renters are paying the price. People on low and moderate incomes, who can’t afford to buy a home, are facing extreme rental stress. Essential workers – teachers, nurses and police – can’t afford to live near where they work.

Across Australia, we’re seeing a rental market that is unaffordable. With vacancy rates at record lows, the rental market is so tight that landlords can hike prices leaving renters with nowhere else to go. That’s exactly why the Government needs to introduce rent caps – to stop profiteering and give people a fighting chance.

The problem is that successive governments have created a housing system where rich property investors get billions in tax discounts to buy multiple properties, while millions of others can’t even find an affordable rental, let alone buy a house of their own. It’s no wonder 89 per cent of Australians agree we’re in a housing crisis.

The Government’s $181 billion tax breaks for wealthy investors – via the capital gains tax discount and negative gearing – are locking out first home buyers and forcing rents to skyrocket.

Without tackling the root causes of the housing crisis, Labor’s policies, such as their 5% deposit scheme, are pushing property prices up further – locking even more people out of affordable rentals and home ownership. That includes essential workers, such as nurses and teachers, who are already struggling to afford homes near their workplaces.

This government needs to start treating housing as a human right instead of a game of monopoly. Rather than giving billions of tax breaks to wealthy property investors, the Government should be investing directly into building good quality homes and renting them to people who need them at prices they can actually afford.”

Helen Haines has followed up her op-ed on regional renewable zones with a speech to the parliament, where she spoke on Barnaby Joyce’s scrap net zero bill.

Haines says Joyce’s bill seeks to deny regional Australia financial freedoms:

This bill would wipe out almost $10 billion in projected payments to farmers, strip $1.9 billion from community benefit programs for regional councils and undermine thousands of jobs expected from renewable projects,” Dr Haines said. 

And there is no alternative proposal – just repeal, rescind, omit.” 

From Haines’ statement:

Dr Haines said that while the Coalition claims to stand up for regional Australia, its actions were not helping communities achieve the potential prosperity available from the energy transition. 

Polling commissioned by Renew Australia for All shows strong support for renewable energy across regional Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales – including in Mr Joyce’s own electorate of New England. 

“While the Member for New England says ‘no’ to net zero, the majority of his constituents are saying ‘yes’.”  

She highlighted communities already securing major benefits including Armidale Regional Council establishing a multi-million-dollar renewable future fund, a $2 million fund over 30 years and mobile tower in Goorambat in Indi, and Hay Council negotiating $26 million in community benefit.

Dr Haines said regional Australia is on the brink of a new gold rush, with $12.7 billion invested in renewable energy in 2024 alone. 

“Just like the gold rush shaped our towns, this transition can deliver long-lasting prosperity – better infrastructure, local jobs, new income streams for farmers and cheaper, more reliable power.” 

“But that prosperity isn’t guaranteed. It depends on strong community benefit funds that return wealth to the towns hosting these projects.” 

She stressed that early, genuine community engagement is what turns renewable investment into “intergenerational benefits.” 

“Places like Dubbo and Armidale show what’s possible – but they’re still the exception. Developers can’t just ‘plug in and play’. Communities deserve to be at the negotiating table.” 

“If the transition fails regional Australians, the whole transition risks failing.”   

“But if communities share in the benefits, we can secure a new era of regional prosperity – our next gold rush.” 

We will bring you some of the press conference independent MPs, social service and poverty advocates, legal experts and disability advocates held just a short while ago very soon, but here is a piece from the Antipoverty Centre’s Kirsten O’Connell and Maiy Azize, Deputy Director of Anglicare Australia have written for The Point on why the police powers over welfare amendment is so bad:

For most people in Australia, losing your income without warning would be unthinkable. For someone living on a Centrelink payment, it could mean losing your home, your food, your medication, and your ability to keep your children safe.

And yet the Government is trying to give itself the power to cut that income off before a person has been found guilty of anything at all.

It is punishment without conviction. It has no place in a fair society.

This is not a small administrative change or an obscure bureaucratic power. It would allow police to trigger the cancellation of income payments, family assistance, and even parental leave for people who have not been arrested, charged, or convicted.

In fact, the person may not even be aware a warrant exists.

There is no guarantee those payments would ever be reinstated, even if the person is later found not guilty or have no case to answer. There is no guarantee they would receive backpay. There is no independent review. A single minister would hold enormous discretionary power over whether a family has money for rent and food.

This approach fits into a much larger and dangerous trend. The Robodebt Royal Commission laid bare how governments have increasingly treated people on social security payments as suspects, how quickly political rhetoric slips into implying that people who receive social security are doing something wrong. The Commission warned about the way politicians exploit “taxpayer versus welfare recipient” narratives, and how easily that kind of language slides into punitive policy.

This latest proposal shows that lesson is being ignored.

Independent MP Helen Haines has written in defence of renewable projects in the regions for The Weekly Times:

The legacy of the gold rush is etched across regional Victoria – in our grand public buildings,
historic town centres, telecommunications, roads and railways and in the generations who call the regions home because their ancestors were drawn to a new opportunity.

Today, regional Australia stands on the cusp of another gold rush. This time, the opportunity is
powered not by precious metal, but by the global shift to renewable energy.
Indeed, the Clean Energy Council reported $12.7 billion in new investments in Australian
renewable energy in 2024 alone. Regional communities understand better than most why this transition is essential. We are living with the consequences of climate change every day – destructive floods, relentless bushfires, and increasingly unpredictable weather patterns.
Some politicians continue to cling to coal in the name of stability, but the market has already
moved on.

Investors simply aren’t investing in ageing fossil fuel infrastructure and are instead looking to new forms of energy generation. Pretending otherwise is a fantasy.
Households are already leading the energy revolution with 4.2 million Australian households taking up rooftop solar and more than 100,000 homes installing a battery. But to build a truly reliable and resilient grid in the most realistic and cost-effective way, large-scale renewable generation and transmission are essential.

If done well, this shift can unlock a renewed boom of prosperity for regional Australia – delivering jobs, investment, new income streams for farmers, reliable and cheaper power and long-term infrastructure.

The truth is clear, the regions hosting energy projects are vital stakeholders in the transition to
renewables and must also enjoy the prosperity it creates. And a critical mechanism to make
that happen?

Long-term, substantial community benefit funds.

Where communities and proponents have developed trusting relationships through early,
effective community engagement, they have secured stronger agreements, clearer financial benefits and more say over local outcomes.

Towns like Dubbo and Armidale, where multimillion-dollar funds are being established, are setting up intergenerational prosperity. But right now, these examples are the exception, not the rule.Community benefit should not be an optional extra.

Communities hosting wind farms, solar farms, transmission lines and batteries should receive long-term benefit funds, cheaper local energy, and improved services, legacies that remain for years to come. Communities must be proactive in advocating for this.

The Snowy Hydro scheme transformed regional Australia with lasting housing, roads and jobs.
Today’s renewables rollout should be equally impactful. Because if the transition fails regional Australians, it risks failing altogether. But if we get engagement right, if benefit funds flow, if prosperity is shared, our energy transition can secure a thriving future for the regions for decades to come.
Renewable developers can’t simply “plug in and play”.

Now is the moment for regional Australians to take our place at the negotiating table – to work together, act smart, and secure a prosperous future on our own terms

We’re nearly at the end of the parliamentary year but the Albanese Government has not taken the opportunity to introduce legislation to ban online advertising for gambling. Such a move would be hugely popular as polling research from The Australia Institute shows. It would also help reduce the enormous rate of underage gambling. Around 600,000 young people gamble online yearly.

Banning advertising for online gambling was a recommendation from the bi-partisan report, You Win Some ,You Lose More, known as the Murphy review, named after late Labor MP Peta Murphy who championed the inquiry.

Instead, as we read in the Australian Financial Review last week, Labor is likely to drop the proposal.

Taking real action on gambling advertising is just one of the ideas in Australia Institute Press’ new book, A Time for Bravery. In his essay “More Than We Can Afford: the High Price of Gambling Advertising”, Tim Costello writes:

“Since the Prime Minister’s thumping election win in May 2025, there has been political commentary that his government could and should be braver in its second term. On gambling, I could not agree more.

We have seen brave souls within the two major parties agitating for a full ban on all gambling ads and other reforms — some of them have even been public advocates. But we still do not have enough political will for reform.”  

You can preorder your copy here.

Labor insists its environmental reforms, aimed at speeding up project approvals while balancing nature protections, will get over the line with the minister flagging further concessions to strike a deal.

As the federal parliament returns for the final sitting week of the year, the Albanese government is yet to secure the numbers it needs in the Senate to pass the bill.

“Under no illusions, we are going to pass these laws this week, and it’s going to happen with either the coalition or the Greens,” Murray Watt told reporters in Canberra on Monday.

“They have an important choice to make about whether they want to be part of this process and work with us cooperatively, or whether they want to sit on the sidelines complaining and see us do a deal with the opposite party.”

In a bid to win over the Greens, Labor has promised tougher rules on native forest logging which would still go ahead under the new legislation, in addition to scrapping a provision to allow coal and gas projects to bypass the main approval process. 

The coalition has been offered changes to limit “stop work” orders, and wants a requirement for a project to report its carbon emissions to be dumped.

Senator Watt said based off negotiations at the weekend, he was “very confident” in landing an agreement.

“We are prepared to make some further concessions in order to pass these laws, because it’s not in anyone’s interests for us to hang on to the current laws that we’ve got at the moment, which are completely broken,” he said.

Opposition environment spokeswoman Angie Bell said the coalition was “not in a rush to fail” and was seeking to work constructively with the government.

“The ball is in the minister’s court,” she told ABC radio.

“I would need to see the amendments in terms of those substantive issues, and there’s a list of seven, but there are more than that that I presented to the minister.”

Just one more on the hollowness of the ‘once in a generation’ line the government is using for its mining friendly environment laws, listening back to ABC radio RN Breakfast and Murray Watt says:

There’s certainly some more that we could compromise on. There is a limit to what we’re prepared to compromise on [but] I’ve always said that I’m a realist. I am a senator. I work in the Senate. I understand that you’ve got to make changes to bills to get them through.

They had them through last year, but they didn’t want to upset the mining industry. So here we are.

Independent MP Andrew Wilkie will introduce a private members bill today to end online gambling for greyhound racing.

Sophie Scamps will second the bill.

Wilkie:

My private members bill would remove the exemption for online wagering on greyhound racing in the Interactive Gambling Act 2001. This would end online wagering on greyhound racing and, because online betting props up the industry’s profitability, hasten the demise of an already declining industry,” Mr Wilkie said.

Australia has the ignominious honour of hosting the largest greyhound racing industry in the world, and has around half the world’s remaining operational greyhound tracks. Australian’s themselves account for roughly 70 per cent of all bets placed on dog racing worldwide. And all the while dogs are suffering, with 99 dogs having died and 9,663 having been injured on tracks in Australia this year alone. 

Online wagering is propping up this deeply unpopular and cruel industry and it is beyond time to ban it.”

Given the mining friendly environment legislation will be getting a bit of attention this week, let’s take a look at some of the arguments which are being made by Labor.

We keep hearing that it has been five years since Graeme Samuel handed in the report Sussan Ley had commissioned him to do as environment minister. Yes, that is true. But putting aside the question of whether that is a flex in itself given how much the world has moved on in five years, FOUR of those years were because of Labor. And just last year Anthony Albanese scuttled the deal Tanya Plibersek made with the Greens. So it is Albanese who has slowed the reform, not the parliament.

We are also hearing a lot about a ‘once in a generation opportunity’ – which, I’m sorry, what? Why? It’s a piece of legislation that can be changed at anytime if the parliament has the will. You know – like how Labor and the Liberals came together last year with the salmon farming laws? That defied the science? Because that is how parliament works – anytime you have the numbers, you can change the law.

And all this talk of a ‘wedge’ – save me. The deal Murray Watt is making is ‘I’ll save the forrests’ to get the Greens to pass the bill or ‘I’ll log the forrests’ to get the Coalition on board. This is what is at stake here.

No wonder people are confused as to what the government stands for.

Labor MP Matt Thistlethwaite (as someone with a strong lisp, saying his name in commentary always needs some extra practice) was asked about the $96m BoM website upgrade and said:

I think that that cost blowout is ridiculous. And that’s why Murray Watt has launched an investigation to try and find out how this has occurred. The BOM website is pretty important. I use it regularly to see what’s going on with the surf and where the good swells are going to be. But more importantly, farmers use it on a daily basis to run their businesses. So, it is an important piece of government infrastructure. And that cost blowout is ridiculous and simply unacceptable.