There’s no conspiracy. It’s just…politicians playing politics. It’s spin, the same thing politicians do all the time, to varying levels of success. In this case, to enormous success, because people are constantly accusing the Greens of being obstructionist despite the complete reverse being true. The Greens have always been open to negotiations, and on both the HAFF and HtB Labor played the obstructionist by refusing to negotiate, relenting after months on the former, and threatening the nuclear option if the Greens didn’t capitulate in the latter.

The concessions I was referring to were in the Housing Australia Future Fund bill, passed with amendments negotiated by the Greens in September 2023. It sounds like you’re talking about the Help to Buy bill, which was introduced in 2023 but after passing the House of Reps in February 2024, Labor waited until September to even begin debating in the Senate, and eventually passed with Greens support in November 2024.

It doesn’t help that despite both of these bills being ostensibly based around affordable housing, Labor has explicitly gone on the record saying they do not want house prices to fall. The Greens do want that. So of course they push Labor to do better. Frankly, I would have preferred them not to pass HtB because it’s inflationary tinkering-around-the-edges rubbish. But they passed it anyway because it might help some small number of people (even if it does create more problems for everyone else), and they don’t want to be obstructionist. Unlike Labor.

i’d still call it a pyrrhic victory due to the amount of time wasted on a key issue the electorate wants action on.

Much more time was wasted by Labor for the timing of the bill in the Senate than by the time from when it began debate to finally being passed. And even that time could have been more than made up for by enacting its 40,000 places over 3 years instead of 4, as the Greens suggested. Or it could have been reduced by Labor doing their job properly and negotiating to improve policy so that it gets popular support.

Labor did none of this. Because they’d rather play politics and be seen to get a “win” in the press than to actually do the right thing. And it worked for them. The media eats up their nonsense. The public eats up their nonsense. And the country suffers for it.