Anthony Albanese says the Greens are ‘too embarrassed’ to fully block Labor housing bill

Anthony Albanese has accused the Greens and Coalition of being too embarrassed to vote down his housing legislation as a stand-off continues over the next measures to help more people afford homes.

The Senate voted on Wednesday to delay for two months a vote on the Government’s Help to Buy bill to set up a shared equity scheme.

The Prime Minister had said on Wednesday evening he intended to reintroduce the bill to the lower house when it next sits in October, a step that would take him down the path towards a possible double dissolution election.

But on Thursday he flipped to being more vague on the timing and instead dismissed the suggestion of a double dissolution, now claiming it was a “hypothetical” that was only being put to him by journalists.

Mr Albanese labelled the Greens, Liberals and Nationals a “no-alition” with only “vibes of policies” and no concrete plans of their own.

“We’re a government that is determined to build, that is determined to advance an agenda to improve the lives of Australians; both the Coalition and the Greens have in common that they’re blockers,” he said.

“It’s up to them to justify why they are blocking legislation that they say, Adam Bandt says, it either has merits or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t have merit, vote against it.

“They’re so embarrassed by voting against this legislation because of its merits that they have voted twice to not have a vote.”

The Greens have demanded the Government scrap negative gearing and capital gains tax breaks on investment properties and set up a taxpayer-backed property developer to build more social housing in exchange for backing Help to Buy and another bill, Build to Rent.

Mr Albanese said dealing with negative gearing and capital gains were taxation policies and unrelated to the housing legislation.

But he would not directly answer questions about whether they were off the table.

“We’re interested in the tax policy that we are implementing, not the ones that we’re not and we have been very clear about that,” he said on radio on Thursday.

“People voted in 2019 on some of those ideas, they were rejected.

“What we are interested in when it comes to housing is things that will increase supply. Now there is a whole lot of economists will tell you that the measures that you talk about will not increase supply, and the danger is they will decrease supply.”