The Greens have signaled their intention to prioritize dental and mental health coverage within Medicare as a key demand in any hung parliament scenario. Leader Adam Bandt, while acknowledging past tactics of blocking key Labor bills, asserts a new spirit of bipartisanship but remains critical of Labor's governing style. He emphasizes the Greens' role in shaping progressive solutions to housing, environmental, and inequality crises.
Putting dental and mental health into Medicare will be the Greens ’ first demand in a hung parliament , but the party will not push to sit in Labor ’s cabinet as leader Adam Bandt promises a new spirit of bipartisanship after blocking key bills during Labor ’s first term.
Bandt admitted in an interview that contentiously stymying Labor’s housing bills and other pieces of legislation had “not always been pretty”, arguing it was for the greater good of creating progressive solutions to what he described as crises for housing, the environment and inequality. Greens leader Adam Bandt says he would seek to to expand Medicare in exchange for guaranteeing support to Labor on votes on supply and confidence.“Whether that is what came across”, Bandt said, was up for debate, but the firm stance was made necessary by what he felt was Labor’s unambitious governing style., as he confirmed his party would swing the spotlight away from Anthony Albanese and towards Peter Dutton to rouse left-wing antipathy against the conservative party. The Greens’ joust with Labor on housing, the conflict in the Middle East and environmental laws in 2024 placed more scrutiny on the third force in Australian politics than at any time since the 2010 hung parliament, when Greens founder Bob Brown secured dental care for children in a deal to support then-prime minister Julia Gillard.Several lower house independent MPs secured Gillard’s path to form government, although Andrew Wilkie told this masthead that he would not do formal deals with major parties in a possible hung parliament after the next election. However, Bandt, in his clearest comments to date on his plans for a hung parliament, said he would seek to emulate his party’s founder by doing a deal with Labor to expand Medicare in exchange for guaranteeing support on votes on supply and confidence (passing budgets and maintaining the government’s status on the floor of parliament
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