The last week of the Senate sittings for 2024 was ‘hectic’, ‘confused’, ‘a shambles’ or ‘getting it done’, depending on who you want to believe. The thing is that Prime Minister Albanese’s ALP Government got most of what they wanted out of the legislative logjam in the Senate and converted it into actual legislation. Again, depending who who you want to believe, they worked co-operatively with other political parties and independents to get the job done, or ran roughshod over the process and practice of the Senate to clear the decks for an election in the first quarter of 2025. It really doesn’t matter in the end how it was done, what does matter is that a lot of ALP policy is law (after ‘consideration of some amendments’ by the House of Representatives where the ALP does have a majority).

The apparently shambolic process where Albanese cut deals with whoever he needed to in an effort to get legislation passed is similar to his role in the Gillard Government around 15 years ago. Its also similar to the standard practice in a large number of democratic countries around the world where the leader of the country would give almost anything to be the leader of a majority government. Even across the Tasman, when Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Party achieved majority status in 2020, it was the first majority government in New Zealand since the mid 1990s and reported worldwide including the BBC.

In fact when you think about it every Coalition Government in Australia has been a joint effort by two of more political parties, neither of which could form government in their own right. So it’s a bit rich for various disaffected political leaders in Australia to be claiming that doing deals and then taking the legislation to the vote is the end of civilisation as we know it. The Greens’ Adam Bandt claimed victory for a number of initiatives last Friday afternoon while also claiming Albanese’s ALP will steal some Greens policies in time for the 2025 election, allegedly copying what happened before the 2024 Queensland election. He also observed that it was important to keep (Opposition Leader Peter) Dutton out of power at the forthcoming election. The holding back until the last possible moment strategy might be clever in Bandt and the Greens collective minds, but it doesn’t bear any scrutiny. 

Depending on who you believe, there is somewhere between two and six months until the net election. If Bandt wasn’t playing politics for politics sake his party would have passed a number of pieces of legislation earlier than the final day rush. This would have given time for the legislation to be embedded into the system well before the election. Following on from this,  voters in Australia would have some time to assess the benefits and compare them to Dutton’s Coalition and their empty thought bubbles. As there is little if any granular detail behind any of Dutton’s announcements over the past two years publicly available there is no evidence of thought, planning or implementation strategy. Bandt playing hard ball until the bitter end and then effectively caving in with no or minimal change demonstrates two things. First, the ALP policies really aren’t that bad and second, that politicians in general need to realise that their party isn’t the only one that can come up with a good idea.

Which brings us to Bandt’s claim that the ALP will steal Greens policy for the 2025 election. Who knows, they might if there is something worth stealing. The Greens claim they ‘invented’ the current Queensland 50cent public transport fare policy that the former Miles ALP Government implemented in its dying days after they forced the then LNP Opposition to also support it if they won government. Regardless the policy is popular and has increased ridership on public transport across Queensland. The point is that good ideas should be recognised as such and are worth stealing. If there is a policy brought up in the election campaign that is popular and brings benefit to the community it should be implemented by whoever forms the next government.

The implementation of a good idea with altruistic intent isn’t only practiced by government. In 1958 Nils Bohlin, an engineer working for Volvo, invented the three point (‘lap-sash’) seatbelt. The three point seatbelt is a significant advance over the two point seatbelts that were designed to be placed across the hips of passengers in vehicles. Volvo went down the usual path and patented the invention, tested it and introduced it in their vehicles.

Volvo patented the designs; standard industrial practice, to protect their investment from copy-cats. Good patents offer you a defensible advantage over rivals – twenty years of monopoly rights in the U.S., for example. Having claimed this prize, Volvo were in a position to charge significant license fees to rivals, or indeed, to promote their cars as the safest on the road, by retaining exclusivity.

Remarkably, however, Volvo did neither, but made Bohlin’s patent immediately available to all. Having sponsored the R&D, they gifted their designs to competitors, to encourage mass adoption and to save lives.

The Forbes article quoted above also suggests that if Volvo had licenced the patent rather than making it available at no cost, by 1978 (the final year of exclusivity in the USA) Volvo could easily have been making USD400 million from this particular safety device. They don’t estimate how many lives have been saved. As a matter of interest, Tesla developed and shared at no cost an EV charger cable connector design widely used in the USA.

If Bandt is correct and other political parties are stealing Greens policies, maybe rather than complaining about who is copying his homework, he should be looking at the bigger picture as Volvo did. Volvo wanted vehicle drivers to be safer and making that decision cost considerable revenue. If Bandt was to work with others to help implement policy rather than stand on the sidelines throwing mud until the last second, it would go a long way to demonstrating pragmatism in politics. It would also show how the Greens could be a positive influence years before they might be able to get enough seats in Parliament to call one of their own Prime Minister.