Australia news live: Watt predicts ‘easier’ time in Senate; Liberals need ‘timeless values’, says NSW leader

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Watt also said Labor was under “no illusions” about the number of people voting for the party for the first time, or rejoining it – while adding “new things” would emerge this term.

The federal government picked up seven seats in the senator’s home state of Queensland in the federal election, including six in Brisbane and Peter Dutton’s seat of Dickson. Federally, Labor has enjoyed almost a 3% swing in its favour.

We want to retain that trust by acting in accordance with the mandate that we received. There will be new things that emerge, globally and domestically, that we’ll need to deal with. But the priority is about respecting the mandate that we’ve been given.

It is a significant change to the Senate … The idea that we can potentially get an outcome with either the Coalition or the Greens without having to cobble together all sorts of Coalitions may make things a little bit easier.

I guess it will also depend on the approach that those parties take in the Senate and I think if there’s one thing that I would hope that both the Coalition and the Greens have learned from the last term is that being obstructive to the government’s agenda actually ends up rebounding on them. I think that that was a really key reason that we saw the Greens in particular go backwards, particularly here in Queensland.

I think this term … we’ll actually now be able to deliver a lot of the things that we have promised in housing.

We think that we can meet the needs of younger Australians through the policy platform that we took to the election. Of course, the commitment to reduce Hecs debts by 20% was very popular among younger people. The commitments we’ve made to build more homes for first home-buyers. The 5% deposit scheme backed in by the government was very popular among young voters. Continue reading...