Labor will continue to target the energy minister, Angus Taylor, as the government’s weak link, citing power price rises since 2015 and renewing its push to set up a Senate inquiry into his meetings with the environment department over endangered grasslands.
On Sunday the mooted inquiry took a step forward with Rex Patrick reversing Centre Alliance’s position and pledging to support the move, although Labor and the Greens still need Cory Bernardi or One Nation’s votes to succeed.
As parliament resumes, the government will press Labor on two bills to crack down on unions – one to extend court powers to deregister unions or disqualify officials, and the other to prevent deductions from employees’ pay to unregistered workers’ benefit funds.
Last week Centre Alliance’s Rex Patrick agreed in principle that unions cannot treat fines for industrial law breaches as a “cost of business” but challenged the government to go further in ensuring the proposed penalties on unions are “consistent with the corporate world”.
On Sunday Patrick told Guardian Australia the crossbench party is “close” to a deal on the workers’ benefits bill and still “working constructively” with the government on the union penalties bill.
Labor has resolved to oppose both measures and accused the government of a disproportionate focus on unions rather than employers who underpay workers.
In a further hip pocket attack, Labor’s climate change spokesman, Mark Butler, has attacked the Coalition’s record on power prices, noting Australian Energy Market Operator figures that average wholesale prices have increased by 158% across the national energy market since 2015.
“Angus Taylor’s one KPI was to reduce power prices but instead they have continued to go up, and up and up,” he said.
“It’s time Angus Taylor took some responsibility for his portfolio and returned back to the National Energy Guarantee to deliver power price relief for struggling Australian households.”
Taylor, the minister for energy since September who also gained responsibility for emissions reduction in the post-election reshuffle, will also be questioned over whether he stood to personally benefit from lobbying to water down environmental protections for grasslands in New South Wales.
In June a Guardian Australia investigation revealed Taylor met officials from the then environment minister Josh Frydenberg’s office and department to discuss the federal government’s designation of the critically endangered grasslands known as the natural temperate grassland of the south-eastern highlands.
The meetings occurred at the same time that NSW and federal investigations were under way into the poisoning of about 30 hectares that contained the grasses on a property in the state’s Monaro region owned by Jam Land Pty Ltd.
One of the directors of that company is Richard Taylor, the minister’s brother, and the minister himself holds an interest in the firm via his family investment company, Gufee.
On Thursday Bernardi and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation voted against a push to refer the matter to a Senate inquiry.
Bernardi told Guardian Australia he hadn’t had “any representations to me suggesting why I should change my vote”.
He said he had “no knowledge” about nor had he seen the letter from the NSW Farmers Association written nearly six months after the meetings were held, used by Taylor to justify the meetings.
“I always try to have an open mind but I won’t just accept their version of the facts,” he said of the Labor-Greens push to refer Taylor.
