The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, accused Malcolm Turnbull of giving up on the “hard things” on the eve of the prime minister’s six-month anniversary in the top job.
As the government struggles to name a date for the budget, usually reserved for the second week of May, Shorten said Australians were “massively disappointed” with Turnbull, due to a lack of an economic plan.
“It is clear now, at the six-month anniversary of Mr Turnbull’s ascension to the prime minister, that he’s basically given up on all of the hard things to do,” Shorten said.
“Instead he’s just obsessed about the date of the election. Australians are massively disappointed by Mr Turnbull, they want to see an economic plan.”
But the finance minister, Mathias Cormann, told Sky that the government was still working towards a May 10 budget.
This week, parliament sits from Tuesday to Thursday for the last time until May, leaving a break of almost two months between sittings.
The government continues to threaten a double-dissolution election if the Senate does not pass the bill to reinstate the Australian Building and Construction Commission even though the bill is not scheduled for debate in this last parliamentary sitting week before the budget.
The Senate will instead consider the senate reform bill with the ABCC bill introduced in May, according to Cormann.
“At the earliest opportunity when we come back in May we will be putting the Australian Building and Construction Commission legislation back to the Senate,” Cormann said.
The energy and resources minister, Josh Frydenberg, said the reality remained that if the ABCC bill did not pass, it would become an “effective trigger” for a double dissolution election.
“It’s a feature of our constitution that if you have unresolved deadlocks in the parliament that fail to pass the necessary times become an effective trigger for an election and that is open to the government,” he said.
“The government has intended to run its full term but there are these unresolved deadlocks in the Senate.”
He defended Turnbull’s performance, suggesting he had made a “strong start” in his first six months as leader – naming his innovation statement, the defence white paper and media deregulation as achievements.
But Shorten continued his attack on the prime minister, providing a contrast with Labor, which has already released policies around multinational tax, negative gearing and education.
“What I find remarkable about the current dysfunction and disunity at the heart of the Liberal government is that Mr Turnbull said that he would provide new economic leadership,” Shorten said.
“It was almost as if Australians hoped, and they had high hopes that Mr Turnbull could change the Liberal Party. The problem in the last six months is that the Liberal Party has changed Mr Turnbull.
“Something unusual has happened in the first two months of this year. The government has shrunk into being a negative small target government and the opposition has grown with policies fully funded and costed and put people at the centre of everything government does.
Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats senator David Leyonhjelm told AAP he has won a victory over the Liberal party in the battle over his party’s name.
Senator Leyonhjelm said the Liberal party advised him on Sunday it was dropping a legal challenge over the use of the word “Liberal” in his party’s name.
“Perhaps they were embarrassed to be seen to stand on the throat of a party that is actually liberal,” he said.
