Gas, gambling and negative gearing: Husic challenges Albanese over policy ambition

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Opinion

November 28, 2025 — 5.00am

This week, as Labor wrapped up the parliamentary year cock-a-hoop with its commanding majority, its new environmental laws passed and an extended honeymoon summer ahead after a historic election win, a new book appeared from one of this masthead’s favourite columnists.

Niki Savva’s Earthquake: The Election that Shook Australia analyses, in forensic detail, what went wrong for Peter Dutton and the Coalition in the 2025 election campaign. For that reason alone, it’s worth reading. But Savva also reveals excruciating new details about Labor’s factional manoeuvrings – led by the Victorian Right’s Richard Marles and Sam Rae – that led to the axing of cabinet ministers Mark Dreyfus and Ed Husic straight after the election.

As Husic said at the time, Marles, as deputy prime minister, should have been more statesman and less factional assassin. But Marles had the numbers and he used them ruthlessly to promote his lieutenants.

The consequence of that, as Savva reports, is that the deputy prime minister’s relationship with the NSW Right – the self-styled king-making faction – will never be restored, severely damaging any chance Marles has of becoming prime minister one day.

Dreyfus and Husic have mostly kept their counsel since the election, though Dreyfus last week called for Labor to pursue a referendum on fixed four-year terms. Husic has carefully confined his commentary to certain issues since his initial spray at the deputy prime minister.

Until now.

Long seen by some in caucus as a lone wolf, the western Sydney MP has decided to speak up from the backbench because he is concerned the government lacks ambition and that too many in the caucus are afraid to speak. The party has overcorrected for the dissent, chaos and ill-discipline of the Rudd-Gillard years.

Asked if he was punished for speaking out on issues such as Gaza last term, and if that contributed to his demotion, Husic has a one-word answer: “Yes.”

“Strong leadership can handle strong views,” Husic tells me. “I mean, especially on things like Gaza, where I thought we needed to take – I think we needed to act a lot faster and a lot stronger on that … I’ll always be haunted by just how many kids were killed in that part of the world.”

With an eye on 2026 and the government’s reform agenda, Husic – the former cabinet minister, experienced MP and senior figure in the NSW Right – wants the Albanese government to be bolder. He has specific ideas in mind.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about [it] in this 50th year since the dismissal of Whitlam,” he says. “Too many people will tell you, readily enough, that the lesson of Whitlam was trying to do too much in too short a space of time. But I don’t think the answer to that is to do too little over a longer piece of time.”

While Anthony Albanese speaks regularly about wanting to make Labor the natural party of government again, about the unity of purpose in the caucus and about taking voters with them, Husic says Labor should be the “champions of change”.

“The thing about Labor is we have never been about status quo; we have been about changing things for the better. I really detect a sense in our supporters that they want us to be a government that does big things for the betterment of the nation.

“I think the biggest danger for the government is that we slouch into groupthink, believing that different views are dangerous. Our caucus has had a tradition of debate. We’ve had fiery debates in caucus and still gone on to win government, and if we continue the way that we are going … I am genuinely concerned that things that are going [to happen], that have the potential to go off the rails, [that they won’t] get called out early.”

So what are some of the policy issues that are festering away that could cause the government trouble down the track? While the heat may have gone out of Gaza, Husic nominates east coast gas supplies (and their impact on the cost of living), gambling advertising and negative gearing as problems to be tackled.

‘Do we really need to own five to 10 homes?’

Ed Husic

“Gambling risks being a running sore for the government,” Husic says, adding that fellow NSW Right MP Mike Freelander was correct and courageous to say if a conscience vote was allowed, the parliament (including Labor MPs) would be able to pass some of the gambling advertising reforms advocated for by the late Labor MP Peta Murphy.

Husic doesn’t want to see Australia’s allies such as Japan or South Korea miss out on gas supply for their markets. But, referring to an Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis report released in May, the former industry minister does have a problem with Japan onselling Australian gas, purchased through long-term contracts, to third countries at a profit. Especially when the amount onsold is up to 1.6 times the entire annual gas consumption of east coast Australia.

“What we should do is for every year that they [Japan] resell gas, that amount gets taken off the next year’s supply,” Husic says.

Like many, he is concerned Australia has too many eggs in the “mining and agriculture” basket and wants the economy to be more complex, and to make more.

And while he has cooled on his call last term to pursue corporate tax cuts (which caused a headache for Treasurer Jim Chalmers) and would now prefer the government to focus on greater incentives for businesses investment, he does have an eye on one of Australia’s most-discussed tax breaks: negative gearing, and its flow-on impact on both housing supply and the government’s credibility on housing policy.

Husic says he is a big supporter of the government’s $32 billion worth of housing policies but, “I have got to say, parliamentarians owning so many homes. I just don’t know if that’s a good look when we’re trying to consider housing reform. I don’t.”

He wants the ministerial code of conduct, which has strict rules forbidding ministers from owning shares because of potential conflicts of interest, to cover owning multiple properties too. “I think the same sort of view should be taken about how many homes we own because people won’t take us seriously, frankly, on that [housing] reform … Do we really need to own five to 10 homes?”

He is not naive and expects his call to be shut down, as it was last year when this masthead revealed Labor was modelling negative gearing changes, but Husic believes Labor in government can sell a winding-back of the tax break to voters, as long as current investments are not affected and negative gearing is still allowed for new homes being built.

Since the election, the resignations and bloodletting have almost all been on the Coalition side. Savva’s book is a reminder that even stable governments have problems bubbling away just below the surface.

Is Husic still ambitious to return to the ministry? “I went into politics to do stuff. I’d very much welcome the chance to be a minister, but I want to be a minister who gets stuff done.”

His intervention is a challenge to colleagues that Labor is at its best when it debates policy, rather than just fall in behind the leader.