By the end of the sitting day on Thursday, it was all smiles for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. For the sum of $500 million towards social housing, he had corralled the Greens into voting with the federal government on a long list of legislation, from an overhaul of the running of the Reserve Bank to the Future Made in Australia program and changes to superannuation.

The prime minister already knew that for another set of bills – the inchoate social media ban for children under 16 and its draconian amendments to the Migration Act – he could count on the support of the opposition.

Mocking its leader Peter Dutton on the floor of the House on Thursday, Albanese could be heard saying that “you’re not being aggressive enough”. The two men seem to have wedged each other into a perpetual tough-guy contest.

Forty-five pieces of legislation were passed by the end of this, the last sitting week for the year.

A race to secure parliamentary assent for a range of measures before the holiday season is hardly new. But when Finance Minister Katy Gallagher told the Senate that many of the bills in question “have been on the notice paper for almost a year”, she highlighted troubling aspects of this week’s events in Parliament House.

This Labor government........

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