The two-party system is girding its loins against democratic challengers

Labor and the Coalition find common cause

Some things are shocking without being surprising.

Labor and the Coalition teamed up this week to block legislation that would put some restrictions on pork barrelling. In fact, the amendment Labor joined with the Coalition in blocking was an amendment Labor themselves had written when in opposition, as Rachel Withers reports:

Wentworth MP Allegra Spender yesterday moved an amendment to the Infrastructure Australia bill aimed at stamping out pork-barrelling, requiring a cost-benefit analysis of any project worth more than $100 million – it’s the same amendment Anthony Albanese himself unsuccessfully put when he was shadow infrastructure minister. As Spender pointed out, you’d have thought this was “an uncontroversial amendment, one which simply requires public money be used prudently and one which was previously proposed by the prime minister himself”. But…Labor and the Coalition teamed up to vote down the amendment, with Infrastructure Minister Catherine King defending the move by cla…