Labor and the Greens will use the final sitting week of the year to ramp up pressure on the Turnbull government and attorney general George Brandis.

After last week’s revelations of an alleged sweetheart deal between Brandis and the West Australian government, which could have cost the commonwealth hundreds of millions of dollars, Labor leader Bill Shorten and Greens’ leader Richard Di Natale want to keep the political focus squarely on the Brandis this week.

The Greens will on Monday move to refer the affair to the Senate legal and constitutional affairs committee.



Senator Nick McKim, the Greens’ justice spokesperson, says he would like the inquiry to report by the end of the week.

“The allegation that Senator Brandis instructed the solicitor general to effectively run a dead argument in the high court is the most serious he has faced in a career that is strewn with misconduct,” McKim said on Sunday.

“We need to get Senator Brandis out of witness protection and into an inquiry where he can be questioned about these extraordinary allegations.”

The affair threatens to derail the government’s agenda, because the Coalition had wanted the focus of the final week to be legislation, particularly its attempt to get the Australian Building and Construction Commission bill through the Senate, along with the backpacker tax.

Last week, opposition parties combined in the Senate to lower the backpacker tax from the government’s preferred 19% rate to 10.5%, but the government rejected the Senate amendments and sent the bill back down to the House of Representatives to have them removed.

Farmers and some Coalition backbenchers have become increasingly frustrated about the fight over the backpacker tax. They say it needs to be resolved by the end of this week otherwise the rate will revert back to 32.5% on 1 January – unless the government is prepared to accept another compromise proposal.

The Nationals leader, Barnaby Joyce, has said the Coalition will not compromise on its 19% plan.



But key Nationals MP Andrew Broad said on Sunday that he would support a 15% tax rate compromise just to get the bill passed this year.

“Parliament mustn’t adjourn until we deal with it, the politicians cannot go into a Christmas break with a tax rate of 32.5% – this would undermine workers for horticulture,” Broad told The Weekly Times.

A Sky News interview with Tony Abbott on Sunday has created another distraction for the government.



Abbott signalled, yet again, that be would be willing to work in the Turnbull cabinet, saying John Howard and Peter Costello worked well as a team, despite not being great friends.

“You don’t have to idolise someone to be able to work with them,” he told Sky News.

Bill Shorten will introduce on Monday a private members’ bill to crack down on the 457 visa program in a bid to get ahead of the government on the issue.

Two weeks ago he released a new “comprehensive plan” to help unemployed Australians find a job, saying he was very concerned the 457 visa program was being exploited.

The Migration Amendment (Putting Local Workers First) Bill 2016 would introduce more rigorous requirements for labour market testing to ensure business owners looked harder for Australian citizens to fill vacant positions before trying to hire workers from overseas.