Increase to the unemployment payment looms as flashpoint, while a working group will try to resolve difficult area of refugee policy

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Labor could adopt a position supporting both an increase in Newstart, as well as a commitment to a review of income support, at the party’s national conference which starts in Adelaide on Sunday.

Party sources have told Guardian Australia there are discussions in train over a form of words committing both to an increase in the payment and a broader review – although there is reluctance to specify a dollar amount, given the hefty fiscal impact of the proposal.

Newstart looms as a conference flashpoint because Darcy Byrne, an ally of frontbencher Anthony Albanese and a left-wing delegate to the Adelaide event, plans to move a motion to increase the payment.

The Australian Council of Social Service has intensified a lobbying offensive of conference delegates, asking them to endorse a two-step process where Newstart would be increased by $75 a week, followed by a review of the payment.

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As well as the internal jockeying over the conference position on Newstart, a working group will also meet on Friday in an effort to settle outstanding issues in the refugee chapter of Labor’s platform.

The group is considering an increase in the humanitarian intake, an appropriate safety net for people claiming asylum, and rights of review for people rejected under the fast-track process implemented by the Abbott government in 2014, covering asylum seekers who arrived in Australia between August 2012 and January 2014.

While a consensus is emerging on the first two issues, the third is more contentious. Some on the left believe that asylum seekers who have had their applications refused should have the right to a full merits review of their asylum claims.

The working group will also look to incorporating the terms of Kerryn Phelps’s bill into the party platform. That bill, adopted by Labor in the last parliamentary sitting, ensures that medical decisions determine whether to evacuate people from offshore detention, subject to conditions that preserve ministerial oversight of the process.

There are also efforts to try to defuse a dispute over environmental regulations.

A draft national platform signed off by the ALP national executive in October committed Labor to significant legal reforms as well as an independent national Environment Protection Authority (EPA) and a national environment commission that would act as an environmental watchdog.

But in an embarrassing process stuff up revealed by Guardian Australia last month, some of the commitments were incorporated into the draft before they were agreed.

The shadow environment minister, Tony Burke, is understood to be unhappy with regulatory power being exercised by an agency rather than the responsible minister, but complicating the dispute, the proposed reforms have been approved in advance of the conference by 470 ALP branches.

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The changes also have strong support from environment groups.

Lisa Garcia is a former senior adviser who led the Obama administration’s environmental justice program and policy within the United States EPA. She is now the vice president of litigation for the environmental not-for-profit Earthjustice.

Before the looming conference debate, she told Guardian Australia there were benefits to setting up national institutions responsible for oversight of environmental protection.

“First of all, there’s a regulatory consistency so businesses, no matter where they are based, be it Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, will have the same standards and they know what is expected,” she said.

“Secondly, there’s also consistency for communities to know that there’s the ability for public participation.”

Garcia said a national environment commission could also ensure that there was compliance with environment law and enforcement was not subject “to the whims of each state”.