ELLEN RANSLEY: Anthony Albanese happily heads to Quad meeting after a week of chaos at home

Anthony Albanese jetted off to the United States on Thursday with hopes of a more productive weekend on the world stage than the mess he was leaving behind in Canberra.

Regional security will be top of mind during his quick jaunt to Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware for a Quad meeting, but like a buzzing noise he just can’t shake, the frustrating circus of domestic politics will still be here when he gets home.

With an election fast approaching, the Senate sat without the distraction of the lower house this week, in what was supposed to be a chance to catch up on a backlog of Bills.

In the end, it only managed to pass two pieces of legislation and facilitated drawing out a saga the Government had hoped to wrap up months ago.

Despite a last-ditch attempt on Monday, Labor and the Greens failed to reach an agreement on the shared equity Help to Buy scheme, which the Government took to the last election.

A defiant Mr Albanese, who had a weeks’ worth of housing-related events already planned before he headed overseas, was prepared to have the policy voted on and defeated.

It would have been a tactical political play, helping Labor build a re-election campaign around the Coalition and Greens standing in the way of helping renters buy a home.

But they didn’t even get that chance after the Greens and Coalition teamed up to kick the can down the road and delay a vote by two months. The Greens say they want the extra time to work with Labor to make the policy better, while the Coalition hates the idea and is just happy to do anything that makes the Government suffer.

Voting against the legislation would have been one thing, but voting to delay a vote on the legislation was another. Labor was furious, as evidenced in a prickly interview on ABC radio where Mr Albanese accused the journalist of asking “not terribly clever questions”.

Instead of spending the week spruiking the work they’d done so far to address the housing crisis, Labor was back fighting the minor party.

They battled it out in competing press conferences and social media posts, full of sledges about who was “bulldozing” (Albanese, likely not amused at the Scott Morrison comparison), and who was “holding renters’ aspirations hostage” (the Greens).

Housing Minister Clare O’Neil was refreshingly frank when she conceded the scheme, which would have helped 40,000 low- and middle-income earners over four years, was not a “silver bullet” to fix the housing crisis, but it was an important lever.

Given the Greens themselves have previously backed a shared equity scheme, a frustrated Labor was left asking why – again – the minor party were letting perfect be the enemy of the good.

Because even if Labor were to take a major political risk and acquiesce to one of the Greens’ biggest demands: a commitment to winding back negative gearing and capital gains tax, it’s hard to see them doing so attached to this homebuyer scheme.

This week made it even clearer just how much of a thorn the Greens are becoming in Labor’s side

Mr Albanese sought to paint the Greens and the Coalition as an unholy alliance he’s branded the “no-alition”.

In a more cutting take, former leader Bill Shorten on Friday described the minor party as “a formidable and destructive political part of Australian life”.

Destructive as they may be, if the polls prove true and Labor falls short of winning government in its own right, it might need to - begrudgingly - look to their left for help.

Expect to see the Coalition take this threat and run with it in the lead-up to the election.

And as for the threat of a double dissolution that Albanese flirted with this week, it’s hard to see a reality where he follows through.

The government will try again with the housing bill, and if that fails again and the stars align then yes, technically he could dissolve both the houses.

But that would not only be improbable from a timing perspective (because a general election is due by May), but also because he would risk winding up with a senate even less likely to work with Labor to pass its agenda.

Regardless of whether it’s the mystical “double-D” or just a plain old regular election, there’s only a handful of sitting weeks before the PM visits the Governor-General.

Labor is quickly running out of time to pass the reforms it hopes will inspire voters to give them another three years in power.

It can’t afford any more Senate go-slows.