Welcome back to your weekly federal politics update, where political correspondent Brett Worthington gets you up to speed on the happenings from Parliament House.

It was as if the prime ministerial pooch Toto could sense danger was looming.

Short, sharp barks rang out in quickfire from the nine-year-old cavoodle early into Anthony Albanese's interview with RN Breakfast this morning.

Until then, the interview had been going well. The PM took pleasure listing the policies his government had delivered to help ease household expenses.

If Toto was sending a warning, it wasn't being received. 

As Albanese hit the mid-way mark of the 23-minute interview, his tone soured under questioning about his government's inability to pass its Help to Buy scheme.

A testy PM accused presenter Patricia Karvelas of asking "not terribly clever questions" when she quizzed him about whether negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions could be considered in negotiations with the Greens.

Albanese: Well, Patricia, I don't answer those sort of questions in the way that –

Karvelas: You mean good ones?

Albanese: Well, they’re not good.

Karvelas: It’s a good question! Are you going to say no to those, or not?

Albanese: They’re not clever. They're things that journalists – the next question is, when will the election be?

Substance lacking in parliamentary pantomime

The whole debate over Help to Buy has been a pantomime that dominated the Senate but failed to deliver anything of substance this week.

It's been more than 200 days since the shared-equity scheme passed the House of Representatives.

Labor brought the issue up for debate in the Senate knowing it didn't have the votes to pass it — but that was the point. 

The government wanted its bill voted down, so it could accuse the Coalition and Greens of standing in the way of helping renters buy a home. 

It was pure politics.

The only trouble was that Labor was again reminded that it might be in government but it doesn't have control of the Senate.

The week ended with the Greens and Coalition teaming up to kick the legislation into the long grass, leaving the government flirting with a complex constitutional threat that if acted upon could see Albanese seeking a double dissolution election.

Threats like that only work when the people you're threatening take it seriously, which certainly isn't happening this time.

PM's a 'bulldozer'... albeit a 'weak' one

As tension between Labor and the Greens bubbled over, the crossbench party adopted a new nickname for Albanese.

Deliberately unoriginal, they've started calling the PM a bulldozer, the same nickname his predecessor Scott Morrison adopted for himself in the dying days of the 2022 election campaign.

After meeting with Housing Minister Clare O'Neil on Monday, in which they laid out their demands to pass Help to Buy, the Greens were miffed at the lack of counter-offer (this is generally an indication that you know your initial demands are a little, well, unrealistic).

In Labor's mind, the Greens' initial demands were so ridiculous (not to mention policies the government doesn't want to touch with a 20-foot pole), it was akin to saying you wanted a new car in return for cleaning their windscreen.

Press conference after press conference, Greens hammered the bulldozer.

But by Thursday morning, the bulldozer was suddenly being dubbed "weak" after Albanese again refused to show signs of adopting backbench calls to ban sports gambling ads. 

"The Prime Minister’s comments today are weak and they are wrong," Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young declared. 

Criticism coming from closer to home

Albanese, having long represented an urban Sydney electorate, has long battled the Greens. So getting called weak or a bulldozer from Greens is unlikely to touch the sides.

But it wasn't the only critique his character faced this week.

Bill Kelty, the former union leader heavyweight, told the Australian Financial Review that Albanese's government was "mired in mediocrity".

Kelty told the paper he wanted to see major tax reform, bank lending rule changes and a new approach to housing. 

If the criticism hurt, the PM wasn't letting on. 

"Bill Kelty was a great secretary of the ACTU. I'm governing in 2024," he told RN Breakfast.

Pagers and walkie talkies 

As the parliamentary games played out in Canberra, the situation in the Middle East deteriorated further.

Amid news reports of the exploding pagers and walkie talkies in Lebanon, Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong was quick to divert from her role as Senate leader to again urge Australians to get out while they still could. 

For months the government has been worried that Australians and their families could get stuck in Lebanon if war breaks out. 

The deadly attacks were occurring as Australia sat out of a United Nations vote over Palestinian occupation.

Australia abstained from supporting a Palestinian-drafted resolution demanding an end what it described as Israel's "unlawful presence" in Gaza and the occupied West Bank within a year.

Even before war broke out last October, Wong has been reshaping Australia's approach to the region. 

Speaking to the ABC's AM program, she said Australia wanted to support the motion but didn't after its amendments weren't supported. 

Band reuniting one last time

Regional tension closer to home will be the top of the agenda when Albanese meets with the partners of the Quad in President Joe Biden's home state of Delaware this weekend.

The meeting will see Albanese discuss "regional security" (political code for "what is China doing throughout the Indo-Pacific") when he sits down with Biden, Japanese PM Fumio Kishida and Indian PM Narendra Modi. 

That the PM is going, despite criticism from some that he needed to stay home and focus on inflation, gives you an indication of the seriousness of the threat the region faces.

It could prove a nostalgic trip for the PM in what will be the last time the Quad will meet in this form.

Within months, half the leaders will be out of office.

Albanese is hoping he won't be joining them.