A week after polling day, finally the political commentary and hot takes are starting to sound less reactionary, less pushing a pre-existing agenda, less desperately seeking a byline. I turned down a couple of media opportunities early in the week, then on Thursday I ended up in a background conversation with an ABC radio producer about the Greens. I didn’t end up getting called back for an on-air interview – they must have found someone more interesting – and since I’d talked to the journo for nearly 30 minutes, based on the conversation, I had a bunch of fresh thoughts that I thought I might as well write down.
Some caveats.
First, this hot take is not necessarily a short take. I’ve based it around the five main questions, and my rants and musings on each are about 500 words. So, this post is a series of short hot takes. Here is a list of shorter hot takes which I think are pretty good and have each informed my thinking:
- Tally Room Podcast #148: A record-breaking election: Ben Raue and William Bowe the day after the election make a couple of calls that don’t pan out, but their analysis (as usual) is five-star content. The Tally Room is consistently my first-choice Australian politics podcast.
- Greens’ election hubris – how the minor party lost its way and now its leader:Flinders Uni academic Josh Holloway in The Conversation who apparently doesn’t enjoy talking to the media which is kind of a shame because the public discourse could do with more voices as well considered as his.
- The rise and fall of Adam Bandt: the Greens leader who embraced a different approach to politics: Paddy Manning, who literally wrote a book on the Greens, in The Guardian. This is a great reflection on Adam Bandt’s leadership of the Greens, and the challenge of moving from strong representation in the Senate to strong representation in the House.
Also, I’ve had good conversations with smart people like Ben Spies-Bucher, Phoebe Hayman, Elizabeth Humphrys, Jacob Broome, Emily Foley, Kirstian Bolwell and Bruce Knobloch.
Second caveat, I used to be a member of and work for the Greens. Primarily now Greens Senator David Shoebridge when he was in NSW Parliament. I also did paid gigs for Lee Rhiannon, John Kaye (vale), Mehreen Faruqi, Jenny Leong and Abigail Boyd. This means I know some stuff (and have amusing stories at parties). It also means you might think I’m biased. Fair enough. I’m not a member anymore, but some of my best friends are.
Bevan: my Greens alter-ego circa 2010.
Bevan sidebar: Back in 2010 I was a communications assistant on the NSW Federal Election campaign team that successfully elected Lee Rhiannon (also Adam Bandt’s first election, though I take no credit at all for that). In a moment of levity (and extreme overtiredness), my boss took a picture of me in a a Kevin Rudd wig from a previous campaign, and I Photoshopped a piss-take of part of the Australian Greens campaign. This is Bevan’s first public appearance. You’re welcome. Besides my extreme photogeneity and sparkling wit, you may also note the now abandoned swoosh logo experiment to ditch the Greens triangle. I couldn’t possibly say whose idea that was.
Okay, if you’re still reading, let’s get into some short hot takes, inspired by the questions the radio producer asked me.
What’s your take on why did the Greens do so badly?
Did they? So badly?
The Greens’ national Senate vote is now solid. One Senator elected in each state, for at least the third election in a row. That hasn’t always been the case, and the results don’t signal that’s likely to change. There was no collapse here. That ain’t so bad, is it? And with the ALP surge in the Senate (where they’re on track to win three seats in several states), the Greens’ Senators may have more potential influence than they did in the last parliament, if they’re able to broker a relationship with the ALP government. More on that later.
Lower house? Yes, losing 75%-100% of your lower house seats sounds bad. As does your leader losing their seat.
The result here that surprised me most was Melbourne. The other Greens seats, including the ones they were hoping to win like Richmond and Wills, all relied largely on the Australian preferential system – basically they needed Labor to come third for ALP preferences to run (mostly) to the Greens and leapfrog the LNP candidate. This is basically what’s happening in Ryan, where the real contest is who comes second out of the Greens and LNP. Last time I checked, the Greens’ Liz Watson-Brown was around 500 votes ahead of the ALP in second and third respectively. Sadly, I think the ALP might get enough preferences from the micro-right and slip into second.
Generally though: ALP surge + LNP collapse = Greens lower house losses. When the electorate invariably swings back from the ALP, the Greens will likely come into contention again in all of the seats they lost.
Another potential factor in Griffith, a much more spurious opinion than the one above, is how much Max Chandler-Mather courted the national spotlight. I remember when Jamie Parker was first elected to the NSW Parliament in 2011, winning the seat of Balmain off ALP Minister Verity Firth, he very consciously chose not to take portfolio responsibilities. Instead, conscious on how difficult it would be to win the seat again, Parker focussed squarely on organising and community building in the local community, only pursuing statewide media when it was of direct relevance to his electorate.
There’s no guarantee that the Greens would have held Griffith if Max had pursued a similar strategy, the loss of South Brisbane in the 2022 Queensland state election showed that an ALP surge was already on the cards, but it does make me consider the importance of consolidating gains before trying to expand territory.
Fun fact: Parker continued to hold Balmain in the 2015 and 2019 NSW state elections, before retiring in 2023 and successfully ‘handing over’ the seat to Kobe Shetty. This makes Balmain the first and only Greens lower house seat to have been passed on from one Greens MP to another. Parker is now the State Manager of the Greens NSW, so it will be interesting to see how his nous impacts the state party, which at times can appear like a loosely aligned chaotic collective of Greens independents.
(Jenny Leong, Jamie Parker, Adam Bandt and some rando Greens supporter, 2015. Photo: Me. For some reason I tilted the camera to make Parker seem taller than he actually is. He’s tall.)
So, Melbourne. Won by Bandt off the ALP in 2010 on LNP preferences – a quirky luxury that appears beyond the Greens these days. The Greens’ vote in Melbourne appears to have dropped below 40%, which probably put him in the danger zone. Besides the ALP (who came second on primary votes) there weren’t a lot of left votes to distribute to the Greens – and nowhere near 10%.
Why did the Greens vote drop in Melbourne and ALP surge? I’ve heard some commentators mention that the Victorian Greens put too much effort into winning Wills and Macnamara, and not enough into holding onto Melbourne, and without on the ground knowledge I can’t say whether that’s the case. We can, however, look at this map, which shows the redistribution of the electorate from 2022 to 2025.
(Federal electorate of Melbourne boundaries 2022 and 2025. Source: ABC)
Basically, the electorate lost a chunk of strong Greens votes from 2022 in the north and picked up a bunch of ALP ones in the south. We can speculate about how much campaigning the Melbourne Greens campaign did in the new part of the electorate, along with the impact of the sizeable anti-Greens campaigns from groups like Advance – however, like the other seats, the result is hardly a major collapse. 40% of the primary vote is decent.
Overall, why did the Greens do so badly? For starters, they didn’t. Second, their victories in the past benefited from Australia’s preferential voting system, and fluctuations this election meant the ALP benefited this time where the Greens did previously. They will likely benefit in the future. Then there’s redistributions, aggressive anti-Greens campaign from Advance and other third-party orgs and of course, some stuff which the Greens actually had control over. More on that below.
Did the Greens lose because they’ve deviated from only talking about climate change?
Fun fact: the Australian Greens have never just been about climate change. Anyone who thinks that should stop drinking the Advance cool aid. The quick history lesson is that the Australian Greens are and have always been an amalgam of environmentalists, socialists and peace activists. The Tasmanian Greens were always the most enviro focussed and the NSW Greens the most socialist – many NSW Greens founders were expelled out the left-hand side of NSW Labor – but even that’s an oversimplification.
Senators Bob Brown (Tasmania) and Kerry Nettle (NSW) famously protested George W. Bush’s speech to the Australian Parliament in 2003. The Greens were for many years the only elected politicians advocating for genuine compassion for people seeking asylum. The Greens championed a national integrity commission long before one was created. They championed marriage equality when Albanese, Wong and co were all saying ‘it wasn’t the right time’ to stand up for human rights. There’s a long list of non-climate related Greens policies the Greens have helped put on the national agenda. Google it, mate.
(Former Greens’ Senator Scott Ludlam (L) strong anti-nuclear activist before it was cool. Here listening intently to a rando Greens supporter. Source: Me)
But… did the Greens talk enough about climate change in the 2025 election? What role did climate play in the campaign?
Early in the campaign, some observers noted that both major parties seemed to be avoiding talking about the climate crisis. This made sense to me from a major party point of view. The existential threat to both major parties was coming from a climate-strong entity to their left: the Greens for the ALP, Climate 200 for the LNP. So not talking about climate is a way to avoid giving oxygen to your opponent.
Neither Climate 200 nor the Greens appeared to be campaigning hard on climate issues, however. Both seemed more focussed on what they would bring to a minority government. This in many ways involved projecting degrees of responsibility, as though there was little or no risk. Bandt’s messaging around the possibility of minority government was particularly solid, I thought, from that point of view. Basically – Negotiation is important. No one gets exactly what they wanted going in. But the outcomes are better.
It is, however, very much an insider political argument. As is talking about minority government. Perhaps the general voter doesn’t particularly like hearing about political technicalities or preference deals. Maybe they want to vote for something a little bigger. The first Albanese government was not great on the climate crisis or nature, a fact that a whole bunch of climate organisations have now started emailing their supporters about.
The climate related contest in the campaign appear to centre around the Coalition’s nuclear energy policy. Despite the LNP campaign barely focussing on it, third sector organisations like the Climate Council and Climate Action Network Australia spent big on campaigns focussed on renewable energy over nuclear. There was even the Liberals Against Nuclear campaign.
The consequence of this is that the ALP largely got a free ride on climate and nature related issues during the election. For a significant portion of the campaign, the collective climate vibe was anti-Dutton, with the ALP’s patchy record barely rating a mention.
Of course, once the results were in, all the climate NGOs who had been pretty much silent during the campaign, like ACF and Greenpeace, started sending out emails about how weak Labor’s record on climate and nature was in the last term, and the importance of now ‘holding Labor to account’ – which clearly doesn’t include pointing out their failings during an election campaign. I have views on this that will require a different post.
Was it a mistake for the Greens to go so hard on housing and renting?
This question I think is conflating two things. The first is Max Chandler-Mather’s national profile around housing, and the second the issue of housing itself. Earlier, I touched briefly on whether Max’s national profile impacted his domestic vote – and really there’s not a lot of point speculating on that. Maybe yes. Maybe no. Your opinion on this will invariably be coloured by your views on how change occurs (or how you think change should occur).
The second aspect of the question assumes that the Greens choose issues to campaign on purely out of electoral expediency, which I would argue is a mistake. From my experience the (very useful) central tension in the Greens is between the party’s genuine connection to extra-parliamentary movements and its aspirations for elected representation and influence within the parliament.
This tension is like that which stimulated the ALP for such a long time. Whether the current professionalised entity that is the ALP genuinely feels that tension is a different question – most ALP politicians are lifelong political hacks rather than workers taking up political leadership roles. The Greens, too, are not immune to this danger of ‘professionalisation’, with the real possibility of future Greens MPs largely being drawn from the pool of Greens staffers.
But I digress.
Housing affordability and renters’ rights are not new issues for the Greens to campaign on. NSW Greens member for Newtown Jenny Leong campaigned on the issue in her initial election campaign of 2015 and has continued to champion the issue since. The NSW Labor Government recently ended the practice of no-grounds eviction, a victory for the Tenants’ Union of NSW’s Make Renting Fair campaign, which Jenny and the Greens supported from the beginning.
The ‘luxury’ for the Greens, in not having to position for the political centre like the major party contest invariably does, is that they can operate ahead of the curve on significant social, environmental and humanitarian issues. Renters’ rights, the climate crisis, people seeking asylum, marriage equality – unlike the modern ALP, the Greens’ support for issues tends to follow in lines with the evidence, the community and progressive values more broadly.
Arguably, ALP support for these issues tends to arrive (if it does at all) when they think it’s electorally palatable. This is understandable, given the ALP consistently attempts to form government. That said, it’s probably a good thing to have the Greens in parliament on Labor’s left flank, who can voice positions on issues that no doubt some Labor politicians hold but feel constrained in expressing. No doubt, this also contributes to some Labor folks hating the Greens.
Bob Brown has come out and said the Greens should have been ‘more bold’. What’s your take on that?
Here comes a short rant.
Personally, I think former politicians and party leaders should shut the f–k up about their party, and party politics generally. You’re done – get a new hobby. I can’t stand John Hewson’s column in the Saturday Paper. As much as I enjoy Paul Keating’s wit – I don’t find his public ALP interventions particularly useful. Every politician seems to find a spine and ‘boldness’ once they’re not in parliament anymore. Yawn. Hope that makes you sleep better.
Bob Brown, to his credit, has gone back to his environmental activist roots with the work of the Bob Brown Foundation. I’m a big fan of the work he’s doing there – they’ve been a leading light in the campaign against Salmon Farming. And yet, on the topic of boldness, I do recall an Australian Greens National Council meeting when Bob and others successfully argued to remove an inheritance tax from the Greens’ policy platform due to concerns about being attacked on the issue by NewsCorp publications – basically on the grounds that we should try and be a smaller target. Bold much?
(Lee Rhiannon, Bob Brown and now City of Sydney Councilor Sylvie Ellsmore in the 2016 Federal election campaign. Photo: Me)
Rant over. Sorry Bob. When Maat weighs your feather, Thoth shall certainly deem you worthy of the afterlife.
To the question: did the Greens run a bold election campaign?
Bold on what, though? Standing up in parliament and naming Israel’s actions in Gaza and Palestine generally as war crimes, apartheid and genocide is pretty bold in the Australian political climate, if you ask me. While this issue wasn’t part of the broad national Greens strategy, candidates in some seats definitely campaigned on the issue, and election analysts like Ben Raue have suggested that this may have gained the Greens votes in some seats.
In terms of general boldness though, I would say that perhaps Greens did not run a bold election campaign. As a casual observer (i.e. viewing the campaign from outside rather than from within, and I wasn’t ‘following’ the Greens campaign, like I was a variety of civil society organisations), my main takeaways were that that the Greens’ policy positions in the election were largely incremental, and not entirely new – Putting Dental in Medicare for example has been around for some time. The main thing I heard the Greens campaign saying however was – Keep Dutton Out, Push Labor to Act.
In my view, there were multiple problems with this slogan. For starters, Keep Dutton Out sounds like a low rent marketing agency version of Don’t Risk Dutton, the ACTU slogan picked up by other third sector campaigners (and which I would argue was very effective). Some commentators have speculated that the simplest way for voters to keep Dutton out was to vote for Labor. I’ve heard people say that the Greens needed this message to avoid Labor saying the same thing, which sounds like a nice little wedge to me.
Personally, I think voters want to hear about issues rather than politics. And from the Greens I think they want (and expect) to hear bold ones. Pitching into minority government doesn’t fill that need. Nor does talking about preferences. The ongoing rise in independent and minor party vote arguably signifies more and more people are fed up with the way that the major parties operate. The Greens needed a good soundbite for when they were asked about the possibility of minority government, but was it a mistake to frame their whole campaign around it?
Another thing I observed along these lines during the campaign is the frequency with when Bandt was pictured alongside Albanese and Dutton. It wasn’t ubiquitous, but it appeared increased from previous elections. Back in my day, Greens comms people would have been delighted to see this – the Greens put on the same footing at the LNP and ALP – it’s a sign of legitimacy. It did get me wondering though, for the average voter dissatisfied with the major parties, does this correlation do more harm than good?
Who will be the next Greens’ leader?
Somewhat strangely for a party that likes to trumpet its democratic credentials, Australian Greens members have no say at all in who the parliamentary leader of the Australian Greens is. There was a push a few years ago to give members a say in these decisions, a push that came out of Queensland. I suppose they’ve got other things to think about presently. So, unless something amazing happens, the new leadership team will be decided by the eleven currently elected Senators, plus Liz Watson-Brown if she holds Ryan.
Every former Greens politician, their staffers, and their animal companions are currently giving their views on who should be the next leader and why. I think that the elected MPs will decide a Leader and Deputy sometime this week, after a heavy period of student-politics style behind the scenes shenanigans. And that’s a damn shame. It would be bolder (and arguably a little more progressive) if they decided on co-leaders, like other Greens’ parties have around the world.
Even more bolderer if they put their personal ambitions aside and said, hey, there’s no rush here, let’s open this up to our members and supporters and engage directly with them about this question.
Or are these just people to stand on polling booths and provide donations?
Hayek on a bike, if I’d known how long this was going to get, I might not have started.
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