Four years ago, a fresh-faced Max Chandler-Mather spoke passionately about his ’18-year plan for a Greens government’.
The former union organiser and Greens firebrand said his ambitious plot relied on a simple equation: you get one vote for every three meaningful conversations you have with Australian voters.
If, he argued with hopelessly naïve logic, Greens volunteers just had 1,866,216 meaningful conversations with Australian voters, they could seize power by 2040.
His equation would deliver them a total 45 seats, making them the senior party in a Coalition with Labor on just 44.
But, in the words of Mike Tyson, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face – and Mr Chandler-Mather got well and truly knocked out on Saturday.
The 33-year-old lost his Brisbane-based seat of Griffith after a 5.8 per cent swing to Labor candidate Renee Coffey.
Similarly, Adam Bandt’s humiliating defeat in his seat of Melbourne to Labor’s Sarah Witty will send shockwaves through the Greens as the party is forced to pick a new leader.
While the count is ongoing – and his likely replacement Mehreen Faruqi has insisted he is ‘still leader’ – no one expects him to make up the 4,300 votes his Labor rival Sarah Witty leads by as of Thursday morning.
Four years ago, a fresh-faced Max Chandler-Mather spoke passionately about his ’18-year plan for a Greens government’ (pictured)
But, in the words of Mike Tyson , everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face – and Mr Chandler-Mather got well and truly knocked out on Saturday
This is despite a Greens’ press release claiming prematurely on Saturday night that he ‘expects the count to elect him in Melbourne’ and their national vote falling slightly from their 2022 high.
So where did it all go so wrong for the Greens leader and his ailing party?
Seat redistribution
As much as his critics – and there are many – would hope it was all down to voters taking against him personally, the main reason Bandt lost took place long before any votes were cast.
The boundaries of Bandt’s Melbourne seat were redistributed last year.
This redrawing of the electoral map meant that the Greens leader lost several suburbs in the inner north, where he was popular, while also absorbing more Liberal-supporting areas.
This significantly narrowed his chances of retaining the seat he has held since 2010.
But Bandt cannot lay all of the blame with the decision to redistribute his seat.
As much as his critics – and there are many – would hope it was all down to voters taking against him personally, the main reason Greens leader Adam Bandt (pictured) lost took place long before any votes were cast
Blockers rather than builders
The Greens leader shoulders responsibility for positioning the Greens so obviously in opposition to Labor.
Renee Coffey, the Labor challenger who ousted Max Chandler-Mather in Griffith, said that voters were most concerned with cost of living and housing issues.
But the Greens were seen as a barrier to progress on the latter after they joined forces with the Liberals to block some of Labor’s housing reforms, in particular the negotiations around its $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund.
Mr Chandler-Mather constantly locked horns with the Prime Minister in very public spats over Labor’s housing policy, earning him the designation of ‘Albo’s Nemesis’ in this publication.
‘Griffith is fundamentally a progressive electorate and people were wanting to see real change and progress, so I think there was some disappointment with some of the blocking that went on and this idea of protest,’ Ms Coffey told the ABC.
Mr Chandler-Mather constantly locked horns with the Prime Minister in very public spats over Labor’s housing policy, earning him the designation of ‘Albo’s Nemesis’ in this publication (pictured: the two men exchange heated words in 2023)
A militant movement, not a party
Kos Samaras, a former Victorian Labor strategist and Redbridge Group director, said the Greens had turned into a ‘movement fuelling civil unrest and disruption’.
‘The party clearly recognised this too late after a string of poor results at state, territory, and local government elections,’ he added.
‘By the time they adjusted course, the damage was done. Their leader is now gone.
‘I never imagined that I would see the Greens lose Melbourne in my lifetime.’
Drew Hutton, founder of the Queensland Greens, echoed these concerns, claiming that the Greens choice of bedfellows often backfired.
‘I think Max (Chandler-Mather) fronting that CFMEU rally was a bit of a problem,’ Mr Hutton told the ABC.
At the rally Mr Chandler-Mather attended, protesters held up placards of the Prime Minister depicted as Adolf Hitler with the world ‘Albonazi’ and ‘traitor’ written across it (pictured)
‘The CFMEU is not the sort of union of want to be associated with.’
The controversial union was placed into administration by the Albanese government in August last year amid allegations of corruption and violence within its ranks.
At the rally Mr Chandler-Mather attended, protesters held up placards of the Prime Minister depicted as Adolf Hitler with the world ‘Albonazi’ and ‘traitor’ written across it.
‘A lot of people see the Greens as being too militant and representing too much a sort of militant youth vote,’ Mr Hutton added.
This was a point made by Mr Albanese who hit back at Mr Chandler-Mather’s claims he had been bullied in parliament on Wednesday night.
‘This is a guy who stood before signs at a CFMEU rally in Brisbane describing me as a Nazi,’ the Prime Minister said.
Allegations of antisemitism
The party’s stance on Israel, where they regularly accused the Labor government of being ‘complicit in genocide’ earned the ire of many Jewish Australians.
Julian Leeser, a Jewish Liberal MP for Berowra in Northern Sydney, shared a statement on Facebook on Wednesday where he accused the Greens of antisemitism.
‘The loss of the Greens’ seats in the House of Representatives is a repudiation of the antisemitism of the Greens and a vindication of Peter Dutton’s decision to put them last,’ he said.
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Penny Wong issued a similar analysis to Mr Samaras, telling Channel Nine that ‘Australians rejected the politics of conflict and the politics of grievance’.
‘Unfortunately Adam Bandt in some ways is quite like Peter Dutton,’ Senator Wong added.
And she’s not wrong, given Bandt has also suffered the ignominy of losing his own seat.
Mr Bandt rarely missed a media opportunity to pose with his big red toothbrush to highlight the party’s bid to add dental to Medicare – with some believing the party strayed too far from its core message about concern for the environment
Liberal Party woes
Senator Faruqi, the current Greens deputy leader and frontrunner to take over the minor party, blamed the party’s electoral drubbing on people’s fear of Peter Dutton.
‘It’s clear that this election a lot of progressive Australians were deeply anxious about a Dutton government and I think that was a factor,’ she told the ABC on Thursday morning.
She claimed that voters were ‘fearful’ of a ‘divisive, a hate-filled Peter Dutton government’.
‘It’s clear that Labor and Liberals will always be working together to keep the Greens out,’ she added.
That analysis rings a little hollow when the Greens campaigned explicitly on ‘Keeping Dutton Out’.
Meanwhile, veteran Senator Sarah Hanson-Young blamed the party’s poor showing in the lower house on the Liberal party’s collapse.
‘The main reason is the huge drop in the Liberal vote that went directly from Liberal to Labor, the Liberal voters preferencing Labor,’ she told the ABC.
‘And it was just too hard for our candidates to get over the line’
Senator Mehreen Faruqi (pictured), the current Greens deputy leader and frontrunner to take over the minor party, blamed their electoral drubbing on people’s fear of Peter Dutton
Lost their core message
Mr Hutton, who helped Bob Brown found the Australian Greens, said the party had strayed too far from their original purpose.
They positioned themselves as party for housing reform and renters, rather than one whose main concern is the environment.
Indeed, the leader Mr Bandt rarely missed a media opportunity to pose with his big red toothbrush to highlight the party’s bid to add dental to Medicare.
When asked to list his top priorities, climate change came fifth behind addressing the rental crisis, dental, universal childcare and ending native logging.
‘The Greens have always been about social justice and democracy,’ he told the ABC.
‘There is a problem though if that comes at the expense of the environment.
‘I’ve been talking to a few of the older Greens … and they have voiced to me that there is a bit of a loss for that concern for the environment that was really the reason we set up the Greens in the first place.’
This point was echoed by the ABC’s Claudia Long who said that the Greens had lost their ‘tree Tories’ – well-off older people who are economically conservative but socially progressive with a concern for the environment.
Instead, those voters are more likely to cast their ballots for Teal independents who are more likely to represent their interests.
The Greens were often seen as a barrier to progress after they joined forces with the Liberals to block some of Labor’s housing reforms, in particular the negotiations around its $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund
What’s next for the Greens
The Greens may be down, but they are very much not out.
As Daily Mail Australia’s Political Editor Peter van Onselen has argued, they have actually increased their power in the Senate.
‘That’s right, don’t be fooled by its poor performance in the lower house where its leader Adam Bandt lost his seat,’ he wrote.
‘The Greens will hold onto all their senators, and given that Labor has increased its senate numbers – again with more factional left wingers – together they will soon control the senate.’
‘Yes, the Greens are about to have the balance of power in the senate in their own right. They will be in a position to decide what legislation Labor puts forward, what gets passed into law, what gets amended according to their desires – and what gets rejected to never take effect.’
Read his full analysis here.