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The Greens

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Power Raid said:
It is nuts to think women couldn't own property that long ago. Even as late as the 80s couldn't get a bank loan and if they could they would probably require a male guarantor.

I feel some of the shaming comes from wanting to keep them in a box and our Christian Church roots had no issues using sex and desire to control their customers. Specifically if women have no options in life, they will simply breed. We see the same discrimination with gays.....those horrible non- procreators denying the church of future customers and king's their next army.

Personally I believe religions like this have to change to align with our laws or leave Australia.
Click to expand...
You sound a bit eager to drop the scattergun
 
i'm really liking what I’ve heard from larissa so far. sticking by the party’s principles, but no longer just obstructionist. the end of brandt may prove their salvation.

www.sbs.com.au

How the Greens 'cracked' a new voter base, as Waters says the party won't shy away from Gaza

The Greens argue that social justice and environmental justice is interlinked, and have vowed to continue demanding action on the war in Gaza while maintaining pressure on climate action.
www.sbs.com.au www.sbs.com.au
 
Patrick Marlborough, in Crikey

The Greens must radicalise, or perish​


The media and political narrative is clear: the Greens’ woeful election performance is the result of voters punishing them for their dangerously radical beliefs (don’t bomb hospitals, starving children is wrong, you should be able to afford the dentist) — the rabid ravings of frothy-lipped eco-terrorists, gone feral from inhaling the fumes of dangerous culture war dogma (trans people should be protected, refugees shouldn’t be tortured, etc).

But if you truly think the Greens ran an “extreme” campaign, you’re probably a tenured columnist writing for somewhere like, oh, I don’t know, [REDACTED]. Among a creaky old media who vaguely remember Bob Ellis as Australia’s Chomsky, the Greens will always appear as a nightmare vision of Unabomber-adjacent Wahhabism. It’s wild that the party’s senior members still haven’t learnt this rather blunt, obvious lesson: these people will always hate them, no matter what they do.

Throughout the federal election, the Greens’ leadership — perhaps cowed by recent state results — pulled back on what various multimillion-dollar smear campaigns framed as their divisive, extremist ideas, such as climate justice, Aboriginal land reform, and ending Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Instead the party made funding social services by taxing megacorps (if this is “radical”, God help us) the centrepiece of an otherwise listless campaign — and were somehow surprised by the vitriol they received from the government, media and lobby groups.

The greatest trick Anthony Albanese pulled this election wasn’t trouncing Peter Dutton; it was sidestepping climate justice and Israel’s genocide in Gaza during the campaign. He achieved this in large part thanks to an obliging media that also prefers to avoid those conversations. Gaza was (and is) Albanese’s greatest weakness, just as surely as it will be the core of his legacy.

The Greens understood this. The past two years saw the party’s diverse left-wing base galvanised by issues the prime minister loathes touching. What momentum the Greens have had since 2022 stems from a growing, popular discontent around issues that are as “distant” as Gaza and as immediate as the price of groceries. Passionate volunteers, grassroots organising and genuinely leftist and progressive actions lent the party an energy that, for a while, made it seem like 2025 was theirs for the taking.

Instead, the party pivoted to policies and messaging that hinged on centrist compromise. Inevitably, the wind went out of their sails, and that excitement and energy rolled back like Bob Brown’s hairline.


There is an awareness among this “new” young-left faction that the party’s leadership and Bike Tory rusted-ons let them down — that they blew it by trying to beat Labor at its own game.


“We tried to become all centrist during the Richard Di Natale era,” a prominent party strategist told me on the condition of anonymity, “and that didn’t work.”


“We need to keep these diverse communities that have found the Greens through our advocacy on Gaza,” they said. “If we stop talking about Gaza, we stop demanding racial justice, we stop demanding economic justice, and we just try and be like some centrist climate movement — then what separates us from the teals?”


On the party’s new blood, they said: “All these young people and immigrant communities who voted for us for the first time: if we take one step back, why would they stay with us?”


The argument that Gaza cost them the election is a non-starter. “We didn’t do it to be popular,” this person stated flatly. “We did it to do the right thing.”


If there’s anything Albanese understands, it’s that doing the “right” thing isn’t worth the bother. The Greens’ failure to exploit this during the election was an own goal. The prime minister’s petulant sooking about Max Chandler-Mather edged levels of cringe that should have been weaponised against. Instead, we were all told to act like his nappy-filling had a shimmer of cool to it.


What may have undone the Greens more than anything is that familiar weakness of any progressive party whose reformist policies require considered conversation.


“My experience campaigning was where there were higher levels of housing stress or income stress, the impacts of anti-politics were much stronger,” a young and well-regarded Greens organiser told me. “When people are too worried about paying rent or eating, they don’t give a **** about politics.”


And yet, it’s these folks they found the easiest to win over to their cause. “The anti-politics people were by far the easiest demographic to swing to voting Greens for the first time,” they told me.


“It was the message of winnability that usually got them over the line: in our campaign, we told everyone just how close it was last time and you’d just see people’s eyes light up. Like, decades of political stagnation and being told constantly that change is impossible had left them completely switched off and the idea that that change was within reach really cut through.”


They went on to say that, with hindsight, the disappointing outcome makes sense “as a party coming up against a really strong contradiction: in a lot of cases, the classes of people we’re talking to have contradictory interests. Broadly, who’s benefiting from the status quo, and who’s not — I think that’s what’s come through in the results.”


The party may succumb to its enemies’ revisionism, however. These younger party members dread that the elders will steer them towards something resembling an appendage of the ALP, existing solely to prod the government in the ribs when it’s about to steer the proverbial “progressive patriotism”-fuelled Dodge Ram off the road.


The charge that the Greens are radical is frightening because they appear to be the only party addressing reality. Climate catastrophe is now inevitable. Refugees are being illegally mistreated. Israel is committing genocide. I can’t afford to go to the dentist.


The only radicalism I see in parliament is the prime minister’s radical centrism, the performance and maintenance of which requires a strain of disengagement that is genuinely, frighteningly, extreme.
 

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They’ll radicalise whether they want to or not.

The Queensland and NSW parties are bigger, better organised and better funded than the Tasmanian and Victorian parties who have historically set the federal direction. Their focus on class warfare and social justice also resonates with a more fertile, younger voter base.

The party’s centre of gravity is shifting north, and it’s unlikely to come back - the more radical and class-focused their campaigning becomes, the harder it will be to get the votes of well-heeled professionals needed to win seats like Melbourne.
 
fletchisgun said:
Do you think this was acceptable? Have Bandt and co made any effort to reach out to the Jewish community?
Click to expand...
She apologised. Doesn't seem to have made the same reference again.
 
PJays said:
Obsessing over Islamophobia and not giving comparable airtime to antisemitism = antisemitic.
Click to expand...
The coverage of antisemitism - real, imagined, or paid for by Bibi - has been wall to wall.
 
SBD Gonzalez said:
Patrick Marlborough, in Crikey

The Greens must radicalise, or perish​

Click to expand...
The author is not wrong that the Greens are in touch with reality on climate change, social justice and economic justice. What I think he misses is that the Australian people are often not, and the media and political establishment have a vested interest in making sure they continue not to be.

As a result, this piece is misdiagnosing the problem. Of course the Greens leadership know the political and media establishment will never like them. They're not stupid. They also know they have neither the money nor the influence to counter the media narratives in the eyes of the Australian people. It's all well and good to say the Greens should have weaponised Albanese's petulance before, but how? Even if they had a headline-grabbing attack dog, the media are unlikely to report their words unless it's to paint the Greens as unreasonable.

The options they're left with are to 1. not adjust to the media narrative and rely on their base and soft voters to win seats, or 2. at least give off the public impression that they're changing tack and working more with Labor.

The problem with the first option is their base is not as concentrated into the same electorates as that of their right-wing counterpart, the Nationals. And it's becoming less concentrated than it was three years ago, because the cost of housing has pushed a lot of young people into middle and outer suburbs. At this election and many recent state elections, their primary vote has fallen in several inner city electorates, and grown in suburban ones like Fraser, Werriwa and Forde (from a lower base, but still). This isn't a problem in upper houses, or in lower houses where Labor are declining in popularity (like the last Victorian state election), but when Labor are on the upswing, it's harder to defend against.

So since demographic shifts aren't helpful and they can't fight the entire media with such a small budget, the only good option left for the Greens to win back the seats they've lost, is to publicly play nice and elect a leader who gives the impression of being easier to compromise with than Bandt or Chandler-Mather were. Waters does this for them. It's irrelevant whether she is actually more or less radical, because when it comes to political narratives, perception is reality, facts are not.

If under her leadership, they can win over (or win back) some of the more financially secure inner city voters, they'll probably win back Melbourne, and give themselves a chance to win back Griffith, though the latter is dependent on whether Labor falls below the LNP at the 3CP. That will give them the political breathing room to take more radical stances.
 
Carringbush2010 said:
This doesn't make sense, if the centre is radical, then society would look a lot worse and a lot different.
Click to expand...
So you equate radical positions in politics with worse society?

House the homeless is a radical position in Australian politics

Would that make society worse?
 

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SBD Gonzalez said:
Patrick Marlborough, in Crikey

The Greens must radicalise, or perish​


The media and political narrative is clear: the Greens’ woeful election performance is the result of voters punishing them for their dangerously radical beliefs (don’t bomb hospitals, starving children is wrong, you should be able to afford the dentist) — the rabid ravings of frothy-lipped eco-terrorists, gone feral from inhaling the fumes of dangerous culture war dogma (trans people should be protected, refugees shouldn’t be tortured, etc).

But if you truly think the Greens ran an “extreme” campaign, you’re probably a tenured columnist writing for somewhere like, oh, I don’t know, [REDACTED]. Among a creaky old media who vaguely remember Bob Ellis as Australia’s Chomsky, the Greens will always appear as a nightmare vision of Unabomber-adjacent Wahhabism. It’s wild that the party’s senior members still haven’t learnt this rather blunt, obvious lesson: these people will always hate them, no matter what they do.

Throughout the federal election, the Greens’ leadership — perhaps cowed by recent state results — pulled back on what various multimillion-dollar smear campaigns framed as their divisive, extremist ideas, such as climate justice, Aboriginal land reform, and ending Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Instead the party made funding social services by taxing megacorps (if this is “radical”, God help us) the centrepiece of an otherwise listless campaign — and were somehow surprised by the vitriol they received from the government, media and lobby groups.

The greatest trick Anthony Albanese pulled this election wasn’t trouncing Peter Dutton; it was sidestepping climate justice and Israel’s genocide in Gaza during the campaign. He achieved this in large part thanks to an obliging media that also prefers to avoid those conversations. Gaza was (and is) Albanese’s greatest weakness, just as surely as it will be the core of his legacy.

The Greens understood this. The past two years saw the party’s diverse left-wing base galvanised by issues the prime minister loathes touching. What momentum the Greens have had since 2022 stems from a growing, popular discontent around issues that are as “distant” as Gaza and as immediate as the price of groceries. Passionate volunteers, grassroots organising and genuinely leftist and progressive actions lent the party an energy that, for a while, made it seem like 2025 was theirs for the taking.

Instead, the party pivoted to policies and messaging that hinged on centrist compromise. Inevitably, the wind went out of their sails, and that excitement and energy rolled back like Bob Brown’s hairline.


There is an awareness among this “new” young-left faction that the party’s leadership and Bike Tory rusted-ons let them down — that they blew it by trying to beat Labor at its own game.


“We tried to become all centrist during the Richard Di Natale era,” a prominent party strategist told me on the condition of anonymity, “and that didn’t work.”


“We need to keep these diverse communities that have found the Greens through our advocacy on Gaza,” they said. “If we stop talking about Gaza, we stop demanding racial justice, we stop demanding economic justice, and we just try and be like some centrist climate movement — then what separates us from the teals?”


On the party’s new blood, they said: “All these young people and immigrant communities who voted for us for the first time: if we take one step back, why would they stay with us?”


The argument that Gaza cost them the election is a non-starter. “We didn’t do it to be popular,” this person stated flatly. “We did it to do the right thing.”


If there’s anything Albanese understands, it’s that doing the “right” thing isn’t worth the bother. The Greens’ failure to exploit this during the election was an own goal. The prime minister’s petulant sooking about Max Chandler-Mather edged levels of cringe that should have been weaponised against. Instead, we were all told to act like his nappy-filling had a shimmer of cool to it.


What may have undone the Greens more than anything is that familiar weakness of any progressive party whose reformist policies require considered conversation.


“My experience campaigning was where there were higher levels of housing stress or income stress, the impacts of anti-politics were much stronger,” a young and well-regarded Greens organiser told me. “When people are too worried about paying rent or eating, they don’t give a **** about politics.”


And yet, it’s these folks they found the easiest to win over to their cause. “The anti-politics people were by far the easiest demographic to swing to voting Greens for the first time,” they told me.


“It was the message of winnability that usually got them over the line: in our campaign, we told everyone just how close it was last time and you’d just see people’s eyes light up. Like, decades of political stagnation and being told constantly that change is impossible had left them completely switched off and the idea that that change was within reach really cut through.”


They went on to say that, with hindsight, the disappointing outcome makes sense “as a party coming up against a really strong contradiction: in a lot of cases, the classes of people we’re talking to have contradictory interests. Broadly, who’s benefiting from the status quo, and who’s not — I think that’s what’s come through in the results.”


The party may succumb to its enemies’ revisionism, however. These younger party members dread that the elders will steer them towards something resembling an appendage of the ALP, existing solely to prod the government in the ribs when it’s about to steer the proverbial “progressive patriotism”-fuelled Dodge Ram off the road.


The charge that the Greens are radical is frightening because they appear to be the only party addressing reality. Climate catastrophe is now inevitable. Refugees are being illegally mistreated. Israel is committing genocide. I can’t afford to go to the dentist.


The only radicalism I see in parliament is the prime minister’s radical centrism, the performance and maintenance of which requires a strain of disengagement that is genuinely, frighteningly, extreme.
Click to expand...

More people voted green at this election than ever before
 
Gralin said:
Hey Festerz you want to explain why you think charity isn't a failure of government?

Governments give charities money all the time instead of you know, directly helping the people the charities supposedly support

Charities are not an efficient way to get money into peoples hands either, most of it goes to "running the charity"
Click to expand...
See this is interesting. I had to read your post word for word.

You need influence or money, or both. If you got one that's good. Influence and generate money. You can also buy influence too.

But if you got both in good spades, your are a chance to do something


I mean Donald Trump being a billionaire and funded his presidential campaigns. No Doubt his influence and money helped him become president again.

Gina Rhinehart a billionaire, funded the Dutton led Liberals/national coalition.

Albanese and the Labor party won again. I don't know if he had billionaires helping him. But there would be some political donations to his party.

Clive Palmer is a billionaire too. He spent 60 million on the election campaign funding his trumpet of the patriots party.

One Nation party.... Well the 1st person we think of in that party is Pauline Hanson.

Then there is the Greens. They are not funded by some rich billionaire in the shadows. But slowly they have got people voting for them.

They have been around since the early 1990s. In the 2022 election, they got around 1.4 million voters and 4 seats. In 2025, they got 1,895,000 or close to 1.9 million voters but only 1 seat.

I am looking forward to the next election in 2028.

I am curious if they can get 2 million or more voters and a few seats, 5-8 seats to be exact
 

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SBD Gonzalez said:
Patrick Marlborough, in Crikey

The Greens must radicalise, or perish​


The media and political narrative is clear: the Greens’ woeful election performance is the result of voters punishing them for their dangerously radical beliefs (don’t bomb hospitals, starving children is wrong, you should be able to afford the dentist) — the rabid ravings of frothy-lipped eco-terrorists, gone feral from inhaling the fumes of dangerous culture war dogma (trans people should be protected, refugees shouldn’t be tortured, etc).

But if you truly think the Greens ran an “extreme” campaign, you’re probably a tenured columnist writing for somewhere like, oh, I don’t know, [REDACTED]. Among a creaky old media who vaguely remember Bob Ellis as Australia’s Chomsky, the Greens will always appear as a nightmare vision of Unabomber-adjacent Wahhabism. It’s wild that the party’s senior members still haven’t learnt this rather blunt, obvious lesson: these people will always hate them, no matter what they do.

Throughout the federal election, the Greens’ leadership — perhaps cowed by recent state results — pulled back on what various multimillion-dollar smear campaigns framed as their divisive, extremist ideas, such as climate justice, Aboriginal land reform, and ending Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Instead the party made funding social services by taxing megacorps (if this is “radical”, God help us) the centrepiece of an otherwise listless campaign — and were somehow surprised by the vitriol they received from the government, media and lobby groups.

The greatest trick Anthony Albanese pulled this election wasn’t trouncing Peter Dutton; it was sidestepping climate justice and Israel’s genocide in Gaza during the campaign. He achieved this in large part thanks to an obliging media that also prefers to avoid those conversations. Gaza was (and is) Albanese’s greatest weakness, just as surely as it will be the core of his legacy.

The Greens understood this. The past two years saw the party’s diverse left-wing base galvanised by issues the prime minister loathes touching. What momentum the Greens have had since 2022 stems from a growing, popular discontent around issues that are as “distant” as Gaza and as immediate as the price of groceries. Passionate volunteers, grassroots organising and genuinely leftist and progressive actions lent the party an energy that, for a while, made it seem like 2025 was theirs for the taking.

Instead, the party pivoted to policies and messaging that hinged on centrist compromise. Inevitably, the wind went out of their sails, and that excitement and energy rolled back like Bob Brown’s hairline.


There is an awareness among this “new” young-left faction that the party’s leadership and Bike Tory rusted-ons let them down — that they blew it by trying to beat Labor at its own game.


“We tried to become all centrist during the Richard Di Natale era,” a prominent party strategist told me on the condition of anonymity, “and that didn’t work.”


“We need to keep these diverse communities that have found the Greens through our advocacy on Gaza,” they said. “If we stop talking about Gaza, we stop demanding racial justice, we stop demanding economic justice, and we just try and be like some centrist climate movement — then what separates us from the teals?”


On the party’s new blood, they said: “All these young people and immigrant communities who voted for us for the first time: if we take one step back, why would they stay with us?”


The argument that Gaza cost them the election is a non-starter. “We didn’t do it to be popular,” this person stated flatly. “We did it to do the right thing.”


If there’s anything Albanese understands, it’s that doing the “right” thing isn’t worth the bother. The Greens’ failure to exploit this during the election was an own goal. The prime minister’s petulant sooking about Max Chandler-Mather edged levels of cringe that should have been weaponised against. Instead, we were all told to act like his nappy-filling had a shimmer of cool to it.


What may have undone the Greens more than anything is that familiar weakness of any progressive party whose reformist policies require considered conversation.


“My experience campaigning was where there were higher levels of housing stress or income stress, the impacts of anti-politics were much stronger,” a young and well-regarded Greens organiser told me. “When people are too worried about paying rent or eating, they don’t give a **** about politics.”


And yet, it’s these folks they found the easiest to win over to their cause. “The anti-politics people were by far the easiest demographic to swing to voting Greens for the first time,” they told me.


“It was the message of winnability that usually got them over the line: in our campaign, we told everyone just how close it was last time and you’d just see people’s eyes light up. Like, decades of political stagnation and being told constantly that change is impossible had left them completely switched off and the idea that that change was within reach really cut through.”


They went on to say that, with hindsight, the disappointing outcome makes sense “as a party coming up against a really strong contradiction: in a lot of cases, the classes of people we’re talking to have contradictory interests. Broadly, who’s benefiting from the status quo, and who’s not — I think that’s what’s come through in the results.”


The party may succumb to its enemies’ revisionism, however. These younger party members dread that the elders will steer them towards something resembling an appendage of the ALP, existing solely to prod the government in the ribs when it’s about to steer the proverbial “progressive patriotism”-fuelled Dodge Ram off the road.


The charge that the Greens are radical is frightening because they appear to be the only party addressing reality. Climate catastrophe is now inevitable. Refugees are being illegally mistreated. Israel is committing genocide. I can’t afford to go to the dentist.


The only radicalism I see in parliament is the prime minister’s radical centrism, the performance and maintenance of which requires a strain of disengagement that is genuinely, frighteningly, extreme.
Click to expand...
Funny that the greens in this election went central wing, considering in the past they were a left wing type group.

I don't know if they need to go to the " radicalism" path.

Funny thing was from the 1970s to the early 1990s, there was a semi decent party that was the undisputed 3rd biggest party outside the big 2 of Labor and Coalition. Yep the Democrats.

Their alignment wasn't left wing or right wing. They were centre.

Eventually the democrats slowly faded into being irrelevant. They didn't even participate the 2016 Australian Federal election.

There were various political parties in the 1990s and 2000s that tussled for that spot as the 3rd Major party...

It started off with the democrats, then one nation. Now it's the greens
 
Freomaniac said:
Funny that the greens in this election went central wing, considering in the past they were a left wing type group.

I don't know if they need to go to the " radicalism" path.

Funny thing was from the 1970s to the early 1990s, there was a semi decent party that was the undisputed 3rd biggest party outside the big 2 of Labor and Coalition. Yep the Democrats.

Their alignment wasn't left wing or right wing. They were centre.

Eventually the democrats slowly faded into being irrelevant. They didn't even participate the 2016 Australian Federal election.

There were various political parties in the 1990s and 2000s that tussled for that spot as the 3rd Major party...

It started off with the democrats, then one nation. Now it's the greens
Click to expand...

Dems were alternative to majors, but died when other alternatives emerged. Now a bunch of parties totally over 1% of vote exist (not including climate 200 who would be bigger than one nation). Needed to be something other than just not lib or labor
 
Freomaniac said:
See this is interesting. I had to read your post word for word.

You need influence or money, or both. If you got one that's good. Influence and generate money. You can also buy influence too.

But if you got both in good spades, your are a chance to do something


I mean Donald Trump being a billionaire and funded his presidential campaigns. No Doubt his influence and money helped him become president again.

Gina Rhinehart a billionaire, funded the Dutton led Liberals/national coalition.

Albanese and the Labor party won again. I don't know if he had billionaires helping him. But there would be some political donations to his party.

Clive Palmer is a billionaire too. He spent 60 million on the election campaign funding his trumpet of the patriots party.

One Nation party.... Well the 1st person we think of in that party is Pauline Hanson.

Then there is the Greens. They are not funded by some rich billionaire in the shadows. But slowly they have got people voting for them.

They have been around since the early 1990s. In the 2022 election, they got around 1.4 million voters and 4 seats. In 2025, they got 1,895,000 or close to 1.9 million voters but only 1 seat.

I am looking forward to the next election in 2028.

I am curious if they can get 2 million or more voters and a few seats, 5-8 seats to be exact
Click to expand...

Seats depend on preferences. If libs perform poorly again greens will be up against Labor and will struggle for seats
 
Jack Mundy said:
Seats depend on preferences. If libs perform poorly again greens will be up against Labor and will struggle for seats
Click to expand...
Correct. The only seat the Greens can realistically win without receiving preferences from Labor is Melbourne, because they can get a primary vote in the mid-40s in a good year. They didn't achieve that in any of their Queensland seats. So Melbourne is really the only place where they're masters of their own destiny.
 
Ghost Patrol said:
If Witty's political party is so good, why does it need charitable organisations to help poor people?

Shouldn't her government be doing that?
Click to expand...
The fact this question is being discussed in this thread is pretty crazy, in my view.

Like there seems to be multiple people basically suggesting the right kind of government should make the charity sector redundant.

I'm reminded of John McEnroe

"You cannot be serious!"
 

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