From Schwartz Media. I'm Daniel James. This is seven am. Just before four point thirty last Wednesday afternoon, Anthony Green called it for the ABC. Green's leader, Adam bant had lost his seat. Fifteen years after band won the inner suburban seat of Melbourne from the ALP, Labor had taken it back along with another two, leaving the Greens with this a single seat in the House of Reps and no leader. The wipeout of the Greens came as a shock to the party that entered the campaign hoping to
expand its influence and numbers in the Parliament. Today National correspondent for the Saturday paper Mike Second on where it all went wrong and what now for the Greens. It's Monday, May twelfth, Mike. Last Thursday, Green's Life. Adam Bantt finally addressed the media and conceded that he lost his seat of Melbourne. What did you make of his speech?
Look, I guess some people would say it was not the most gracious.
Look, thanks for coming out. I've got a few remarks that I'd like to make and won't be taking any questions at the end of it.
Ironically, Peter Dutton's concession speech was probably the most gracious performance he ever gave, but frankly, I kind of liked what it said about Bett. You know, he got into politics because he was passionate about issues, particularly the environment and climate change, and he maintained that passion in defeat.
I want to thank Melbourne voters for regularly giving me the highest vote, including in this election, and to thank you for the last fifteen years and the chance to do some amazing things together.
It was a stunning outcome, you know. I thought his loss was even more surprising than that of Peter Dutton. In his seat of Dixon. He only held it by about one point seven percent at the twenty twenty two election, so it was in play. Band, in contrast, held his seat by a very multi ten percent. In fact, he
barely needed preferences to win n twenty twenty two. His primary vote was forty nine points six percent, so he looked to have a pretty firm hold on it, even given the fact that since the last election there'd been a redistribution in his seat which took some of the more progressive areas out and put some more conservative areas in. But he still had a notional margin of six or seven percent. So yeah, short answer, I didn't see this coming and I don't think anyone did.
Yes, it was very surprising. What about the other Greens seats lost, how surprising?
Were a not nearly as surprising, frankly, but still a bit unexpected. The opinion polls during the campaign, even as they were showing the Dutton opposition was tanking, showed the Greens vote was holding or in fact increasing slightly. But the Green's three Brisbane seats Griffith, Brisbane and Ryan, it became increasingly clear. I think during the election campaign that those three seats were in play. All the parties put
big resources into them. But the way they fell and probably in the case of Brian didn't fall, was still remarkable because it was all about preference flows. You know, it's a bit complicated, but let me try to explain. If we take Griffith for example, which was Max Chandler Mather's seat in twenty twenty two, he came first on the primary vote right, he got thirty four point six percent of the vote, so he finished first, but he was still well short of an outright majority. The Coalition
came in second and Labour came in third. So what this meant was that Labor preferences were distributed because they go upwards according to the vote check, and they pushed Chandler Matha not just over the line, but to what looked like a very big win, you know, sixty forty after preferences. But this time around, the order in which the candidates finished changed, so Labor came first, Greens came second, and the Liberal National Party the Coalition party, came third.
So instead of Labor preferences being distributed and flowing to Max Chandler Mather, Coalition preferences flowed and they went to the Labor candidate, which led to what appeared to be a hammering basically sixty forty in the other direction. So that was the pattern. Their Brisbane followed essentially the same pattern, and the Greens candidate, Stephen Bates, was behind Labor on the primaries and the Coalition preferences went to Labor and
he was gone. I spoke to the excellent election analyst Ben Rowi about this, and he said, this is a peculiarity of the preferential voting system that we will see more and more over time, and that is that anytime the top two contenders are not clear. You know, once you get into a three way contest, preferencing gets, as
he put it, really weird. And he says the Greens have a much better chance of winning seats when they're up against a Liberal in the final count than when they're up against Labor because of the way the preferences flow. So if we go to the third Brisbane seat, Brian, that shows the flip side of this. There Elizabeth Watson Brown one in twenty two. Her vote share actually declined at this election. It was down to just twenty eight point seven percent, so seven points adrift of the L ANDP.
And yet she appears to have squeaked back into office and the reason for that was that the order of finishing of the parties didn't change. Labour again finished third and so Labour preferences flowed to her. As Rowi summed it up, the preferential system has delivered kind of a perverse result here, which is that the more conservative seat wound up electing the more left wing candidate, i e. The Green, The more progressive seat ended up electing the less left wing candidate with Labor.
So while there was a minus swing away from the Greens, was this more of a case of the coalition crashing and bringing the Greens down with them.
Not entirely, but to a considerable extent. You know. Someone in the Greens described it to me by way of a sporting analogy. They said it was like one of those races where one competitive falls on trips another on
the way down. The bottom line here is that while the Greens lost seats in the House of Representatives, including that of their leader Adam Bant, their primary vote was only down a little So in this election, the Greens actually did not do that badly in terms of their overall vote share, it was only down about half a percent. And bear in mind also that there is this long term trend away from the major parties. So last Saturday,
almost a third record opted for someone else. Younger voters, particularly young women, are far more inclined to vote for the Greens than previous generations were. At this election shore
more of them went for labor. But should the Albanese government fail to sufficiently address the concerns of these younger voters, you know, on issues like housing, social justice, the environment, climate change, the Greens remain an obvious alternative and continue to be an entirely viable political outfit, which is possibly more than can be said at this stage for the Liberal Party, I.
Think after the break Adam band in the big red toothbrush. So, Mike, let's talk about the actual campaign. The Greens ran. What was their pitch to the electric.
Well, the mantra, the relentless slogan that they kept saying was keep Dutton out, push Labor to act. You know, this was repeated endlessly by Bantony his team.
We're in reach of winning new seats across the country. This is our chance to deliver again for real change, to keep Dutton out and to get Labor to act. Vote won Greens.
And the intent of it was obvious. You know. They were framing the Greens as a progressive safeguard that if voters delivered a minority parliament, and let's remember that that looked a very real prospect only a month or so ago, they and the cross Bench would be there to stop
the worst instincts of the Liberals. In retrospect, though, it doesn't look as smart, does it, because obviously, when voters went into the polling booths, they decided that the best way to keep Dutton out was just to vote Labor and not the Greens.
So you think the Greens made a major miscalculation on betting that a minority government was almost an inevitability.
Yeah, I think so. I think so. You know, there's central campaign issues. I wonder about that too. I think the Greens always do best when the focus is on environment and climate, and it wasn't in this campaign.
Okadam, We've got to talk about the toothbrush.
We can't not talk about it. Obviously, you want dental in medicare instead.
We had bent running around with the giant red toothbrush about putting dental into medicare.
Well, people are putting off going to the dentists because they can't afford us. And when you do go, if you need something more than a routine treatment, or your child needs braces, it can run into the thousands of dollars.
Not a bad idea, I would suggest, but I'm not sure it cut through.
There's been a trend though, where the Greens have been losing votes in what you might consider their heartland, particularly in places like Victoria, first in state and local elections and now federally. What are people within the party saying is the reason for.
That well's you won't be surprised to know. There's a number of different interpretations on this, so there's a degree of argument within the party. But you're right, some people in the party and outside the party attribute this to the sort of broadening of the suite of issues that the Greens now champion, you know, in particular, a lot of people single out Gaza and they're very strong support for the Palestinians and they're very strong criticism of Israel.
Oddly enough, Ben Ray suggests that the Gaza issue appears to have won the party some big swings in some seats, you know, like Chiffley and Werrowa in Western Sydney, which have quite substantial Muslim populations but not big enough to win. And he says that he doesn't think that Gaza explains
why the vote was going down in their heartland. But some of the Greens I spoke to who wanted to stay anonymous, argued that it wasn't so much the party's policy positioning that has been damaging, but more the sort of immoderate way that those positions have been argued. You know, on Gaza, for example, it's one thing to accuse Israel of committing crimes under international law. But it's quite another thing to accuse the Australian government of being and I'm
quoting here, complicit in Israel's genocide. You know. That was what Marine Ferruki had to say a couple of months ago.
So long as we have defense contracts with Israeli weapons companies, the Labor government is complicit in genocide. So long as we refuse to impose sanction on Israel, this Labor government is complicit in genocide, and there are no excuses for inaction.
The Greens have always had a broad social justice agenda, but some people in the party argue that there hasn't been enough emphasis on the core turf of environment and climate, and that the party has come to be seen not just as obstructive, but as aggressively obstructive. In the last parliament, you know, I spoke to some who said the feedback they were getting from voters on the booths was that the party seemed and are quoting here, too angry and too personal in its critiques of the government.
It was a point that Anthony Alberanezi and the Labor Party really hammered that the Greens had been obstructionists throughout the first term.
That they simply combined with the coalition in what I termed the null alition to provide blockages, and that occurred across a range of portfolios, housing, Treasury as well the environment.
In his first interview since the election, he spoke about the no elition the Greens had formed with the opposition. So did that sentiment resonate with voters? Do you think?
What I think is that Anthony Albanizi is the canniest politician in Australia and the fact that he kept hammering that point suggests that Labor knew it was resonating, and I think there is some truth to it. You know, they perhaps held out too long in some cases. Of course, the counter argument is that they got some results. Max Chandler matha hung out and hung out and hang out in housing policy and eventually got a few billion dollars
extra out of the government by doing so. But along the way it got a bit ugly.
He should have a good look at the way that he asked questions in the Parliament and maybe what he needs as a mirror and a reflection on why he's no longer in parliament.
And the Prime Minister singled out Chandler Matha, in particular in that interview that you mentioned, noting that Chandler Mather had stood up at a CFMU rally in front of sign that described him as a Nazi Albanzi I think was genuinely offended by that. Chandler Mather also took it up to Albo for owning a rental property and put that in terms that Alberanze found offensive and you know, were frankly pretty strong.
So you know, I think he should have a look at the way that he conducted himself in question time, including the questions that he asked of me, which I found pretty offensive and which some of which were ruled out of order.
So I think so. So it'll be interesting to see, you know, now that Chandler Mayth has gone, now that the leader's gone, if the Greens adopted somewhat more cooperative or at least polite approach to negotiations with the government in the future.
So do you think the public still sees that its valuable in terms of holding the government to account in the Senate?
Oh? I do? I do? I mean, you know, their performance in the House of Reps was poor, but because Labour's win was so big that's kind of irrelevant. You know, they're going to have probably ninety out of one hundred and fifty lower House seat. But the Greens still performed very well in the Senate. They held all their seats. They've got eleven Senate seats, which, as it happens, is exactly enough to give Labor the votes it needs to
pass legislation. And this may not have happened entirely by accident. I spoke to the Greens New South Wales Senator David Shubridge, and let me quote him. He said, I think a lot of people were really anxious about getting Peter Dutton with a side surf of Trump, and that played out with people voting Labor out of fear of Dutton in the lower House and then voting with their heart for the Greens in the Senate. And you know, I think
that's right. I think that the electorate at large does not like a government to control both houses, and I think in the current climate they probably want a labor government that is slightly less timid than the last one was, you know, a bit bolder on policy, and certainly Greens in the balance of power will be pushing in that direction.
And obviously whether the Greens adopt a less combative approach when dealing with the government will come down to leadership and left the way and see who the new leader is, and they'll hold the balance of power in the Senate. The Government is going to have to negay shape with them at some point. So what do we know about what the Greens agenda will be for the next parliament.
Well, Adam Bann at that media conference on Monday he spelled it out, you know, and he made the point he said, the government now can't blame any independent senator for not getting its reforms through.
The only thing stopping getting dental into medicare, stopping you coal or gas mines, or rebalancing unfair housing tax breaks is the government itself.
And he's absolutely right. He was absolutely right also when he said that this could be the most progressive parliament Australia's ever seen. It comes down essentially to how bold Labor is because the Coalition can't stop them if they want to do radical things, because the Greens will happily wave it through. So it will be interesting to see,
won't it. It really comes back I guess not so much to the Greens as to where the labor has the nerve to actually push the envelope a little bit on some of these things.
Nerve is one word for it. Mike, thank you so much for your time.
Thanks sir, cheers.
Also in the news today, dumped Industry and Science Minister Ed Husick has called the Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles a factional assassin. Hoosick was acts last week as Males and the Victorian Right successfully argued to take a front bench place from the new South Wales Right. Attorney General Mark Drayfus has also been sacked, and mister Hughesy questioned why the Prime Minister didn't use the huge mandate of his win to protect the two ministers from the factional fight.
The new cabinet will be announced today and hours after the US President Donald Trump announced to cease fire between India and Pakistan. Both countries have accused the other of breaching it. Clashes between the two nations have been escalating for weeks, triggered by a mass shooting of tourists in India controlled Kashmir. India blame Pakistan repeated violations of the truth and said it was retaliating. Both countries are nuclear armed.
I'm Daniel James. This is seven am. Thanks for listening.