The Greens’ federal election result has been widely condemned as a “disaster”.
The party has been all but wiped out in the House of Representatives. It has lost three of its four members, including leader Adam Bandt, who has just conceded his once safe seat of Melbourne. This leaves the Brisbane electorate of Ryan as the Greens’ only remaining seat in the lower house.
Yet the tired explanations being rolled out – the party is too extreme, too obstructionist, too distant from a mythical single-issue environmentalist past – misidentify the party’s dilemmas.
And they overlook the fact the Greens’ influence will be greater in the new parliament, at least in the Senate.
(The author seems to be in a pretty unique position to comment, given that they literally wrote a PhD thesis on the Greens a few years ago)
Pretty much this, the Green vote was about stable, the issue was preferences. One Nation, Trumpet, Liberals etc ended up having thier preferences fall through to Labor.
Bandts seat was realigned, he took in a new section around Pahran etc that was traditional Labor.
As a long time Greens voter they’re not going to get much further then this, they don’t appeal to entitlement and greed and are more science and fact based. An old quote by James Speth sums up why
As Anthony Green pointed out on election night, next election will be worse as the funding laws have now changed and vastly favour LNP and ALP.
Yeah I’m a little bit doomer about election funding being rigged in favour of the mainstream parties. We’ll see how it plays out long term.
didn’t clive palmer spend millions and got nothing?
Yes, and that has put a smile on my face.
He still has a giant billboard up on the way to work. It has gone from an irritation to a little ray of sunshine knowing what he got for his millions.
“Achieved nothing,” he’s only a household name after all