Greens’ election hubris – how the minor party lost its way and now its leader

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.

Under-delivering

The Greens share the blame for the tone of these election post-mortems.

This is a party of campaign hubris, consistently over-promising and under-delivering.

Bob Brown’s “green government” is yet to emerge. Christine Milne’s aspirations of gains in the bush barely materialised. And the “small-l liberals” chased by Richard Di Natale now prop up independents.

Bandt’s list of new target seats appears to have stretched resources too thin and underscored the challenges of taking a Senate party into the House.

The campaign narrative of “keeping Dutton out and getting Labor to act” may have suited a time when either a Labor or Coalition minority government was a possibility. But it did little to distinguish the Greens as Labor gained momentum.

Many voters may have thought kicking Peter Dutton out was best done by voting for Labor, backed up by supporting the Greens in the Senate to encourage more ambitious Labor action.

National vote holds up

And yet – is the election result all that bad?

Despite a small negative swing, the Greens’ nationwide primary vote was still above 12%. This election sits alongside 2010 and 2022 as among the party’s largest ever share of votes.

Support ticked up in seats as divergent as Lalor, Fraser, Macarthur, Barton, Newcastle, Page, Spence, and Swan. Even in divisions lost to Labor, such as Griffith and Brisbane, voters did not abandon the party in large numbers.

aec.gov.au, CC BY The Greens will also maintain their Senate numbers. This gives them sole balance of power, making them pivotal to Labor’s legislative success. Clearly, if the Greens are too “extreme”, it’s an extremism shared by a significant and relatively stable share of Australians. Lower house obstacles So, what explains this mix of loss and achievement? The Greens routinely highlight the barriers of the lower house electoral system. They have a point. Single member districts tend not to produce a chamber that reflects primary vote share. Preferential voting can be a boon to minor parties. But it also makes the outcomes of tight, multiparty electoral contests – the kind the Greens relied on to win in 2022 – susceptible to even slight shifts in voters’ preferences. Given the Nationals and a slew of independents held their seats, this may read like a cop out. But unlike the Nationals, the Greens lack a clear geographic cleavage that corrals large numbers of electors their way. And contrary to vaguely centrist independents, the Greens occupy ideological space where most voters don’t reside – even if many of the Greens’ “social democratic” policy positions have broad support when considered individually. This is hardly new. The party is no more stridently left-wing than in 2022. But even in the country’s most progressive seats, there is always a conservative rump. If the Liberal Party is knocked out of a race, most of their preferences will flow to Labor, which can be decisive. Senate obstruction Much has been made of the Greens’ legislative obstruction in the Senate. Delaying Labor’s housing agenda is one such example. Dabbling in opposition before ultimately capitulating for minor concessions may have dampened Greens support.