Bandt clings to Melbourne seat as members clash on party direction

Greens leader Adam Bandt has clung onto his Melbourne seat as members internally clash on the direction of the party after the loss of Brisbane seats.

Bandt looks set to maintain his position despite a 5.4 per cent swing to Labor in his seat, as the party reckons with the “devastating” losses of firebrand Griffith MP Max Chandler-Mather and his Brisbane colleague Stephen Bates.

Greens leader Adam Bandt will have to define the party’s direction.Credit: Paul Jeffers

The Greens still hope to retain the Queensland seat of Ryan, held by Elizabeth Watson-Brown, who is in a complex three-horse race with the Liberals and Labor.

Melbourne’s progressive inner-north seat of Wills, where former state Greens leader Samantha Ratnam is attempting to unseat Labor’s Peter Khalil, is still too close to call, disappointing party strategists who hoped an advantageous redistribution would hand them a seat they have been trying to win for over a decade.

One source told this masthead that the possibility of winning one extra Senate seat was proof the minor party just needs to better define itself and advocate more on the climate, Israel-Palestine and housing.

“There was inconsistent and confused messaging from within the party, and it stemmed from a disagreement between those who wanted a more moderate approach and those who wanted to be bolder,” the source said. “We need to be bolder; we need to be seen as an alternative.”

However, another source argued the opposite.

“[We got] sucked into the culture wars, and when you do that, you don’t win – you have to help people at the local level. You saw it in Brisbane and Griffith in 2022,” they said.

“For a lower house seat, you have to make sure you are representing it and focusing on grassroots, community-based organising rather than culture wars issues. That’s where it went wrong in Griffith.”

The party’s heavy reliance on door-knocking before the campaign began meant it could have missed a shift in attitudes during the campaign, a third member said.

“It’s about how to get that short-term immediate campaign data. Door-knocking doesn’t provide information on the final couple of weeks of a campaign, so we missed that,” they said.

The party argues that the collapse of the Liberal vote in Queensland meant more people shifted to Labor, causing Chandler-Mather and Bates to lose their seats.

Publicly, the party was optimistic about its chances, as Senator Sarah Hanson-Young remained hopeful it could retain Ryan and win Wills.

“It’s going to come down to days, counting those postal votes and the preference flow,” she said.

But as counting continued at the Australian Electoral Commission’s West Footscray centre in Melbourne, Labor volunteers from Khalil’s team who were not authorised to speak publicly said they believed the ALP would hold off Ratnam’s challenge.

Ratnam said she remained hopeful as scrutineering continued but she acknowledged it would take time before a result was known.

By Sunday afternoon, with 70 per cent of the vote counted, Khalil was leading Ratnam by 0.68 per cent – or about 1100 votes out of 125,000 eligible voters.

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