Greens’ dream of more seats has turned into a nightmare

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The Greens suffered a profound defeat at the federal election on Saturday night, with the possibility the party will lose all three of the seats in Queensland it won for the first time at the 2022 election and fail to make any of the gains it had hoped to.

Even party leader Adam Bandt is enduring a scare in his seat of Melbourne, as Liberal preferences flowing to Labor shake his hold on the seat he first won in 2010.

Australian Greens leader Adam Bandt speaking at the party’s campaign HQ in Melbourne on election night.Credit: Paul Jeffers

Another seat for which the Greens retain hope is Ryan, in Queensland, where, in a complex three-horse race with the Liberals and Labor, incumbent Elizabeth Watson-Brown might emerge an unlikely winner. That seat remains too close to call.

Also close is Wills, in Melbourne’s progressive inner north, where former state Greens leader Samantha Ratnam is attempting to unseat Labor’s Peter Khalil and move from Victorian to federal politics.

During the campaign, Bandt had called for a “renters’ revolution”, but it was the party’s firebrand housing spokesman, Max Chandler-Mather, who was the biggest of the Greens’ casualties. He lost his seat of Griffith thanks to a resurgent Labor boosted by Liberal preferences.

Chandler-Mather conceded in a late-night speech that he had lost his seat, and confirmed he had phoned Labor’s Renee Coffey to congratulate her on victory in Griffith.

“What we are trying to do is fundamentally transform Australian politics, economy and society in favour of ordinary working people,” he told the crowd of supporters.

“That sort of project is going to have more setbacks than it has victories because the forces that we are coming up against are enormously powerful. I believe we can get there. I believe we can win. It is going to take time.”

As the night’s counting came to a close, the true cost of the Greens’ failure to significantly boost its primary vote in key seats was becoming apparent.

In a Labor-versus-Coalition election, the housing and climate crises and the minor party’s pro-Palestine stance in Gaza failed to convert for the Greens, with its primary vote climbing only slightly from 12 per cent in 2022 to 13 per cent.

The Greens’ candidate for Wills, Samantha Ratnam (second from right), on election night.Credit: Paul Jeffers

However, the party was likely to retain the six Senate seats it was contesting – one in each state – keeping its status as a potential blocking stake in the Senate.

As has been the pattern in past elections, the party had set its expectations sky-high – seeking to regain its four existing seats and add five more – two in Melbourne, one in regional NSW and one each in South Australia and Western Australia.

Despite the numbers, in an upbeat speech to a room full of cheering supporters in Melbourne last night, Bandt extolled the slight increase in the Greens vote and said: “One thing is clear, though: we have kept Dutton out.”

To boos, he added: “We may see the situation where some Labor members are elected on Liberal preferences.”

In Brisbane, where Chandler-Mather has lost Griffith and Stephen Bates has lost Brisbane, only one of the three Queensland seats, Ryan, is still too close to call.

At the election-night function in the northern state, however, you would not guess the trouble they faced. At 10pm, music was blasting and hundreds braved sporadic rain on a partially outdoor dance floor.

The revelation that Peter Dutton had lost his own seat about 25 kilometres to the north injected a fresh boost into the crowd, with delighted volunteers walking around with news headlines on their phones for the crowd.

Queensland senators Larissa Waters and Penny Allman-Payne were earlier brought in to rally the troops. “The results are really early, and as you can see, it’s gonna be really tight tonight, so we’re all gonna be watching with bated breath,” Allman-Payne told the still-energetic crowd.

Liberal Party preferences, which were directed to Labor above the Greens, had done the damage. That meant that, even in electorates in which the Greens lead, and with small Liberal votes, the two-party preferred vote will likely go to Labor in coming days when all votes are counted.

At the Greens’ Melbourne party in the suburb of Docklands, the party was also pumping despite the result. After Bandt’s speech at 9.10pm – shortly before Dutton’s concession speech – he asked the DJ to start, and the party moved to the dance floor.

Speaking later, Bandt said it was too close, across the country, to make confident predictions. He blamed the Greens’ poor result on the Liberal-Labor preference deals, which he said were designed to lock the Greens out.

“As we’ve been sitting there looking at the numbers … we’re on track to not only hold the balance of power in the Senate ... but to have between one and four seats in the lower house as well.”

Ratnam extolled the almost 10 per cent swing towards the party in the progressive electorate, and along with Bandt asked the party’s hardcore supporters to be available in coming weeks to scrutinise the count of crucial pre-poll and postal votes, which could take weeks.

Before losing his seat, Chandler-Mather was the party’s rising star. He spent his first term in the House of Representatives being outspoken and controversial. He spoke favourably of the CFMEU at a rally after corruption allegations were levelled against the union. And, with his calls to abolish negative gearing, double capital gains tax and freeze rents, he managed to get under Anthony Albanese’s skin.

Campaigning in Griffith during the week, the prime minister said Chandler-Mather had “personally held up, as the Greens party housing spokesperson … investments in the Housing Australia Future Fund, held up the Help to Buy scheme about shared equity in homeownership”.

At the national Greens party in Melbourne, one young campaign volunteer said cost of living, which in her mind translated to housing, was the overwhelming hot-button issue in the inner-northern Melbourne electorate of Wills.

A close second was the Israel-Palestine conflict.

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