Joe Hildebrand: Teals and Greens protest about problems they have no idea how to solve

The Teals and Greens are not Labor fronts nor friends – they are self-interested and self-satisfied pontificating narcissists sooking and moaning about problems they have no idea how to solve, writes Joe Hildebrand.

Let’s not mince words: This has been the most phenomenal election in Australian history.

It has now been a week since the last votes were cast and the results are still reverberating.

And for pretty much everybody except the Australian Labor Party, those reverberations have been shattering.

The Albanese government appears set to hold more than 90 seats in the next parliament – almost two-thirds of the House of Representatives.

And Anthony Albanese is now the first Prime Minister since John Howard – the first this century – to lead his party to a second term in government.

The turnstile churn is over. Stability and normality has finally been restored to Australian democracy.

That is nothing short of extraordinary in and of itself but it is what Labor has done to other parties that will be even more nation-defining in the years ahead.

The Liberals have been reduced to a rump.

Greens leader Adam Bandt concedes he has lost the Federal seat of Melbourne. Picture: NewsWire/David Crosling

While the National Party has largely held its own, the Liberal Party faces an existential crisis that, barring some sort of miracle, will keep the Coalition out of power for at least two terms – and more if it fails to learn the hard lessons the electorate taught it.

But the biggest and best blow of all has been to the sanctimonious snobs who once seemed like an unstoppable rising force in progressive 21st century politics.

I speak, of course, of the Greens and the Teals, two slightly different shades of colour that have besmirched the political landscape in this country in recent years.

After winning a record four seats at the 2022 election, the Greens disgraced themselves with barely disguised anti-Semitism and ugly activism over a foreign war in which Australia has no part, while at the same time crippling the rollout of affordable housing in this country, which the most vulnerable Australians vitally need.

As a result they have been righteously wiped out in the lower house, with only the lonely member for the Brisbane seat of Ryan a chance of taking a seat. A Mars bar for anyone who even knows their name. Adam Bandt has now lost his own seat of Melbourne after 15 years, just as Peter Dutton lost his on election night.

The PM effectively faced two opposition leaders in government, one from the left and one from the right. Both are now among the historically low number of Australians who are unemployed.

Teal MP Zoe Daniel lost her seat of Goldstein. Picture: The Australian/Nadir Kinani

The once insufferably smug Teal juggernaut has also hit a brick wall, with the Liberals’ Tim Wilson reclaiming the seat of Goldstein from Zoe Daniel and uber-Karen Monique Ryan in real trouble in the neighbouring seat of Kooyong.

Meanwhile, hairdresser-whisperer Nicolette Boele was thought to be a shoo-in for the north shore Sydney seat of Bradfield but was still trailing the Libs at the time of writing.

And that was all with the supposed Trump-bogeyman Dutton at the helm. God help them if someone more versed in the art of eastern suburbs cutlery placement takes over.

For all the gloating and self-congratulatory commentary of 2022, that seems a pretty fragile and ephemeral result for the millions spent by a billionaire, hurt because he fell out with Josh Frydenberg.

But of course the Teal dream isn’t over, and here’s where it gets really interesting. Struggling to win or hold on to Liberal seats, they have started going after Labor’s. If only an incredibly handsome columnist could have predicted this three years ago.

Indeed, the ALP’s dreamboat surfer-dude Member for Fremantle came under attack from a

Teal-funded independent and has only narrowly survived. The less sun-kissed member for the Canberra seat of Bean may not.

This is a lesson for those on the left as stark as the lesson being delivered to those on the right. The Teals and the Greens are not Labor fronts and they are not Labor’s friends.

They are self-interested and self-satisfied pontificating narcissists. Like cuckoos in the nest, they seek to ingratiate themselves among supposedly progressive voters in order to eat the ALP from the inside.

They will never have to form government or hand down a budget or face all the political realities that entails. Instead they are endless parties of protest that sook and moan about problems they have not the slightest idea of how to solve.

And so the greatest result of this election is that these shysters have been shown the door.

God willing it is an amusement park exit that locks like a vault behind them.