How new Greens MPs will push their power in Brisbane

Brisbane’s new federal Greens MPs promise to pursue a curfew at Brisbane Airport and a bridge out of flood-locked Moggill, while pressing the Labor government on climate change, housing and other environmental issues.

Voters elected two new Greens MPs in Brisbane on Saturday – Max Chandler-Mather in former Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd’s old seat of Griffith – and architect Elizabeth Watson-Brown in Ryan, ousting the LNP’s Julian Simmonds.

In the third Brisbane seat, Greens candidate Stephen Bates was 158 votes ahead of Labor’s Madonna Jarrett on Monday evening, with postal votes to determine the outcome there.

Chandler-Mather said he would press for a 11pm curfew at Brisbane Airport, while Watson-Brown said she would seek a business study into a bridge across the Brisbane River from the flood-locked Moggill Peninsula.

Chandler-Mather said curfews were not negatively impacting the fast-growing Sydney Airport and Brisbane should have similar aircraft noise mitigation.

Greens leader Adam Bandt with new MPs Elizabeth Watson-Brown and Max Chandler-Mather.Credit: Tony Moore

“It hasn’t affected their economy, nor their capacity to invite people from around the world,” he said.

“That curfew was won in the 1990s and Sydney has grown since then.

“I think you will have to ask the people of Brisbane who get woken up at 2am if they think a curfew is necessary. I think it is absolutely necessary.”

Federal Greens leader Adam Bandt lodged a private airport curfew bill in the House of Representatives in February, after the previous Coalition government in September 2021 ordered an inquiry into the impact of the way the two runways at Brisbane Airport were run.

Bandt said he had spoken briefly with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Sunday and the Greens would support Labor’s proposed independent environmental protection agency.

How the national percentage vote changed since the 2019 election

• Coalition: 5.6 per cent drop to 35.8 per cent (56 seats)
• Labor: 0.5 per cent drop to 32.8 per cent (74 seats)
• Greens: 1.5 per cent increase to 11.8 per cent (three seats)
• Independents (including ‘teal’ independents): 10.5 per cent (10 seats)
• One Nation: 1.8 per cent increase to 4.9 per cent (no seats)
• United Australia Party: 0.7 per cent increase to 4.2 per cent (no seats)

(As of May 23, ABC election result site)

But he pointed out while Labor won the election, voter support for the party had gone backwards.

“The reality is that – regardless of whether Labor gets over the line with a slim majority, or whether they are in minority – it doesn’t change the fact that the Greens are the most powerful third party in the Parliament and our support in the Senate is going to be critical in getting things done.”

“We now have the situation across the country where roughly one third votes for the Coalition, one third votes for the Labor and a third of the people in this country want someone else.”

Chandler-Mather said Cleveland’s Toondah Harbour development for 2000 units over internationally protected wetlands was “indicative of the way property developers are trampling over communities across Queensland”.

Bandt said environmental laws were “full of holes, and they don’t protect our environment which is what they are supposed to do”.

In Ryan, Watson-Brown said she wanted to have “deep community consultation” about a possible bridge to prevent the Moggill-Bellbowrie region from being continually “flood-locked”.

“We spoke to lots of people in that area, and they felt they were abandoned in the last flood and left alone with no access out,” she said.

“So it is a really, big issue around isolation and connection.”