Attention-seeker or renters’ champion? The Greens MP driving pollies up the wall

This story is part of the June 15 edition of Good Weekend.See all 12 stories.

HE drives the prime minister nuts. Anyone can see that. And Anthony Albanese isn’t alone. The entire Labor caucus seems to loathe Max Chandler-Mather, as do most members of the Liberal-National opposition. When the first-term Greens MP rises to address the House of Representatives, jeering erupts on both sides of the chamber. “It starts almost as soon as they set eyes on him, certainly when he gets up to speak,” says his Greens colleague, Elizabeth Watson-Brown, who sits next to Chandler-Mather in the House. At times the sound rises to a cacophony, she says. “It’s almost like howling. Absolutely bestial.”

At least two MPs – the Liberal National Party’s Michelle Landry and independent Helen Haines – have gone to the Speaker, Milton Dick, to raise concerns about the level of hostility directed at the young Queenslander. Stephen Bates, a fellow Green, sometimes drops into Chandler-Mather’s Parliament House office to monitor his welfare. “Obviously, it’s pretty messed up, being screamed at in your workplace,” Bates tells me. “I go in and check on him: ‘How are you doing?’”

Here’s the thing, though. Chandler-Mather appears to be doing just fine. “He’s always in a good mood,” Bates says. “He’s very hard to break, is what I’ll say. They keep trying but they haven’t broken him and I don’t think they will.”

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One Monday evening, I join a gathering of about 40 people in a park in Chandler-Mather’s Brisbane electorate of Griffith. “Free Community Dinner. Everyone Welcome!” says a sign near the barbecue. Chandler-Mather, wearing latex gloves, is serving quesadillas. At 32, he is lean and boyish, with springy brown hair and alert blue eyes. In Canberra, he has a reputation as a left-wing firebrand: the flak he gets in parliament is partly a reaction to the righteously ­indignant tone of his speeches. But away from the ­microphone, his manner is bright and amiable. Here in the park, he’s the solicitous host, keen to get to know his constituents. And feed them. “Hello,” he says, beaming at the next person in the quesadilla queue. “Would you like lettuce, tomato and sour cream?”

A team of volunteers organised by his office puts on this event each week, as well as a dinner for homeless people, and breakfasts for kids at three schools in the electorate, which encompasses inner-city suburbs on the south side of the Brisbane River. A lot of the ­ingredients – bread, fruit, vegetables – are supplied by a hunger-relief charity, Foodbank. Chandler-Mather pays for everything else. He says he expected the free meals program, which he started six months after he was elected, to cost him $12,000 a year. The bill has risen to more than double that amount. But in his view, his remuneration as a federal MP is so generous that he has money to spare and an obligation to share it. A base salary of $217,000, for heaven’s sake. An annual allowance of $19,500 in lieu of the use of a government car. “It’s ridiculous,” he says cheerfully. “Obscene.”

He spends the car allowance on the meals program, along with about $7000 of his salary. He points out that he didn’t need the Commonwealth to supply him with a vehicle: he has a 17-year-old Toyota Yaris that runs perfectly well. “There are so many trappings, creature comforts, that they offer you with this job,” he says. “And declining as many as possible, I think, is important. Because it keeps you a bit grounded.”

After entering parliament two years ago, Chandler-Mather turned down an invitation to join the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge, where MPs waiting for flights can schmooze with corporate bosses and other big wheels in a club-like atmosphere. He travels economy on his commutes between Brisbane and Canberra, forgoing the opportunity to sit up the front of the plane at tax­payers’ expense. He makes clear this doesn’t feel like a hardship. “I’ve never flown business class in my life.”

Something else he has never done: owned real estate. Chandler-Mather is one of the millions of Australians – more than 30 per cent of householders – who rent the place where they live. That’s significant because he is the Greens’ spokesperson on housing and homelessness, a role in which he has made a significant impact. I am as interested in politics as the next person but before I started researching this story, I couldn’t have named the Coalition’s shadow minister for housing (Victorian Liberal MP Michael Sukkar) or, for that matter, the actual Housing Minister (Tasmanian Labor MP Julie Collins). Chandler-Mather, on the other hand, is a kind of celebrity. He appears on TV programs like Insiders, Q&A and The Project. He is quoted in news stories. His social media posts get tens of thousands of views. He may belong to a minor party – there are four Greens in the 151-member House of Representatives and 11 in the 76-person Senate – but he has taken centre stage in a debate that looks certain to grip the nation all the way to the next election.

Chandler-Mather, Elizabeth Watson-Brown and Stephen Bates, the three new Greens elected in Brisbane during the 2022 election.Credit: James Brickwood.

Australia has an acute shortage of ­affordable accommodation. The housing crisis, as headline writers call it, is getting worse rather than better. Rents continue to rise. House and apartment prices soar to absurd new heights. The rich, many of whom have substantial real estate port­folios, get richer. The poor, who are their tenants, get poorer. Chandler-Mather is appalled by the entrenchment of inequality: how have we allowed this to become a country where wealthy landlords receive tax breaks while renters on low and even middle incomes struggle to keep a roof over their heads? And why can’t we supply enough shelter for people priced out of the private rental market? According to a ­report released last month by the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council, 169,000 households are on waiting lists for public housing and 122,000 of our fellow citizens are homeless. “The housing system in Australia is broken, and it is breaking people,” says Chandler-Mather.

His critics will tell you through gritted teeth that Chandler-Mather is an attention-seeker and a self-­promoter, less interested in working with the government to repair the system than in grandstanding. “It’s mostly about publicity and generating outrage,” says Queensland Labor senator Murray Watt.

When Chandler-Mather had the floor, there were shouts of ‘Grow up!’ and ‘Sit down, you moron!’

Politicians aren’t the only ones he annoys, I ­realise when he addresses the National Press Club in Canberra in March. Sharing the stage with him is Mike Zorbas, the smooth-as-silk chief executive of the Property Council of Australia, essentially a lobby group for property developers. Zorbas speaks first, emphasising in a calm, pleasant voice that it’s the ­sincere wish of everyone in the industry to make more housing available to Australians at prices they can ­afford. The sharp-suited real-estate types who make up much of the audience applaud him warmly. Chandler-Mather goes next. “The great lie at the heart of Australia’s housing debate is that private property developers want housing to be more affordable,” he says. “What private property developers want to do – understandably – is make as much money as possible. That means doing everything they can to drive up the price of housing, land and rents.”

Zorbas adopts a stoic expression as Chandler-Mather goes on to outline the Greens’ proposals for alleviating upward pressure on prices. The government should freeze rents for two years, then cap rent increases, he says. It should phase out tax concessions for property investors, thereby improving the budget’s bottom line by billions of dollars a year. It should use that money to build hundreds of thousands of affordable homes, ­effectively becoming a publicly owned property developer in the same way that governments stepped in to solve the housing shortage after World War II. Around the room, housing industry people look pained, polite, amused or in some cases incredulous. A man sitting near me sighs, picks up his phone and spends the rest of the speech playing Wordle.

Last year, exasperation with Chandler-Mather reached a peak. Labor needed the votes of the 11 Greens senators plus two other upper house crossbenchers to pass a bill creating a $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, the investment earnings from which would be used to build and maintain government-subsidised housing. A step in the right direction, many agreed, but Chandler-Mather dismissed it as “a $10 billion gamble on the stock ­market”. He and the Greens played hardball, agreeing to support the bill only after the government had ­committed to outlay an extra $3 billion for direct spending on social housing (the catch-all term for ­accommodation owned and managed by governments or not-for-profit organisations).

During the months-long stand-off between Labor and the Greens, the heckling of Chandler-Mather in the lower house intensified. When he had the floor, there were shouts of “Grow up!” and “Sit down, you moron!” The prime minister told him he was a joke. A government frontbencher made a comment about his mother. Chandler-Mather – who won’t name the minister – only half-heard the jibe but got the gist. “I don’t think it was specifically targeted at my mum,” he says. “They don’t even know who she is. It was just part of a slew of weird, overly personal insults that they were fond of throwing at me.”

Chandler-Mather smiles. It occurs to me that not only is he unbothered by this stuff, he’s having the time of his life.

PM Anthony Albanese lets fly at Chandler-Mather after a fiery exchange in question time.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

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We are standing at the front door of a well-kept house in the suburb of Greenslopes on a warm Brisbane afternoon. Chandler-Mather is wearing a straw Bunnings hat – inherently daggy but, on him, somehow quite jaunty – and carrying a clipboard. When door-knocking in his electorate, he normally introduces himself like this: “G’day, I’m Max. I’m your federal member of parliament.” It’s important to be adaptable, though, and the woman who has answered the door looks decidedly unwelcoming. “I’m not a marketer,” he says quickly. “I’m your federal member.” The woman says, “I’m not interested”, and closes the door in his face.

It’s water off a duck’s back to Chandler-Mather, who estimates he knocked on 15,000 doors during his campaign for the seat of Griffith and who basically hasn’t stopped knocking since. His goal is to have meaningful conversations with his constituents – find out how they’re feeling about things, what problems they’re facing and what, if anything, he can do to help. He encourages candour. He takes extensive notes. “My job is to advocate on your ­behalf,” he tells them. If not all want to talk to him – and that much is obvious in the hour or so I spend pounding the pavement with him – he understands. People are busy. They presume he’s a salesman. At a house with a car parked in the driveway, he rings the bell and waits for the sound of approaching footsteps. Silence. He waits a while longer. Still nothing. “They could be not coming to the door because they see someone with a clipboard,” he says.

Chandler-Mather estimates he knocked on 15,000 doors during his campaign for the seat of Griffith – and basically hasn’t stopped since.Credit: Paul Harris

Another possibility: they’re not coming to the door because they see Max Chandler-Mather. But if that crosses his mind, he leaves it unsaid. As sunny as ever, he leads the way to the next place. And the next. At an address that the electoral roll indicates is home to several voters, a young man answers his knock. “Awesome!” he says, when Chandler-Mather tells him he’s from the Greens. Chandler-Mather asks if he has any concerns. “Man, the environment,” the bloke replies. Chandler-Mather (pen poised): “Any particular issue about the environment?” Bloke (puzzled): “It’s a bit f---ed.”

When the subject of housing comes up, the young man agrees rents are insanely high. He’s leasing a room in this house because he can’t afford to rent a place of his own. As the discussion continues, I can tell he’s chuffed that Chandler-Mather has taken an interest in his circumstances. “Thank you heaps!” he calls after us as we leave. “You guys have got my vote.”

The mere fact that Chandler-Mather is in parliament irritates those on the government benches. In winning the May 2022 federal election after almost a decade in opposition, Labor was expected to retain Griffith, which it had held for all but two of the previous 45 years. Labor’s shadow environment minister, Terri Butler, who inherited the seat from former prime minister Kevin Rudd, had defeated Chandler-Mather at the 2019 election. Most assumed she would do so again. Instead, the Greens challenger snatched the prize, increasing his share of the primary vote by 11 per cent to 34.6 per cent, ahead of the Liberal National Party on 30.8 per cent and Butler on 28.9 per cent. Chandler-Mather doesn’t mind admitting it was a ­do-or-die effort on his part: he gave up paid work ­almost 12 months before the poll in order to put all his time and energy into campaigning. “By election night, my ­savings account had got down to $25,” he says.

In preparation for life as a parliamentarian, the ­then-30-year-old acquired his first suit, a navy one. At my desk one morning, I find myself idly wondering how he afforded it. “Hahaha good question,” he replies to my text message. “I bought it after I got my first pay cheque as an MP.” Some in Canberra saw Chandler-Mather as trouble from the start. The first time he rose to ask a question in the House, he was interrupted by the National Party’s Pat Conaghan, who drew the Speaker’s attention to the Greens rookie’s “state of ­undress”. What he meant was that Chandler-Mather wasn’t wearing a tie. Conaghan, who represents the northern NSW seat of Cowper, was ordered to resume his seat. Later, he released a statement harrumphing about slipping sartorial standards: “This is not a ­barbecue. This is question time in the Australian Parliament. What next, boardshorts and thongs?”

Chandler-Mather had arrived in the national capital with two other new Greens MPs: Elizabeth Watson-Brown, who had won the previously LNP-held seat of Ryan in Brisbane’s prosperous western suburbs, and Stephen Bates, who had squeaked past Labor to take the central city electorate of Brisbane. To party leader Adam Bandt, MP for the seat of Melbourne, it felt like the start of a new era. Bandt had been the sole Greens member of the House for 12 years. Suddenly he had company, all of it from Queensland. The northern state, usually perceived as a bastion of conservatism, had also elected a second Greens senator, meaning it now had five Greens in federal parliament, three more than any other state. Political pundits were confounded. What on earth had happened there?

With party leader Adam Bandt.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Max Chandler-Mather happened, seems to be the short answer. In his maiden speech, he paid tribute to Queensland Greens state director Kitty Carra, but Carra herself credits Chandler-Mather with masterminding the party’s breakthrough. Veterans of the political trenches will tell you that the most successful campaigns are crafted by people whose ability to crunch numbers and interpret voting patterns is supplemented by something akin to a sixth sense, an intuitive understanding of the mood of the electorate. Chandler-Mather has that rare talent, Carra says. “Max always sees things before we do, he really does.”

Carra first became aware of Chandler-Mather in 2016 when, at the age of 23, he managed Greens candidate Jonathan Sriranganathan’s campaign to secure a seat on Brisbane City Council, the largest local government authority in Australia. “People kept coming into my office and telling me we were going to win it, and I kept scoffing at them,” says Carra, who hadn’t seen the Queensland Greens come out on top in any contest since the 2010 federal election, when Larissa Waters won the Senate seat she still holds. “It had been a long time between drinks.”

After Sriranganathan’s victory, Carra invited Chandler-Mather to a meeting of the Greens’ state council. “He gave a little talk in his enthusiastic fashion,” she says, recalling her dawning realisation that she had a political prodigy on her hands. “It was obvious not just to me but to many in the room that this young man knew how to do it. He had the brains and the wherewithal and the strategy for winning. And the determination.”

Carra wanted him by her side. “So we offered him the job of strategist, which was a big call. We’d never had one in the party. Literally invented the role for him.”

The Queensland wunderkind is now an inspiration to Greens nationally. “There’s enormous respect in the party room,” says Adam Bandt. For Elizabeth Watson-Brown, who had a stellar career as an architect before running for the Greens, watching Chandler-Mather in action has been an education. Politics isn’t just his job, she says. “It’s him. It’s in his DNA. It’s the way he thinks and the way he operates. He’s a political animal.”

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Max Chandler-Mather is sitting on the ­verandah of the house he shares with his partner, social scientist and novelist Joanna Horton, and their baby, Felix, who was born late last year. It’s a charming old place, with polished wooden floors and a yellow front door, but it is by no means fancy. “You don’t know how long you’ll be here,” he says, explaining his and Joanna’s disinclination to do much more to it than ­replace peeling paint.

Protections for tenants vary from state to state, but the possibility of being turfed out for no reason at the end of a lease is an ever-present fear for most people who rent, as is the risk of a rent rise that will bust the household budget and force a decision to move. Chandler-Mather says he has experienced it all – eviction without cause, unjustified rent rises, “having a landlord rock up and be very aggressive with us just for asking to get a giant pile of trash moved from the yard”. This, he says, is the harsh reality of life for renters in this country: “They can’t plan for the future. They’re constantly humiliated and treated like second-class citizens. You feel this deep sense of anger and frustration when you go through it personally, but also a sense of powerlessness.”

With partner Joanna Horton and baby Felix. Even on Chandler-Mather’s $217,000 salary, it’s a big ask to raise a 20 per cent deposit to buy a median-priced Brisbane house.Credit: Courtesy of Max Chandler-Mather

Tenants need powerful people in their corner, it seems to Chandler-Mather, and he is one of a tiny handful of federal parliamentarians who can honestly say he feels their pain. The Sun-Herald and The Sunday Age reported earlier this year that of the 227 MPs and senators, ­almost all owned at least one house or apartment and two-thirds owned two or more properties. In the Liberal-National Coalition, 55 of 86 MPs and senators (or their partners) owned at least two pieces of real estate at the time of the report. In the Labor caucus, the rate was higher: 77 of 103 parliamentarians, or 75 per cent. The Greens, too, had landlords among them: five of their 15 parliamentarians owned two or more properties.

It’s hard to blame affluent people for investing in real estate. Presented with the opportunity to lower their tax bill while acquiring an asset that will increase in value, why wouldn’t they take it? Under the scheme known as negative gearing, losses that investors incur in buying and renting out properties can be offset against their income from other sources, thereby ­reducing overall tax liability. The capital gains tax ­discount means they are taxed on only half the profit they make when they sell the properties. As Chandler-Mather sees it, the problem is that investors are competing with first-time home buyers, bidding up prices and locking more and more people out of the market.

‘Renters can’t plan for the future. They’re constantly humiliated and treated like second-class citizens.’

He says he and Horton would like a place of their own one day but even for someone on an MP’s salary, ­getting the money together would be a monumental task. According to a recent report on the Domain real estate platform (majority owned by Nine, publisher of Good Weekend), the 20 per cent deposit required to buy a median-priced house in Brisbane has risen to almost $185,000 (up from $94,000 a decade ago). In Sydney, the deposit for a median-priced house is more than $325,000 (up from $158,000). In Melbourne, it’s more than $206,000 (up from $119,000).

Buying a house in Australia has never been harder, says economist Saul Eslake, a former chief economist of ANZ Banking Group and long-time analyst of the housing market. The rate of home ownership among people aged 45 and under is lower than it’s been since the early 1950s, Eslake says. This means greater ­demand for rental accommodation, which pushes up rents. The median house rent in Sydney reached $750 a week in March, according to Domain, and $570 a week in Melbourne. Eslake reckons Chandler-Mather is wrong to argue for caps on rent rises: “All the ­evidence is that rent controls don’t work.” But the economist says he wholeheartedly endorses the Greens’ policy of winding back negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount – “which, after all, was the policy that Labor took to two elections, in 2016 and 2019”.

That Labor lost those elections has cemented the widely held view that the policy is the kiss of death at the ballot box. It has long been believed that, despite all the hand-wringing, more voters want house prices to keep rising than want them to plateau or fall. “Politicians know that at least 11 million Australians own one house and 20 per cent of Australians own an investment property,” says Eslake. Only about 5 million voters are renters. But Chandler-Mather says polling suggests the stratospheric price hikes of the past few years have changed attitudes even among home-owners. “Some people who own investment properties but also have kids understand that the tax handouts they ­receive are grossly unfair, and are denying their kids a chance to buy a home,” he says.

Young people are the Greens’ biggest supporters. Chandler-Mather and his three fellow Greens MPs represent four of the five federal electorates that had the highest proportion of voters aged under 30 in 2022. In a poll conducted by Resolve Political Monitor in May, a quarter of respondents aged 18 to 34 said they would put the Greens first on a ballot paper, compared with 12 per cent overall. Labor accuses Chandler-Mather of calculatedly whipping up anger about the cost of ­housing, but Eslake believes strong emotion is justified. “I’m surprised there isn’t more anger among young people at the way their parents and grandparents have rigged the housing system against them,” he says.

On a Tuesday morning at Mayfield State School in the Brisbane suburb of Carina, small children in maroon uniforms are considering their options. Chandler-Mather is offering them two kinds of breakfast wraps. They can have a simple filling – just melted cheese and mild tomato salsa. “Or you can have cheese, salsa, ­spinach and egg, my personal favourite,” he says, doing a little dance to indicate his enthusiasm for the fancier choice. The kids regard him steadily. Most go for plain cheese and salsa.

Chandler-Mather grew up in his electorate. When he was born in 1992, his parents, Kim Chandler and Tim Mather, lived in a share-house in the wonderfully named Whynot Street, in multicultural West End. “They were radical lefties,” he says. “Socialist types. Dad was ­probably more of an anarchist.” Chandler, who is now a public servant, and Mather, a librarian, later bought a place a few doors down, which is still the family home. (They paid $147,000 for it in 1993, Chandler-Mather says. Property data supplier CoreLogic puts the current median house price in West End at $1.5 million.) With his friends and younger brothers, Ned and Joe, Chandler-Mather played a lot of soccer and cricket on a flat stretch at the bottom of the street, often finishing in fading light. “My mum is a good cook and the neighbourhood kids knew that if they stuck around long enough they’d get dinner,” he says.

Serving at a barbecue for school kids in his area. Chandler-Mather uses his $19,500 Commonwealth car allowance to help fund local meal programs.Credit: Courtesy of Max Chandler-Mather

Boyhood friend Darby Laughren tells me Chandler-Mather always had a sense of fairness – “a very empathetic person”. He was also very sporty, excelling at club soccer and long-distance running. Even now, as he strides purposefully along the corridors of Parliament House in his navy suit, Chandler-Mather has the loose-limbed gait of a natural athlete. He routinely rounds off a busy day in Canberra by bounding around Lake Burley Griffin for 10 kilometres. “He’s got this amazing, greyhoundish energy,” says his colleague Elizabeth Watson-Brown.

Plenty of mental energy too, says Greens staffer Liam Flenady, who managed Chandler-Mather’s 2022 election campaign: “His brain is just wired in a particular way to be constantly analysing the political situation.”

There’s a theory that Chandler-Mather irks the Labor government so much because he’s the one that got away. Labor was the party he joined at Queensland University, where he was a leading campus activist, editing the student newspaper Semper Floreat and co-ordinating a campaign in which Labor factions joined forces to wrest control of the student union from the Young Liberals. He studied history and English literature, graduating with first-class honours, and might have pursued a career in academia if the person assigned to be his PhD supervisor hadn’t laughed and said politics was obviously his calling. For Chandler-Mather, it was a revelatory moment. “I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s right.’ ”

He got a job in the call centre of the Labor-affiliated union United Voice (now the United Workers Union), but two decisions by Julia Gillard’s government – to cut support to single parents and reopen offshore detention centres for asylum seekers – left him deeply disappointed. In 2013, when he was 21, he decided to quit the party.

He had no intention of joining the Greens, which he has said he’d always dismissed as “a very middle-class party; neoliberals in disguise”. That attitude changed when he was roped in to managing the 2016 city council campaign of his university friend Jonathan Sriranganathan (who earlier this year lost a bid to become Brisbane lord mayor). Another comrade-in-arms from his university days tells me it wasn’t just that Chandler-Mather altered his opinion of the Greens: he altered the Greens. The Queensland division underwent a “pre- and post-Max” transformation, says the friend, who asks not to be named. Pre-Max, “they were almost like Tasmanian Greens: ‘we love trees’ and ‘you’re threatening the rare bilby’ or whatever. It was all about the environment.” Post-Max, “it’s essentially a far-left political party that talks about the environment occasionally.” Paddy Manning, author of the 2019 book Inside the Greens, argues that social justice has always been an important part of the party’s platform. “In taking up the cause of young people locked out of the housing market, Chandler-Mather is making an ally of the generation who have the most to lose from climate change,” says Manning. “The Greens are playing the long game.”

Queensland Greens director Kitty Carra says she and Chandler-Mather have had many stoushes about strategic direction and policy – “because I’m more cautious, I guess”. But even when they clash, she ­admires his all-guns-blazing approach to politics. And at no point has she doubted what drives him. “It’s a pure and simple desire to make a better world. That’s what is so charming. And so challenging.”

A thousand volunteers helped Chandler-Mather campaign for Griffith, between them knocking on 90,000 doors. “I’m not calling it a cult – it’s not a cult,” says the old university friend. “But he has the charisma and the strategic mindset to recruit a lot of people and get them to door-knock for him.” Liam Flenady agrees: “People wanted to campaign for Max.” (His fans have been known to jokingly call themselves Maxists.)

The Chandler-Mather door-knocking method – long conversations, detailed note-taking – was also used by Elizabeth Watson-Brown and Stephen Bates, who credit it with delivering them victory. Now Chandler-Mather is teaching Queensland-style community engagement to Greens in other parts of the country. “We spend a lot of time training our volunteers, and take it very seriously,” he says. There are half-day courses for beginner, intermediate and advanced door-knockers. “And for those who go through all three of those streams, there are weekly masterclasses.”

Of course, in politics, having a game plan guarantees nothing. “We might find that Max Chandler-Mather is a flash in the pan – that he’s too radical for Brisbane voters and gets voted out at the next election,” says Paddy Manning. “It’s unlikely, but they could fall flat on their faces and lose all three of those Brisbane seats.” In 2022, the Brisbane Greens benefited from having no progressive independents, so-called teals, competing with them for the anti-government protest vote. They might not be so lucky next time. But Chandler-Mather seems to Manning an impressive performer. “And I’ve had a senior cabinet minister say to me that in focusing on housing, the Greens are on the right issue.”

The government’s habit of making personal attacks on Chandler-Mather in parliament makes no sense to political consultant Kos Samaras. “I’ve seen it myself. It’s just stupid,” says Samaras, a director of RedBridge Group and former Victorian Labor strategist. “If I was giving advice to the Labor Party, it would be that ­instead of responding as if they were sitting in a ­schoolyard, they should perhaps listen to what he’s ­saying and find ways to counter it with facts.”

Many believe Chandler-Mather fails to adequately acknowledge that a key cause of the high cost of accommodation is a shortage of supply. He’s been accused of hypocrisy in opposing two residential developments that would bring 1300 new homes to his electorate (he argues that the land should instead be used for public and affordable housing and badly needed parkland). Economist Saul Eslake points to his blocking of Labor’s proposed Help to Buy scheme, in which the government would assist some first-home buyers by co-purchasing properties with them: Chandler-Mather has declared the scheme won’t get the Greens’ vote in the Senate unless Labor comes to the negotiating table and gives ground on rent caps, say, or tax concessions for investors. “Unbelievably pig-headed,” Eslake says.

What Samaras knows from his company’s work with focus groups is that none of this ­really matters: “People might say, ‘I don’t agree with everything he’s saying. I think his facts are wrong.’ But if you ask them the question, ‘Do you think he cares?’ The answer is, ‘Yes, absolutely.’ And in today’s political environment, empathy is the real currency.”

Tears are rarely shed in parliament. When Chandler-Mather wept one day last year, some assumed he was upset about the barbs that had been flying across the chamber at him. He says that wasn’t the case at all. What undid him was a story he was telling the House about a man who had come into his Brisbane office asking for help: a close relative of the man’s in north Queensland had died, and he didn’t have the train fare to get to the funeral. Chandler-Mather and his staff pitched in for the ticket, and the man cried with gratitude. “I was like, ‘How have we come to this?’” remembers Chandler-Mather, who got his message across to a bigger audience than he expected. “That speech ended up getting four or five million views on social media.”

Political observers with long memories note that, in a previous era, the parliament’s resident left-wing firebrand was a bloke named Anthony Albanese. Elected to federal parliament on his 33rd birthday in 1996, he had grown up in public housing in Sydney and came to the House of Representatives determined to build a fairer society. “I think Albo looks across at Max and sees himself 30 years ago,” says the Greens’ Stephen Bates, who suspects that’s why Chandler-Mather gets under the Labor leader’s skin. When Albanese moved into The Lodge and Kirribilli House, he was able to sell his Canberra apartment and rent out both his houses in Sydney’s inner-west. Chandler-Mather calls him “the property investor prime minister”.

At Greens HQ in Brisbane, Kitty Carra couldn’t be prouder. “Max will fight with anybody,” she says.

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