Adam Bandt’s banishment from parliament may be the (second) sweetest victory of all for Albanese

Adam Bandt has lost his seat of Melbourne. Picture: Getty Images

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Adam Bandt’s utopian vision of turning the next parliament into the most progressive in the nation’s history may still be realised, it just won’t include him.

For Anthony Albanese, the purging of Greens leader from the seat of Melbourne – one which Bandt has held for 15 years – may not be the sweetest of all victories from Saturday night but it will run as a very close second.

With the defeat of Queensland Green Max Chandler Mather, Albanese lost his muse but with Bandt now for all bets gone, Albanese will have seen off a mortal enemy.

A significant number of Australians may thank him.

The prime minister once declared his mission in life was to fight “Tories”. This wasn’t entirely truthful. His mission has always also been equally grounded in a visceral hatred of the Greens.

Now the minor-left wing party has been reduced from four lower house seats to likely just one – the Brisbane based seat of Ryan.

When considering this as a 75 per cent reduction in representation in the lower house, it is a statistically worse result for the Marxist-socialists than the Liberal Party.

Bandt has only himself to blame. While he might point to the redistribution of his seat which cut his margin, the hubristic blend of belligerence and hysteria that Bandt represented never achieved the cut through of previous Greens leaders.

As leader he did not add anything to or build on the core support for the Greens’ brand. The 2022 election was an aberration in terms of its lower house success.

And Bandt assumed too much and drove too aggressive an agenda built around a strategy to wage war on Labor alone.

This reveals the depth of a misunderstanding. And that is the simple fact that many people vote Greens out of protest, knowing that they will end up with a Labor government anyway through preferences.

But attacking Labor at every opportunity, the constant blocking and folding on legislation for two and half years ended up backfiring.

While the Greens tried to pivot back in the last few months realising it was losing the argument on issues that even its own base cared about – such as living in a home – its shift involved even more eccentric promises and demands that were not only undeliverable but didn’t connect with voters.

Its frenzied anti-Israeli rhetoric and anti-Semitic posture polluted its brand even further.

Consequently its primary vote went backwards this time, dipping to around 11.5 per cent.

But while the Greens may end up with at best just one seat left in the house of reps, the great socialist alliance between it and Labor in the Senate will continue.

Just because Albanese declared that he would enter into no deals with the Greens to share power should the election outcome have been a hung parliament, that doesn’t mean he won’t have to horse trade with them on legislation.

The Greens will still have policy influence over the direction of the Labor government, via its numbers in the Senate and if for no other reason than half the Labor caucus probably agree with plenty of the radical positions they hold.

Despite this result for the Greens, Albanese and Labor cannot avoid the reality either that with their primary vote still below 35 per cent, Labor will continue to have to rely on the Greens for preferences to form government.