Blue sky ahead for next Greens leader at 2022 election

The next Greens leader faces the prospect of leading the party’s biggest federal parliamentary team after the 2022 election.

The Greens currently have nine senators, one fewer than the 10 they had after the 2013 election, along with lower house MP Adam Bandt, the only member of his party to announce he will contest the leadership.

But the six Greens senators elected last May have terms through to 2025. Only three — whoever takes over departing leader Richard Di Natale’s seat in Victoria, Peter Whish-Wilson in Tasmania and Rachel Siewert in Western Australia — face re-election in 2022.

At the next poll, the Greens will have a far better chance of winning a seat in each state than they did of winning two in each state at the double-dissolution election in 2016.

For starters, the Greens’ primary vote at last year’s election was 10.2 per cent, up from 8.7 per cent at the 2013 and 2016 polls. The latest Newspoll, which asked about voting intentions in the House of Representatives, put the Greens at 13 per cent, up from the 10.4 per cent the party received in the lower house at the May election.

Labor recorded its lowest national Senate vote last year of just 28.8 per cent. In Queensland, the opposition’s vote was so low, at 22.6 per cent, that only one ALP senator was elected from the Sunshine State.

Queensland is one of the three states, along with NSW and South Australia, where the Greens will not be defending a Senate seat, giving them a chance to increase their numbers in parliament.

Unless Labor takes a large number of votes from the Greens in Queensland, rather than just pulling them from the Liberal National Party and One Nation, the Greens will like their chances of a second Queensland seat.

An extra possible factor is whether Pauline Hanson, who will turn 68 in May 2022, recontests her seat. One Nation’s chances of resecuring her seat without her would be diminished.

In South Australia, the likely demise of the two Centre Alliance senators — who were both elected on the back of former leader Nick Xenophon’s popularity in the state — means that the Greens are a very strong chance of picking up a seat there as well.

NSW is the Greens’ weakest state. The party recorded a primary vote of only 8.7 per cent last year, 1.5 points below their national average, but still secured a seat because Labor’s vote was so weak.

Bandt, one of two current deputy leaders, remains the Greens’ only lower house MP after candidates saw their primary vote go backwards in target seats Cooper, Wills and Higgins last year. Assuming a second seat in the House of Representatives remains out of reach, Bandt or any leadership rival could well lead a parliamentary team of 12 or even 13 in the next term of parliament.