Meet the Greens: Tough in February, pushovers by November

David Shoebridge, Nick McKim, Mehreen Faruqi and Adam Bandt.

The Greens bookended the parliamentary year with loud defiance and limp capitulation.

The party’s principles were casually defenestrated earlier this week, policies herded out the door and kicked to an almost invisible point up the road.

Rent freeze? Out the window. Fifty thousand new socially affordable houses? Let’s make that 25,000. Reforms to negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions for housing investors? Let us never speak of them again.

What do the Greens believe in? It depends on what month of the year we are in. In February, they are fire-breathing tub-thumpers for truth, justice and the Cuban way, but when summer rolls around again they could be quietly replaced by coir matting with the words “Please step on me” inscribed in 20-point font.

Boss Hogg of the Greens Adam Bandt would have us believe his buddy in the House of Representatives, Max Chandler-Mather, had been able to persuade the partyroom to drop its year-long opposition to two housing bills.

The reality is that the young Queensland firebrand turned doormat had been rolled, bowled and dipped in excrement.

Max Chandler-Mather MP, Australian Greens spokesperson for housing and homelessness.

Watching the white flag presser with Bandt and Chandler-Mather was like peering into a world of Temu sadomasochism. The pained expressions on the two men’s faces looked genuine but the punishment was felt only by those watching the ugliness. Like dashing one’s head against a brick wall, it felt good when it stopped.

“The Greens can announce that we’ll be waving through Labor’s two housing bills after accept­ing that Labor doesn’t care enough about renters to do anything meaningful for them,” Chandler-Mather said. “If we come to the next election and there’s still a housing crisis – well, that’s a question Labor has to answer.” Except the charge must be laid that the Greens had wasted an entire year and got precisely nothing for it in political capital other than exquisite humiliation.

More pertinent is that there is a housing crisis in this country and the Greens have done their best to keep at least $500m of federal money out of the marketplace for a year for no purpose or benefit as Chandler-Mather drew a series of embarrassingly bad lines in the sand, then crossed every one of them with a shrug of his shoulders.

Let’s take a look at the replay.

Back in February, Chandler-Mather hit the keyboard and pushed out a critique in the arcane left-progressive US publication Jacobin. “Allowing the HAFF bill (the Housing Australia Future Fund) to pass would demobilise the growing section of civil society that is justifiably angry about the degree of poverty and financial stress that exists in such a wealthy country,” the member for Griffith gravely intoned. By November, civil society had been sent packing. Poverty and financial stress in Australian society had become trivia and related minutiae, to be addressed only in the awkward moment a microphone is placed under Green noses on their way to the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge.

Adam Bandt

Chandler-Mather also claimed in the same article that the $10bn Housing Australia Fund established by legislation in November had lost money. Gambling the $10bn on the stock exchange, as Chandler-Mather put it, has earned the federal government $596m as of the end of September this year, a 6 per cent return on investment with a quarter of the year remaining. Not great but not a loss.

The other Greens have welcomed the spotlight, only to shrink in it. Mehreen Faruqi spent much of the year in pro-Palestinian cosplay while better performers such as David Shoebridge and Larissa Waters were forcefully elbowed out of the way. Shoebridge was obliged to hand the reins to Faruqi on the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs. Shoebridge is a lawyer while Faruqi is not, but on her comments alone Faruqi understands that ethics is a county somewhere in the colonial oppressors’ backyard.

It’s worth remembering that the big crossbench headline maker is one who rejected the Greens’ cold embrace – Lidia Thorpe. On Wednesday, Thorpe hurled her papers at Pauline Hanson in yet another display of performative outrage. While most observers viewed the display with distaste, one can only imagine the Greens musing in silent reflection, “How can we get these headlines?”

The answer can come only in the form of a long rota of things the Greens might do. Faruqi might have to pash a bikie. Bandt could scream obscenities outside a strip club – and guys, let’s not forget it’s only 90-odd more sleeps until the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. Hurling oneself under a float along Oxford Street is bound to make the news. Memo to police: please arrest us.

Lidia Thorpe and Mehreen Faruqi

With the hubris so thick you could stir it with a stick, along came the Queensland election. Polling showed the Greens’ primary vote sitting at around a baker’s dozen as they embarked on what they said was the largest doorknocking campaign in history. The Greens lost their inner-city seat of South Brisbane and went backwards in nearby Maiwar after incumbent Michael Berkman suffered a 7.4 per cent swing against him. The Greens were similarly unloved in the other four inner-city seats they targeted and the party’s overall vote remained stubbornly in single figures, confirming in my mind at least that the more people saw of the Greens the less they liked.

Bemused and baffled by the Greens shocker in Queensland, Chandler-Mather finally emerged with his own version of a mea culpa.

“The honest answer is we don’t have all the answers yet,” he said, apparently coming to grips with the fact politics is a tough game. And therein lies a logical riddle that should become the Greens’ motto. Chandler-Mather might get it tattooed on his forehead. Best wait until February when he has his gander up.