Operation Get Max: Labor and the unions’ plan to oust Greens MP

Max Chandler-Mather will be targeted by Labor and a cashed-up union movement as they try to unseat the tyro Greens MP from Labor’s former heartland Brisbane seat of Griffith.

Labor's candidate for the Greens-held federal electorate of Griffith, Renee Coffey, at South Bank this week. Picture: Glenn Hunt

Labor and its cashed-up union movement are preparing to unleash a massive ground campaign to unseat high-profile Greens MP Max Chandler-Mather from his inner-Brisbane electorate at the upcoming federal election.

Emboldened by the Greens’ dismal showing at Queensland’s October state poll – where the progressive minor party lost one of its two electorates – Labor operatives are gearing up for a major showdown against Mr Chandler-Mather over the summer as the party fights to reclaim its heartland seat.

Winning back Griffith, lost to the Greens at the 2022 election, is a priority for Anthony Albanese’s Labor strategists who are plotting a path to claw back ground in Queensland to stave off the growing threat of minority government. Labor holds just five of Queensland’s 30 lower house seats; after the last election, the Greens hold three.

Renee Coffey, head of national youth mental health charity Kookaburra Kids, was preselected as the ALP’s Griffith candidate in July and has been promoting herself to the electorate as standing for “progress not just protest, outcomes not just outrage”.

“In this area, they are progressive voters and they want a progressive government and I think a lot of people voted for the Greens because they believe in a progressive agenda,” Ms Coffey told The Weekend Australian.

“But on one end there has been a feeling of disappointment, and on the other betrayal that it was the Greens blocking the exact change they wanted to see on housing.

“If people feel like the Greens are playing games then they are very much willing to vote for Labor and I think (that’s) what we saw at the state election, particularly in this area.”

Ms Coffey is an atypical Labor candidate; she has never worked for a union or been a political staffer. But as a close childhood friend of Jessica Rudd, Ms Coffey closely observed how Ms Rudd’s father, former prime minister Kevin Rudd, built a local profile and strong margin in his 15 years as the member for Griffith.

Ms Coffey said she had not sought any recent advice from Dr Rudd, or former Griffith MP Terri Butler, despite knowing them both “really well”, indicating that their respective roles as US Ambassador and Fair Work Commission deputy president prevented them from being involved in her campaign.

Renee Coffey and Jessica Rudd, friends since primary school.

Union sources have told The Weekend Australian that the United Workers Union, led by factional powerbroker Gary Bullock, planned to pour its resources into Ms Coffey’s campaign, as well as Madonna Jarrett’s fight to wrest the electorate of Brisbane from the Greens.

Mr Chandler-Mather said the Greens were still dissecting the October state election result, which saw first-term Greens MP Amy MacMahon lose South Brisbane, covering about half of Griffith’s footprint.

Federal member for Griffith, Max Chandler-Mather, holds a press conference on affordable housing at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: Martin Ollman

He said the LNP’s decision to preference the Greens last was the factor that “ultimately flipped the seat”, and the minor party was now running a massive community survey in Griffith to “make sure we’re properly engaging with the electorate”.

“You’ve always got to have ­humility in politics, and make sure you’re listening to the feedback from the electorate,” Mr Chandler-Mather said. “We’re proud of what the Greens have delivered: $3bn for new public and community housing, the largest single investment by the federal government in more than a decade, and now ­another $500m in upgrades for ­social housing.”

He said he had used $50,000 of his annual MP’s salary to pay for the party’s free meal program in Griffith, and his team had knocked on 100,000 doors since the 2022 election.

“The plan is to knock on a similar amount between now and the next election,” he said.

Mr Chandler-Mather, who won Griffith from Labor’s Terri Butler, holds the seat on a two-party preferred margin of 10.1 per cent, versus the LNP.

The LNP is expected to preference the Greens last in Griffith at the next federal election, due by May, but a formal decision has not yet been made.

Asked whether voters would punish him for protesting against the CFMEU’s forced administration alongside ousted union leaders, the delay in backing Labor’s housing laws, or pushing for a ceasefire in Gaza and “proper sanctions” by the Australian government on Israel, Mr Chandler-Mather said he believed his electorate backed the Greens’ “principled” stand on those issues.

But Labor strategists have been tracking the Greens’ dropping primary vote in voting booths in Griffith – particularly in the state electorates in South Brisbane and Bulimba – from the state election in 2020, to the 2022 federal election, and this year’s Brisbane City Council and state polls.

Queensland ALP state secretary Kate Flanders, who ran Labor’s target seat campaign at the 2022 federal election, said she had known Ms Coffey since their children went to daycare together.

“Renee is out every day and our Labor volunteers are energised after the state campaign and we’re throwing everything at this,” Ms Flanders said. “We’ve got a lot done in this first term of government, no thanks to people like Max who have blocked and delayed on issues they say they care about, and someone like Renee would make a real difference.”