Defeated Adam Bandt likens climate change to ‘invasion’ as Peter Dutton cites voter ‘disgust’ at Greens

Former Greens leader Christine Milne says her party needs to focus on core green issues to be effective in the new parliament, as Adam Bandt called on the left to treat climate change like an ‘invasion’.

Outgoing Greens leader Adam Bandt holds a press conference on Thursday to concede he has lost the seat of Melbourne, alongside his wife Claudia. Picture: NewsWire/ David Crosling

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Former Greens leader Christine Milne has warned her devastated party it needs to focus on core green issues if it is to be effective in the new parliament, as a vanquished Adam Bandt called on the left to treat climate change like an “invasion”.

Mr Bandt’s concession of defeat in the seat of Melbourne leaves his deputy, Mehreen Faruqi, and senators Larissa Waters and Sarah Hanson-Young jostling ahead of a leadership vote to lead a party left with only one lower-house member.

Mr Bandt lashed the major parties on Thursday, calling for climate change to be treated like a “war” and blamed “One Nation and Liberal preferences” for his defeat as Labor’s campaign machine celebrated its second party leader scalp.

Also on Thursday, Peter Dutton cited rejection of anti-Semitism as a reason for Mr Bandt losing the seat of Melbourne to Labor’s Sarah Witty, who is a foster carer and is chief executive of the Nappy Collective, a charity providing nappies to needy families.

“No spin by Adam Bandt can change the reality that he, and other Green members, lost their seats because of their appalling treatment of the Jewish community,” the former Liberal opposition leader tweeted on Thursday afternoon.

“Australians were rightly disgusted at their behaviour.

“We were proud to preference the Greens last, helping to ensure Adam Bandt’s loss.”

During Mr Bandt’s concession speech on Thursday, he blamed Mr Dutton as a reason why the Greens have lost seats, saying many Australians had voted Labor as the “best option to stop Dutton’’.

“People in Melbourne hate Peter Dutton with a very good reason,” Mr Bandt said.

“They have seen his brand of toxic racism on display for many years, seen his time as immigration minister, seen him make comments about Melbourne and like many, many of them wanted him as far away from power as possible.”

Mr Bandt clarified that while Mr Dutton was not the sole reason for the shift away from the Greens in seats, he still made an impact on vote numbers.

Greens leader Adam Bandt, seen on a street poster, has lost his Melbourne seat to Labor. Picture: Luis Enrique Ascui

Ms Milne’s intervention comes after fellow former Greens leader Bob Brown blamed the media and major parties for “vilifying” Mr Bandt, accusing Anthony Albanese of having the “grace of a ­cockroach” over his reaction to the Greens’ seat losses.

Mr Brown also raised whether the left-wing party should start running open tickets to deny Labor the preferences that have got it over the line in some electorates.

The party’s parliamentary members will elect new leadership in a party-room meeting next week, with Senator Faruqi a likely frontrunner, but amid support for senators Waters, Jordon Steele-John, and Hanson-Young.

Ms Milne, a pioneering Greens politician who led the party federally from 2012 to 2015, said Mr Bandt’s loss was “devastating” and party’s lower house near wipe-out “disappointing”.

However, she said the party retained a high Senate vote, and that Greens senators should use their balance of power “to secure significant climate and environment policy”.

“But to get it, they will have to focus on the planetary crisis playing out right around the country: the logging, the landclearing, the new fossil fuel projects,” she said.

The party should focus on “the failure of the Labor Party to address … in any meaningful way or to deliver the comprehensive new environment laws that were promised”.

Former leaders of the federal Greens Bob Brown and Christine Milne. Picture: Nikki Davis-Jones

Some may interpret her comments as seeking to return the party to his environmental roots, after an election marked in part by Mr Bandt’s focus on the Israel-Hamas conflict.

However, Ms Milne said she backed the party’s stance and did not believe it was anti-Semitic.

“The Greens have always stood up for human rights and international law from the Tampa, to the Iraq war and Gaza,” she said.

“We have never and will never tolerate genocide or anti-Semitism. It is appalling to me that so many are turning a blind eye. I am proud the Greens have taken the stand they have.”

Ms Milne, who was part of the landmark Labor-Greens alliance in the Tasmanian parliament in 1989, also called for a broader rethink within the green movement.

“The climate and environment movement will also need to rethink and take on the Labor government, instead of turning a deliberate blind eye to new coal and gas projects and always calling on the Greens to ‘just pass it’,” she said, accusing Mr Albanese of Trump-like arrogance.

“Prime Minister ‘get out of the way’ Albanese is demonstrating extraordinary arrogance for someone whose party secured 34 per cent of the primary vote.

“The Australian people rejected Trumpism. They did not vote for authoritarianism or steady as she goes.”

On Thursday, Mr Bandt – who held the seat of Melbourne for 15 years – called in his concession speech on the media to stop reporting on climate change as a “political issue” and view it as if “our country is being invaded”, warning that the nation faced a “hellish future in their lifetimes if we don’t get the climate crisis under control”.

“You should treat the climate crisis as if there is a war on,” he said.

“One of the refrains was that we don’t hear people talk about climate as much anymore, during the course of this parliament,’’ Mr Bandt said.

“We were knocking on (the media’s) door trying to get you to write stories about it, we were asking questions about it in parliament, we were holding press conferences about it and we really struggled to get anyone to take that seriously.”

Mr Brown meanwhile took aim at the “big parties” for demonising the outgoing leader.

“It (Mr Bandt’s defeat) is because of the targeted negative and false campaigning against the Greens … and the Greens are going to have to, in the future, work out how to respond to that,” Mr Brown said.

“The Greens are absolutely essential on climate change and protecting the environment, and this is going to be a period of onslaught of both.”

Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Peter Wertheim said the Greens had pursued “ever more radical causes that were remote from the central concerns of mainstream Australians, and alien to their values”, urging it to use defeat as an “opportunity”.

“They now have the chance to reorient themselves away from the pet causes of the far left and move towards the political centre,” he said.

“The ignorant moralising arrogance, the ludicrous oversimplification of complex issues, and the ferocious demonisation of those with different views all need to stop.”

Zionist Federation of Australian president Jeremy Leibler said Australian voters had “utterly rejected a party that thrives off division with no solutions”.

The Greens’ new leadership will be determined by a party-room meeting next week with Senator Nick McKim acting in a caretaker role in the interim.

Elizabeth Watson-Brown looked set to retain the Brisbane seat of Ryan for the Greens and become its only lower-house member.

Despite initially denying she was canvassing votes, Senator Faruqi, of NSW, and her backers have gauged support for the deputy’s promotion, and she would be a – if not the – frontrunner.

Senator Waters, of Queensland, Senator Steele-John, of Western Australia, and Senator Hanson-Young, of South Australia, are believed also in the mix.

Greens deputy leader and senator Mehreen Faruqi. Picture: Damian Shaw

Senator Waters could modernise and professionalise the party’s image to non-member voters, some sources said.

Others mused whether a co-leadership situation, not dissimilar to the British Greens, could be an option to take the party forward with at least one of those coming from a senator representing Australia’s three mainland eastern states.

However, sources said the party was stuck in a bind, given its membership backed the radical-left politics that the wider public repudiated, adding that any moderation of the party would turn away its new, younger base.

They said Senator Faruqi would likely win any leadership vote but whose politics was the “exact type” that got rejected at Saturday’s election.

Anthony Albanese. Picture: Martin Ollman

Outgoing MP Max Chandler-Mather.

With 81.6 per cent of possible votes counted, according to the Australian Electoral Commission the Greens’ national House of Representatives share was down 0.51 percentage points from 2022 at 11.74 per cent.