Back to basics – and familiar faces – as Greens eye balance of power

The federal Greens are campaigning on core principles and have a key demand of minority government in the event of a hung parliament at the next election: a nationwide ban on native forest logging.

Former leader Bob Brown, who lent the minor party’s support to Labor leader Julia Gillard’s minority government in 2010, launched the policy on Friday with lower house candidates Samantha Ratnam and Sonya Semmens.

Speaking for the trees: Samantha Ratnam (left), Bob Brown and Sonya Semmens.Credit: Justin McManus

A Resolve Political Monitor poll conducted for this masthead this week put the Coalition ahead 55 per cent to 45 per cent in two-party terms, when Australians were asked how they would allocate their preferences on their ballot papers.

However, 39 per cent of respondents were undecided and the prospect of a hung parliament remains a live possibility.

The Greens, whose primary vote is holding steady at 13 per cent in the recent poll, will issue five demands of negotiating minority government with Labor. They have already announced putting dental into Medicare and housing reform among their key priorities.

Party elder Brown, who has joined the campaign trail as the Greens try to expand their lower house representation, said protecting native forests had always been “core business”.

“This has always been core Greens business, but what’s happening is an alignment of the stars,” he said.

“I’m very excited about it. I tried to get Julia Gillard to move on [ending native logging] and previous leaders, but it was just too hard. Now it’s not, because Victoria and Western Australia have ended native forest logging.”

A poll by the left-leaning Australia Institute in April showed 69 per cent of Australians supported an end to native forest logging on public land, including 79 per cent of Labor voters, 76 per cent of Greens voters and 62 per cent of Coalition voters.

A Biodiversity Council survey of more than 4000 Australians last March, however, showed 55 per cent of people supported a ban on native forest logging throughout the country, while 35 per cent were undecided.

“It’s a bit like Malcolm Fraser putting an end to a dying industry in whaling at Albany in 1978,” Brown said. “I’m very excited. The time is right.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese ruled out forming a minority government with the Greens or other crossbenchers in the event of a hung parliament.

Under the Greens plan, which has been independently assessed by the Parliamentary Budget Office, the federal government would fund the transition of states away from native timber harvesting to the annual tune of $500 million for 20 years.

The minor party also wants the government to spend $20 million over four years to improve carbon accounting.

The PBO said the policies, taken together, would decrease the fiscal and underlying cash balances by about $1 billion in the forward estimates to 2027-28, due to an increase in administered expenses.

“There would be a small unquantifiable reduction in company tax revenue,” the PBO found.

“The companies involved in native forest logging transition to alternative business operations, or they close down and new alternative businesses take their place. This would be expected to result in a temporary decline in profitability, which would impact tax collections.”

A growing majority of wood products come from plantations in Australia. “Plantation logging is where 80 to 90 per cent of the produce is, and more percentage of the jobs are, these days,” Brown said.

Victoria and WA have banned native timber logging on public land, while NSW has committed to establishing a Great Koala National Park on the Mid North Coast, creating 315,000 hectares of protected forest in the Coffs Harbour region. Native timber logging is also banned in south-east Queensland, and it is heavily regulated in the rest of the state.

Party elder Bob Brown with NSW candidate Mandy Nolan.Credit:

The Greens say if native timber logging bans are rolled out across the country, they could deliver an annual reduction in emissions of 37.5 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent a year, or 8.5 per cent of total annual emissions.

Greens leader Adam Bandt said he was heartened by the fact that several states had moved to ban native timber harvesting.

“But it’s not happening anywhere near quick enough, and in some states they’re talking about expanding it, so it needs national action,” he said.

In NSW, the Greens need a 1.8 per cent swing to candidate Mandy Nolan to oust sitting Labor MP Justine Elliot in the lower house seat of Richmond.

The party is also hopeful that former Victorian MP Samantha Ratnam can oust Labor’s Peter Khalil in the Victorian seat of Wills, where the war in Gaza has been a major flashpoint for voters.

In Macnamara, if Labor repeats its 2022 strategy of giving first preferences to the Greens, several hundred votes could take the seat from Labor’s Josh Burns and hand it to Semmens.