Who is Renee Coffey, the Labor candidate who ousted the Greens’ Chandler-Mather after one term?

Newly elected member for Griffith, Renee Coffey, grew up with no illusions about the pressures of the job: former Griffith MP Kevin Rudd was a family friend.

Coffey attended the same primary school as the children of Rudd and Therese Rein – Morningside State School – and the Rudds were frequent houseguests at family Friday night dinners.

“I would see Kevin roll up several hours after everybody else, absolutely shattered from community events. So I had that modelling from a very young age about what it looks like to be a really engaged member of parliament,” Coffey said.

Renee Coffey with supporters on winning the seat of Griffith in Brisbane for Labor.Credit: Instagram

On Saturday night, the Norman Park resident snatched victory from Greens identity Max Chandler-Mather, overcoming a 10.5 per cent margin and bringing the seat back into the Labor fold.

Coffey achieved a primary vote of 30,561 over Chandler-Mather’s 28,312. With the LNP putting the Greens last on their how-to-vote cards, preferences have flown Coffey’s way.

Chandler-Mather declined an interview on Monday, but later posted on Facebook that he lost because “the major party vote combined was too big to overcome this time”.

Renee Coffey (left) sits on her parents’ front steps in Hawthorne with school friend Jessica Rudd in the mid-’90s.

In the post, he celebrated his work on bringing together a renters’ movement that had “struck fear in the hearts of the banking and property industry”, and the Greens’ drawn-out negotiations with Labor on housing.

Chandler-Mather had spearheaded the move to vote with the Coalition to delay the government’s Help to Buy scheme last year, holding out for rent caps and changes to negative gearing.

“The point is not to just win elections. The point is to change peoples’ lives for the better,” he wrote.

As an MP, Chandler-Mather was criticised for speaking at a CFMEU rally after corruption allegations were levelled against the controversial union.

The party rebuffed external suggestions that Chandler-Mather’s behaviour had been too polarising for an electorate with a mortgage-heavy belt in the south-east suburbs of Bulimba, Norman Park, Carina, Camp Hill, Holland Park and Coorparoo.

“I think it’s clear from Max’s stable high primary vote that Max isn’t being punished for any decisions in the term,” said a Greens source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Coffey begged to differ, saying the electorate wanted to see “outcomes, not just outrage”.

“From what I heard in the electorate, I don’t think that the blocking went down very well at all,” she said.

Greens housing spokesperson Max Chandler-Mather leaves office after one term.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“I think that the electorate saw a housing bill with a lot of really important reforms held up for almost 18 months … that delay, I think, was very costly in people’s minds.

“I don’t think they appreciated the grandstanding, to be frank.”

Both Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton claimed during the campaign the Greens had exploited the conflict in Gaza to win votes.

On the Palestine issue, Coffey said Griffith voters wanted to see peace in the Middle East but were “wary of some of the more extreme positions of the Greens party”.

“I think people were really just wanting to see a sensible, pragmatic, practical voice representing us and our interests here in Griffith in Canberra,” she said.

Jonathan Sriranganathan – the former city councillor and Greens mayoral candidate who employed Chandler-Mather as his campaign manager in 2016 – criticised the party’s electoral tactics, arguing it had put forward an “unadventurous” platform that “fell far short of a head-on challenge to capitalist colonialism”.

“If anything, the Greens’ central platform and messaging was too similar to Labor’s to offer a strong-enough contrast and point of difference,” he wrote on his blog.

Coffey began young in activism, establishing Young Australians for Anti Racism and Reconciliation while in high school.

“I was about 16 years old, fighting the forces of Pauline Hanson and anti-racism,” she said.

She worked for 13 years providing educational opportunities to young First Nations people as deputy chief executive of the Australian Indigenous Education Foundation. Most recently she was chief executive of youth mental health charity Kookaburra Kids.

She was also P&C president at her children’s school for five years.

Asked whether she would continue the free school lunches program operated by Chandler-Mather and funded from his own salary, Coffey said she was “looking forward to having those discussions about how best we can support the schools, with children who have needs, within our community”.

In the meantime, she was looking forward to “getting her feet under the desk” and for the reality of her win to sink in.

“The next day I was walking to breakfast in Seven Hills and a girl in her 20s in her little white car pulled up beside me and yelled out of her window, ‘Are you Renee Coffey?’ And I said yes. And she said, ‘Congratulations!’

“And that was probably when at first I was like, oh, this is real.”

Coffey is one of five Labor women who have won south-east Queensland seats from male opponents, joining Kara Cook in Bonner, Madonna Jarrett in Brisbane, Ali France in Dickson and Emma Comer in Petrie.

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