Firstly, the Liberal vote collapsed — it was the lowest in their party’s history — and a section of that transferred to Labor, with a smaller share going to minor far-right parties. And the while the Labor primary vote did increase by 2 percent, 34 percent is still very low by historic standards. In this election, the combined major party vote was the lowest in Australian history.

Beyond these broader structural trends, the biggest factor was that voters rejected opposition leader Peter Dutton’s Trump-lite campaign. He tried to combine particularly harsh anti-migrant sentiment with an incoherent economic platform, promising to mimic Trump’s massive public service job cuts by establishing a local version of the Department of Government Efficiency [DOGE], while also offering enormous state investment in nuclear energy.

This contrasted with Labor’s center-right platform, which offered tax cuts, restrictions on immigration, and the status quo when it comes to the two key pillars of Australia’s economy: mining and housing. It was a successful pitch to wealthier, middle-class voters, especially in metropolitan and suburban areas, who shifted away from the Coalition, and toward Labor as the competent party of the status quo. And thanks to our two-party preferred voting system, this relatively small shift in the vote had an outsize effect, allowing Labor to win a record number of seats in parliament.

The collapse in the Liberal vote has been a long time coming. The precursors to the Liberal-National Coalition emerged in the early twentieth century in response to the growth of the Australian labor movement and its political arm, the Australian Labor Party. But now, in broad historical terms, the collapse of the trade union movement and the rightward shift of the Labor Party has denied the Liberals and Nationals much of their reason to exist.

Yes, our national vote remained exactly the same as in 2022. So, to explain why we lost Lower House seats, the first major factor was the massive collapse in the Liberal vote. Especially in my seat, Griffith, and in Stephen Bates’s seat in Brisbane, we saw a big transfer of votes from the Liberal Party to Labor. As a result, in Griffith the Liberals came third, and their preferences ended up electing Labor. In Brisbane, the shift pushed the Greens into third, and Labor was elected on Greens preferences.

There was a small decline in our vote in wealthy, middle-class areas alongside significant upticks in some outer-suburban areas which are multicultural, working-class, and where a mix of renters and mortgage holders live. In Melbourne electorates like Fraser, or in the northern sections of Wills, there were really significant swings to the Greens, partly thanks to our position on Palestine and our broader social democratic platform that appealed to both renters and mortgagees.

It was similar in places like Kuraby, in the Brisbane electorate of Moreton. In my electorate of Griffith, Stephen’s seat of Brisbane, and Elizabeth [Watson-Brown]’s seat in Ryan we saw significant increases in our vote in suburbs with a higher proportion of renters and young people, like Stones Corner, Coorparoo, Kelvin Grove, and St Lucia.

Beyond that, it’s important to note that the decline in our vote in some middle-class areas is overstated. It definitely happened, but it was a relatively small decline. For instance, in my electorate of Griffith, in West End, we still recorded 45 percent of the primary vote.

There’s also a final factor that needs to be talked about more. For the first time, in my experience, the Greens faced a coordinated national attack campaign. At the same time, it became very apparent just how few large, institutional allies we had. In that sense, the result did expose some of the limitations the party faces right now. We don’t have the same complex series of inner and outer trenches of institutions, think tanks, public intellectuals, and mainstream media institutions that the political establishment has.

To give you a sense of what I mean, the far-right group Advance spent north of $15 million on a campaign exclusively attacking the Greens. It remains to be seen how effective that was, but it combined with a deeply hostile mainstream media and deep hostility from both major parties, who treated the Greens with utter contempt.

Business groups also spent enormous amounts of money attacking us. That includes groups like the Master Builders Association representing the property industry, as well as peak mining, oil, and gas groups like the Australian Energy Producers. Basically, the largest sections of Australian capital in housing, finance, and mining — as well as both major parties and right-wing lobby groups — all came after us, spending tens of millions of dollars. And they did so with a high degree of coordination, targeting resources at the same seats, adopting almost identical policy positions and at times even using identical language.

For example, the Labor Party and the property industry made the same arguments against Greens’ policies like rent caps or scraping tax handouts for property investors. And they championed the same agenda, of further deregulating the property industry, allowing property prices to rise and handing property developers more money and power. Similarly, you saw Labor and the oil and gas industry make the same absurd arguments to justify Australia’s incredibly generous tax regime for gas corporations or the approval of new gas projects.

Whether this coordination was deliberate or not is beside the point; but it had an impact. While we can’t counter that yet, the fact that our vote remained stable in the face of a campaign of that scale is very significant.

While door knocking, we found that cost of living and housing came up most consistently. Among a smaller layer of people, the environment and climate change also came up consistently.

As you suggest, we faced a very concerted attack for our Senate position on housing. Ultimately, I think that’s because the establishment realized we were serious about trying to change the housing system. They stand to lose a lot if we shift away from treating homes as lucrative financial assets for banks, developers, and investors, and toward a system where homes are treated as places for people to build good, meaningful lives.

The initial establishment line of attack focused on our policies and was completely ineffective. Every published poll recorded popular support for the Greens’ policies to freeze and cap rents, build public housing, and scrap tax handouts for property investors. So, the second establishment line of attack focused on our attempts to use Greens leverage in the Senate to negotiate with Labor on their housing bills. Labor claimed the Greens were blocking or delaying housing, while simultaneously arguing that anything the Greens proposed was impossible, which of course wasn’t true, but was nonetheless repeated ad-nauseum by their allies in the media.

The truth is that in 2023, Labor attempted to ram through a housing plan — the Housing Australia Future Fund [HAFF] — that didn’t guarantee a cent in funding for public or community housing. After months of campaigning and pressure, in return for passing HAFF, we managed to secure $3 billion of direct investment in public and community housing and a guarantee of $500 million every year after that. That constitutes the single largest investment in public and community housing from the federal government in over a decade. Far from delaying housing, the Greens’ pressure managed to accelerate the construction of social housing — although to be frank, what we won is a drop in the ocean, compared with what we need.

In late 2024, we found ourselves in a similar position to exert leverage over two other housing bills, neither of which were going to really help. But this time, Labor had clearly decided to refuse to negotiate at all. Despite that, we almost pressured Labor to scrap tax handouts to property investors — the government went as far as asking the Treasury to cost those changes to tax handouts.

But once Labor ruled out those reforms, we made it very clear to Labor’s housing minister in the negotiating room that we were willing to make concessions, and that we would settle for additional public housing funds. Although they understood us perfectly well, they refused to negotiate, and every time, they walked out and repeated, ad-nauseum, that the Greens were blocking housing. Two months after Labor first tried to pass the bills through the Senate, we eventually passed both and secured $500 million for upgrades to public and community housing.

In part, Labor’s intention was to lower expectations about what sort of change is possible. Small tweaks to a broken system look more appealing when you’ve convinced people building well-designed public housing at scale or rent caps are impossible. As for the impact, well, Labor had a very willing ally in the establishment media. By framing what happens in parliament from the political establishment’s perspective, the media places limits on our capacity to use parliamentary leverage to build power behind a push for more substantial change.

How was that reflected in the electorate? Well, I didn’t encounter a single low-income renter who said something other than “keep fighting.” The level of enthusiasm from anyone who stood to benefit materially from our push was quite stark. Renters understood implicitly, almost immediately, what the fight was about.

There was also a layer — less big, but still there — who felt their interests were materially threatened by our push for rent caps, to scrap negative gearing, and to build public housing. Basically, they didn’t want to make concessions or accept limits on how much they could increase their tenants’ rents. There was a further layer of people who believed the Labor and mainstream media narrative. We don’t have the institutional capacity to counteract that yet. But that said, although the Labor-media campaign probably did have some impact, I think it’s probably overstated, especially in comparison to the enormous impact of the Trump-inspired collapse of the Liberals.

Certainly — over the last few years, our ground campaign has become more sophisticated and our huge network of volunteers has grown. Across Brisbane, we organized a network of volunteers to run weekly free school breakfasts in four public schools and weekly free community meals. When Cyclone Alfred hit, we mobilized hundreds of volunteers every day for over a week — not just to coordinate cleanup, but to help pack and deliver sandbags, food, and other supplies. In some areas, our capacity to help people in the here and now outpaced the local council and the state government. And in terms of door knocking and campaigning — not just in Brisbane, but across the country — we had greater capacity to organize and train a larger network of volunteers than we did in 2022.

We built this greater mobilization in part by marrying our field organizing and parliamentary strategies during negotiations over the HAFF. During that period, we ran a national door-knocking campaign — led largely by renters — not for an election, but to build pressure on Labor to make concessions on housing.

This, for me, was one of the most exciting periods of the last three years. For one, it worked — during negotiations, Labor ministers constantly complained about Greens door-knockers. But more importantly, it was a preview of what a genuine mass party could achieve, by transmitting power on the ground into parliament, and vice-versa. I strongly believe our ground campaign was fundamental to securing $3 billion for public and community housing. And after HAFF passed, many of the door-knocking teams we mobilized stuck together, and rolled straight into the next election.

Obviously all this wasn’t enough. There are strategic and tactical lessons we’ll need to learn. And we don’t have a network of institutional allies that could counter the influence of Labor-aligned institutions, like the United Workers Union, for example, which spent big money to kick me out in Griffith.

The reality is we’re going to have setbacks because we’re taking on the two major parties and powerful financial interests. They have a lot to lose if the system changes in favor of ordinary people. But given the context, it was reassuring that instead of wilting in the face of an establishment onslaught, we were able to mobilize. That’s partly because now, we’ve built a large network of highly trained, motivated, and skilled volunteers, largely made up of renters, but also including a few middle-class allies.

Greens volunteers came out of this election disappointed, yes, but better trained and networked, and, remarkably, ready to go again. That’s because in general, our volunteers understand the political context and challenges we face.

Well, we’re certainly not going to take advice from a political commentariat who would rather the Greens disappear altogether.

I think the first question is: How do we build a political movement that can withstand the sort of rip tides that influenced this election? I don’t just mean the enormous establishment mobilization against us, but also the contingent impacts of Trumpism, also a massive factor in the Canadian election, the collapse of the Liberal vote, and the consolidation of wealthier middle-class voters behind Labor.

The second question is whether it’s possible to build a broad coalition between renters and multicultural working-class people on the one hand, and progressive middle-class voters on the other. Some are arguing it’s not, but I disagree. To make change, it’s necessary to put together an alliance of different social groups, founded on a set of common interests. This requires a coherent political platform with material offerings that speak to both groups, broadly defined. The breakthroughs we have made in Queensland were thanks to this approach. And frankly, we aren’t winning more Lower House seats unless we can stitch together this kind of coalition.

In terms of what we can offer right now, I think a big part of it will be thanks to extraparliamentary, local organizing. In metropolitan Brisbane for instance, we still have the volunteer capacity — and, if we push, the financial resources — to run regular community meals, free family fun days, climate disaster response teams, and support networks. These initiatives can fill gaps in the lives of both renters and middle-class people. Given the experience of urban and outer-suburban life is increasingly isolated and alienated, it can be very powerful to offer both financial support and meaningful, enjoyable community engagement.

Beyond that, there are questions about the kind of extraparliamentary institutions, movements, and groups we need to build. From a structural, economic perspective, we know that the number of renters is going to keep growing and house prices will keep going up as a result of a housing system neither major party wants to touch. It’s this growing class of renters that also represent the fastest growing and most active part of the Greens volunteer and organizer base. So, how do we help foster genuine organizing among renters, to help them become self-empowered and to act collectively in their own interests?

The housing crisis is creating the basis for that kind of organizing, and for building a broader voting coalition. Although many middle-class people are not directly impacted by the housing crisis, their kids and grandkids are. Moreover, private developer–led urban development has seen Australian cities increasingly dominated by expensive, poorly built apartments or urban sprawl, without the public parks, community spaces, schools, and public transport that help people build good, meaningful lives.

Greens housing policy, by contrast, advocates for public and community-led, Viennese-style development, centered around beautifully designed, genuinely affordable medium-density apartments. Combined with expansive investment in public parks, community spaces, and public transport, it’s a vision that stands to benefit both middle-class homeowners as well as renters. Indeed, this style of “right to the city” politics was integral to the early growth of the Queensland Greens.

Beyond that, lower-income workers, renters and more middle-class, progressive voters also share an interest in tackling climate change. And importantly, this stands in direct conflict with the coal, oil, and gas industry, as well as their political wing, the Labor Party.

Also, privatized electricity, childcare, and aged-care systems are placing a real financial burden on a wide cross-section of Australian society, as well as an emotional burden, in the cases of childcare and aged care. At the same time, the share of GDP going to wages is at a record low, while the share going to profits is at a record high. And, to be honest, wages aren’t even that reliable a determinant of how wealthy you are, given the growth of asset inequality.

Growing inequality also harms communities. This can spur social concern among middle-class people, especially in suburbs where many renters also live. Interestingly enough, this is reflected in the Greens vote, which is often strongest in areas where there’s a greater disparity between the lowest and highest income earners. I think that tells us there’s a layer of better-off people who will vote for a political platform that materially lessens inequality.

Lastly, the establishment isn’t necessarily as strong as it seems. Despite Labor’s record parliamentary majority, it was their fourth-lowest primary vote in since World War II. That reflects declining trade union membership and the long-term hollowing out of the Labor Party — their support is a mile wide but an inch thick.

Given this context, the Greens have a lot to offer in the short to medium term. I still think it’s entirely possible to build a movement that both retains the inner-city electorates and grows in outer-suburban areas. I think both focuses are necessary, because if we want to see a Greens government, we need to hold on to seats like Melbourne or Griffith just as much as we need to win seats like Fraser, or Moreton.

It’s a good question. Winning suburban, working-class seats is clearly part of the future of the Greens. And the swings in some areas were very encouraging. We’re getting close to 40 percent of the vote in suburbs like Kuraby, in Brisbane. And we got swings over 20 percent in some of Melbourne’s more multicultural, working-class northern and western suburbs. For example, there was a remarkable 27 percent swing toward the Greens in Fawkner.

Essentially, in seats like Fraser — and to less an extent, Moreton — we have built to a point comparable with Griffith in 2019. Despite really encouraging swings, the hard bit is to move beyond a primary vote in the mid-20s.

To do so means stitching together a multicultural coalition of renters, working-class people, and middle-class progressives. And I believe the key is still a resolutely progressive, broad political platform, backed by community organizing, campaigning, and working to establish the wider network of allied institutions we need to withstand future establishment onslaughts and exogenous shocks like Trump.