It’s A ‘Greens-Slide’: Greens Celebrate Best Results In History And Massive Lower House Gains

The Australian Greens party celebrated its best election results in history on Sunday afternoon. The party achieved huge results in the House of Representatives while retaining all its Senate spots.

Now the third biggest political party in Australia, the Greens have absolutely skyrocketed up the voting leaderboard this election with almost a third of the total votes Labor or the Liberals each picked up. This is officially more votes than ever before.

The party’s primary vote also increased nationally by 1.9 per cent to a total of 12.3 per cent.

“People have backed the Greens in record numbers and delivered a massive mandate for action on climate and inequality,” Leader Adam Bandt said on Sunday.

Bandt is currently the Greens’ only Member of Parliament in the House of Representatives (the house with the main character energy) but that is all about to change thanks to surprise state Queensland. Blue voters in Queensland won Scott Morrison’s Coalition the unwindable election, so this shift is being called a “greenwave”.

Greens candidate for the seat of Griffith in Queensland Max Chandler-Mather claimed the Greens’ first ever win in the electorate on Sunday morning, followed by Elizabeth Watson-Brown who took out the seat of Ryan.

Even more noteworthy there is that Watson-Brown won the seat off a Liberal MP. It was considered a safe blue seat since 1972 but the constituents were hungry for massive change and bypassed centrist Labor and went straight for progressive Greens. Like wow.

Chandler-Mather and Watson-Brown have become the third and second Greens MPs in federal parliament.

The Greens are also looking likely to win a fourth (4th!!!!) seat — the seat of Brisbane — but it’s proven to be a pretty tight race so nothing’s been called yet.

On Sunday afternoon Greens candidate Stephen Bates was ahead with 55 per cent of the vote, compared to Liberal candidate and sitting MP Trevor Evans’ 44 per cent.

The seat was held by Evans by a margin of 4.9 per cent but there has already been an 11 per cents win away from the Libs and a 5.9 per cent swing to the Greens.

The party also expects to build upon its retained spots in the Senate across several states including a couple in Queensland. It’s on track to have a total of 12, which would give them the balance of power.

This is huge. So how did they do it?

Other than their just generally good policies, grassroots campaigning in the wake of the February floods had a lot to do with it in Queensland.

It launched a huge door-knocking initiative in inner-city Brisbane, pushing on climate inaction in the face of the floods that hit the city hard.

Bandt attributed the success in attracting loads of first-time voters to the party’s strong commitment to climate action, net zero by 2030, and economic policy that’s ambitious, different to the Labor and Liberals’ and pledges to alleviate cost of living pressures by taxing billionaires.

“We’ve just had three years of droughts and then fires and now floods and floods again. People can see that this is happening and it is unfolding, and I think increasingly what we are seeing is that that cuts across all voting situations, cuts across all demographics.”

In the coming days we’ll find out if the greens will hold the balance of power in the House of Representatives too, which would be great news for the Great Barrier Reef.

“This is just the next step in the growth of our movement for climate action and to end inequality,” Bandt said.

“We will continue to go from strength to strength in the community, in the streets and in the Parliament.”

Image: Getty Images / Dan Peled