Source : the age
The Greens are blaming the loss of at least two lower house seats on inconsistent and confusing messaging during the campaign, and members are debating whether the party should double down on its emphasis on the war in Gaza.
The party’s leader, Adam Bandt, looks set to maintain his position despite a 5.4 per cent swing to Labor in his seat, as the party reckons with the “devastating” losses of firebrand Griffith MP Max Chandler-Mather and his Brisbane colleague Stephen Bates.
Greens leader Adam Bandt will have to define the party’s direction.Credit: Paul Jeffers
The Greens still hope to retain the Queensland seat of Ryan, held by Elizabeth Watson-Brown who is in a complex three-horse race with the Liberals and Labor.
Melbourne’s progressive inner-north seat of Wills, where former state Greens leader Samantha Ratnam is attempting to unseat Labor’s Peter Khalil, is still too close to call, disappointing party strategists who hoped an advantageous redistribution would hand them a seat they have been trying to win for over a decade.
One source told this masthead that the possibility of winning at least three to five extra Senate seats was proof the minor party just needs to better define itself and advocate more on climate, Israel-Palestine and housing.
“There was inconsistent and confused messaging from within the party and it stemmed from a disagreement between those who wanted a more moderate approach and those who wanted to be bolder,” they said.
“We need to be bolder, we need to be seen as an alternative.”
However, another source argued the opposite.
“[We got] sucked into the culture wars, and when you do that, you don’t win – you have to help people at the local level. You saw it in Brisbane and Griffiths in 2022,” they said.
“For a lower house seat, you have to make sure you are representing it and focusing on grassroots, community-based organising rather than culture wars issues. That’s where it went wrong in Griffith.”
The party’s heavy reliance on door-knocking before the campaign began meant they could have missed a shift in attitudes during the campaign, a third member said.
“It’s about how to get that short-term immediate campaign data. Door-knocking doesn’t provide information on the final couple of weeks of a campaign so we missed that,” they said.
Publicly, the party was optimistic of its chances, as Senator Sarah Hanson-Young remained hopeful the party could retain Ryan and potentially win Wills.
“It’s going to come down to days, counting those postal votes and the preference flow,” she said.
But as counting continued at the Australian Electoral Commission’s West Footscray centre in Melbourne, Labor volunteers from Khalil’s team who were not authorised to speak publicly said they believed the ALP would hold off the challenge from Ratnam.
Ratnam said she remained hopeful as scrutineering continued but acknowledged it would take time before a final result was known.
By Sunday afternoon, with 70 per cent of the vote counted, Khalil was leading Ratnam by 0.68 per cent — or about 1100 votes out of 125,000 eligible voters.
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