Adam Bandt’s loss proves progressivism and electoralism don’t mix

Despite a messy campaign trail, the narrative of this year’s election result couldn’t be clearer. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese led Labor to a landslide victory, which the ABC termed a “win for the ages”, while the Coalition and the Greens were punished for embracing the hard right and left, respectively, far too much.

With the ABC announcing the loss of of Greens’ leader Adam Bandt, the common wisdom that the “Greens misjudged the electorate”, as David Crowe put it, looks set to be baked in.

To quote the ABC’s chief digital political correspondent Jacob Greber, “Australia’s political centre has held” and, regarding the Greens’ election result, voters rejected “what they regarded as extremism, obstructionism and support for bad causes such as the CFMEU”.

Greber’s argument, among many, appears to be that during a period of global turmoil, anxious voters retreated to a political Goldilocks zone. A compelling argument, perhaps, if your analysis skims the surface of the lower house. However, delving deeper into the total primary vote, the reality is far more complex.

For starters, the Greens’ primary vote remained steady, which is a feat in and of itself given the millions upon millions of dollars spent attacking them from far-right lobby groups such as Advance. Secondly, the poor lower house result deceptively hides how many primary votes the Greens actually won, due to the number of barriers our electoral system provides to prevent a third party from securing seats.

It’s no secret that seats like Brisbane, Griffith and Ryan all went Green in the last election because Labor preferences pushed them ahead of the LNP. This election, because the Labor vote was so strong across the nation, the Greens fell behind, and the Coalition prefers Labor with a majority to a Labor minority government with a strong progressive crossbench. The irony is that despite being attacked by both the left and right wings of politics, Labor owed its historic victory in no small part to preferences from both sides.

In contrast, in progressive inner-city electorates such as Wills, Cooper and Fraser — traditional Labor heartland — the Greens needed to surpass the votes of both the Labor and Liberal parties combined to pick them up. The Greens can rely on preferences from the Socialists, which ran strong campaigns in these three seats, but despite major left-wing swings in inner Melbourne, only one seat, Wills, was threatened. Peter Khalil, the special envoy for social cohesion, ultimately fended off the challenge from Samantha Ratnam, but only due to preference support from the socially incohesive far-right.

All-in-all, to say that the Greens’ result was due to voters rejecting “extremism” isn’t only false, it’s counterproductive for our democracy. With Labor being the only left-of-centre party in Australia with any long-term historical footing, it essentially serves as a blockade to prevent the electoral growth of any modern progressive party. If Labor ends up switching its preferences to its major rival, then the prospect of the Greens regaining Brisbane and Griffith, and picking up Macnamara and Richmond, is effectively killed. Progressive campaigns will lose a substantial amount of their footing in the Australian political sphere, which will be devastating for marginalised communities.

The Liberals used exactly this tactic in 1998, preferencing Labor ahead of One Nation to keep the far-right at bay, but the sanitary cordon broke this year when the Liberals did a preference deal with Pauline Hanson’s party. While it didn’t translate into any seats for One Nation, it served as a sign that Peter Dutton’s Coalition was, remarkably, more far-right than John Howard’s, and after thirty years of Pauline Hanson bashing at their doors, her former party ultimately conceded ideological surrender.

Australia has no such sanitary cordon against the left — yet — but it’s not for a lack of the establishment trying to make one happen. Advance’s big strategy this election was to paint the Greens as captured by leftist extremists, a narrative many commentators were open to parroting. But in doing so, these same commentators had to recognise exactly who they were giving that label.

The Greens received endorsements from human rights organisations across the board, representing the transgender community, refugee community, anti-poverty advocates and so on. The suggestion that these organisations align with “extremists” demonstrates how deep the divide is between Parliament and community advocates. These are the people who are arguably invested in politics the most, but the one party that is the most receptive to their needs is also the one that is struggling with our electoral system the most. This isn’t a coincidence.

In situations when Parliament has caved to the needs of community advocates, it gets dragged kicking and screaming, but then claims victory as theatrically as possible. No situation showcased this better than the same-sex marriage plebiscite. This came after decades of campaigning from the queer community and the Greens, who introduced same-sex marriage into Parliament knowing it would be blocked by both major parties. In the end, realising that same-sex marriage was inevitable, the Liberal Party decided to legislate it on their terms by introducing a plebiscite that was panned by human rights organisations, and then, upon returning a “Yes” vote that even the conservatives couldn’t argue against, it was passed in the most saccharine and histrionic way possible.

The then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull took full credit for the victory in a lavish and myopic speech, shamelessly ignoring all the work that his own party put into making the campaign as difficult and exhausting for the queer community as possible. Meanwhile the Greens, the only party that had consistently supported same-sex marriage, were sidelined in the celebrations, and the grassroots queer activists who forced the campaign into mainstream consciousness from the beginning are forgotten to history altogether.

It’s a dark indictment on our society when the only party that has policies on ending mandatory detention and placing gender affirming care on Medicare gets labelled so freely as “extremist” — but it’s the nature of being a progressive activist. We know full well that when the two major parties are dragged to the table to actually listen to the needs of community advocates and act accordingly, the credit will go to the same politicians who obstructed the way for decades, while we, the activists, will be spat back out onto the streets and forced to ready ourselves for the next exhausting and unforgiving campaign.

Can the Greens convert everyday Australians to their “extremist” policies?

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