A big Green question mark

With the possibility of a hung parliament, the performance of the Greens on May 3 could have significant impact on the government formed after May 3.

The party is under immense pressure after a string of bad results in 2024 and early 2025. The loss of their long-held Victorian state seat of Prahran in a by-election was the latest in a pattern of miserable results for the Greens in recent years, having also lost seats in state and territory elections in the ACT and Queensland, and local council elections in Victoria and NSW.

They have also suffered high-profile scandals and resignations: Sam Hibbins, resigned from the party and the parliament after admitting to an affair with a staffer;  Senator Lidia Thorpe, resigned from the Greens over the party’s support for the Voice referendum, and Senator Dorinda Cox has faced a series of bullying allegations from her staff. 

So just how bad is the Greens damage? Will they suffer further losses in this year’s federal election? To what extent has their positions on the Israel-Gaza war contributed to this loss of support? 

Doing badly in what should be favourable times 

Resolve polling in The Age/SMH late last year indicated that the Greens and leader Adam Bandt had fallen to record low approval ratings. Bandt’s -15 net likeability rating made him the third least popular Australian politician, with only Thorpe and Pauline Hanson rating worse. 

More worryingly for the Greens, seat polls this year have suggested they are likely to lose at least some of their existing seats. A recent YouGov MRP poll – which uses large-scale data weighted to project individual electorate predictions – suggested the Greens could lose three of their four held seats and pick up no others, with only Adam Bandt projected to survive. 

Meanwhile, a poll commissioned by right-wing activist group Advance Australia suggested the Greens were behind in Brisbane and Ryan, as well as target seat Wills, but remained competitive in Griffith and could snatch Jewish heartland in Macnamara if a surge from Labor to Liberal on primary pushes Jewish MP Josh Burns into third. As TJI outlined in its analysis last week, it would be a sad irony if Jewish voters seeking to punish Labor ended up defeating one of our few proudly Jewish MPs and delivered the Greens the seat instead. 

Of course, polls are not always predictive. Seat polls have high margins for error, and we should be particularly sceptical of those commissioned by activist groups like the Advance ones – without seeing the full results and methodology, it is impossible for me to judge the veracity of this one. It’s also worth noting that the Greens generated late momentum during the 2022 federal campaign, but recent losses at state and local levels will undoubtedly worry the party as they head towards a federal election due within the next two months. 

The Liberal win in Prahran is particularly worrying for the Greens. The Liberals would not have won if Labor had contested – whichever of Labor or the Greens had finished higher would surely have won on the other’s preferences. 

But the Greens primary vote went backwards despite Labor not contesting. They failed to pick up any of the 27% Labor got in 2022. 

In the Queensland election, the party’s overall primary went slightly up, but they suffered swings against them in their held and target inner-city Brisbane seats, areas where they also won three federal seats at the last election. 

The Greens historically have fared best when Labor is in government, peeling off voters on Labor’s left flank disappointed with the invariable compromises and pragmatic shifts the party makes in power. 

So, the current trend of declining support while Labor has been in power in most of the country is a worry for them. If the Greens can’t peel seats off Labor at the tail-end of a sustained period of high inflation and cost of living pressures, when Labor is governing across the country, one wonders when they can. 

Israel-Palestine is a weak spot 

The Resolve poll showed the party’s policies on expanding Medicare, taxes on big corporations and freezing rental increases enjoyed majority support from voters of all parties; banning all new coal and gas projects was less popular. 

The weakest support for their policies went to the party’s policies on Israel-Palestine – just 28% of voters supported their calls to immediately recognise a state of Palestine and impose sanctions on the Netanyahu Government, with 47% of voters undecided or neutral. 

This accords with other polling on the conflict which has consistently showed that a minority of Australians hold strong views in either direction on Israel and the Gaza war. Various questions asked in different ways have consistently found that most prefer a middle of the road approach, not identifying strongly with either side, but they are also concerned at the conflict spilling onto Australia’s streets. Thus recent polling found strong disapproval of the Gaza protest movement which the Greens have become associated with. 

The truth is that while this issue animates those with a strong connection to it, most Australians either don’t care or simply recognise that the Middle East is a long way away, and Australia has no power to change what is happening there. 

Gaza has been a central feature of the Greens campaigning since the war began. The party and its politicians have participated in protests on the war, made frequent statements about it, and even charged federal and state Labor governments of being “complicit in genocide”, as they put it. 

But this message is clearly not resonating with Australians. Even those who disapprove of Israel’s conduct in the war don’t necessarily buy the idea that Australia has responsibility for it. A Guardian Essential poll late last year found that 56% of Australians were satisfied with the Albanese Government’s response to the war, with only 30% believing it to be too supportive of Israel. Even 49% of Greens voters approved of the Government’s stance, compared to 45% who believed it was too supportive of Israel. 

If the Greens have not even convinced their own voters to hold Labor responsible for the situation in Gaza, it seems clear that the campaign is not resonating with swing voters. 

What seems likeliest about the Gaza issue is that it animates the Greens’ hardcore activist base, but it is turning off two types of Greens voters – environmentally-focused baby boomers, and professional millennials who voted Greens recently for the first time but have felt alienated by the party’s shift to a more radical platform since the election. 

There is also the danger that, despite their move to a more radical platform, uncompromisingly hard-core left voters will always demand more and never be satisfied, especially when the Greens try to distance themselves from more extremist movements. 

So it is unsurprising that the Greens are starting to move away from the Gaza issue as a central message – even after the ceasefire ended recently. A recent photo op with key Victorian candidates joining former leader Bob Brown to launch a forestry policy suggests the Greens are on the back foot to accusations they are “no longer the party of Bob Brown” or that they’ve forgotten their environmental roots. 

Losing on both sides 

Evidence of the Greens losing primary votes in both directions has been building for a while. While the Victorian Greens in 2022 gained in terms of seats, partially assisted by the Liberals preferencing them ahead of Labor, they also suffered significant primary swings against in seats where the Victorian Socialists also contested. Meanwhile, in seats where ‘teal independents’ succeeded at the 2022 federal election, the Greens also suffered primary swings at their expense. 

What seems clear is that as Australians continue to dislodge from the two-party system, the Greens are facing increased competition in both directions. Voters unhappy with the major parties have more choices available to them, and the Greens are suffering as a result. 

The Greens’ decision to back down from several prolonged legislative fights with Labor in late 2024 suggests they are also worried about voters marking them down for obstructing Labor’s agenda. 

There will be several seats to watch on election night to see if the Greens do suffer. They will feel the pressure from both Labor and the LNP to hold their three Brisbane seats, but their hopes of claiming Macnamara remain live thanks to the Liberal Party trying to push Labor into third, which would deliver them the seat. Jewish voters should be under no illusions about this – the Liberals will not win Macnamara, and only first preference votes for Josh Burns stand in the way of the Greens. 

Another to watch will be Wills in inner-north Melbourne, where demographics may favour their more radical approach. 

The coming election will test whether the Greens brand damage is as significant as recent commentary suggests it is. Polls are never guarantees, and minor parties can pick up late momentum swings in campaigns as voters look at their options more widely. 

But if they do fail to capitalise on an election which looks to be a tricky one for the incumbent Labor government, it may well be that the Greens push to the radical fringes on issues like Gaza is what costs them.