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- [00:01]
A
I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to seven. Amid the seismic political shift currently underway in this country, there's been one party missing from the conversation, the Greens. And it's curious because the conditions which have seen one nation rise, frustration with the major parties, a slip in living standards, appetite for change should suit the Greens and their anti establishment politics. So why are they lost in the political will wilderness? Today, former Greens MP and Greens Institute CEO Max Chandler Mather on whether the Greens can mount a comeback and tap into the progressive version of Pauline's populist politics. It's Wednesday, june 24th. Max, hi. Hello. Welcome to the show.
- [00:59]
B
Thanks for having me.
- [01:00]
A
So, Max, since the last election, we've seen support for the major parties collapse and one nation's popularity rise. Pauline Hanson, according to some polls, is the preferred prime minister at the moment. So tell me why you think we're seeing this surge in support for one nation.
- [01:16]
B
Oh, two things. One, massive increases in financial stress, you know, and it's been occurring since COVID and it's really starting to bite. And I think there is a wild underestimation actually at the moment just how much financial pain people are in. You know, there's over a million kids in poverty in Australia at the moment. You know, there are pensioners, single parents making tough choices at the supermarket about whether or not they buy enough food to eat that week or pay the rent, kids going to school without shoes, all sorts of things. And in a wealthy country like that, that's unacceptable. And it is starting to bite now into higher and higher income brackets. And that pain is being underestimated by almost the entire political class. And the second feature is people are disconnected from politics. You know, in the 20th century, you have these large collective institutions like trade unions that represented 50% of the workforce. Trade union density's collapsed now to 13%. And people are disconnected from politics in that sense and experience politics as an individual. And so I think there's this void at the moment. And I think one nation, for a lot of people are the chance to break with the status quo in some way, to at least start to change things because of the pain they're in, because of the sense that of lack of hope that they have in mainstream politics and the sense that, and they're not wrong, the sense that the political class treats them with contempt. And they do. There is a real grain of truth in the fact that at the same time as politicians are paid, you know, over $200,000 a year, they keep turning around and talking about the fact that we all have to make tough choices. Well, they don't have to choose between feeding their kids and paying the rent. They don't have to give up on hope that their kids will ever be able to buy a home. They don't have to figure out how they live on a pension that doesn't increase as fast as the cost of things at the mom. So, you know, I think there's that as well. And I think we kind of underestimate how smart people are, ordinary people are, and recognising that, a lot of the political class does treat them with contempt, and so they are responding in kind.
- [03:10]
A
Ok, so these two things that are underpinning the situation right now, a lack of trust in the political system and economic instability, people doing it tough. One nation has clearly been able to speak to these people. But these are concerns that the Greens could have have capitalised on to make their own political gains. That doesn't seem to be happening at the mom.
- [03:31]
B
Well, obviously, we could always do better. I mean, I think it's a broader question about how we think about change. And I've been very clear for a long time that change is not going to come through negotiations with the Labor Party or sort of tinkering around the edges in a broken political system. And, you know, that might sound a little bit trite, but in really basic terms, in my experience in Parliament, the way mainstream politics works is to serve large corporate interests. And certainly that's the role of the Labor Party these days. And if you might disagree with that, it's worth just looking at some basic facts, that we've seen massive declines in real wages. At the same time, we've seen big increases in corporate profits. The same time as the gas industry is making hundreds of billions of dollars, labor government would rather they don't increase taxes on them, or at the same time as they decide they're not going to increase the pension or build enough public housing for people to live in or do anything really meaningful to improve people's lives. So there's that. And I do think we can always do better at articulating that and recognizing that pain. So there's that. I think also there's an organizational question, like, for us really to reach people, we do need to be at their doors, we do need to be at their communities at a much bigger scale than we are right now, and not there to preach or to tell people what to think, but literally just to ask what's going on in their lives and prove that we're an institution and a movement, and that, in the first instance, wants their politics dictated and directed by what people say they want changed in their lives. There's that as well. And then finally, I think there's a lot of work to do to demonstrate that as a political movement, we are in opposition to the political establishment. And I think there's a lot of basic things we can do around. I think, collectively, none of us should be flying business class for free. All of us should be giving up a part of their wage to front field meal programs in our communities. We should be giving up a lot of the perks that come with being a politician. And I think we could do that collectively as a party. And that would be very meaningful for people because that demonstrates, I think, that we're willing to put our money where our mouth is. So all of those things, I think, would go a long way to helping. And, you know, there's a lot of Greens MPs across the country who do that. But I think it's reasonable that I think any one of the Greens would recognise right now that we could always do better in the context of. Of a collapsing major parties and a surging one nation.
- [05:53]
A
And one interesting statistic among all of this is Millennials. So one nation is out polling the Greens among millennials, I think it's 18 to 16%. And you're a millennial yourself. This is a demographic that you spent a lot of your time trying to reach on housing in particular. So why do you think millennials are turning to one nation and not the Greens?
- [06:14]
B
Well, I think people feel a distinct lack of hope at the moment. I mean, and, you know, it's just genuinely understandable. Like, if you're a millennial, you have experience, especially over the last 10 years, massive declines in living standards. Every time house prices go up another percent, that's another loss of hope that you'll ever be able to afford a home. You now need to earn a six figure income to afford rent in any capital city across Australia, let alone think about ever being able to buy a house and what that means for your comfortable retirement or being able to look after your kids. You're starting to think about starting a family, or you have, and you're recognizing that it's almost impossible to make ends meet in those circumstances. And you, you know, I think some people will start to feel angry about that, and that's entirely justifiable. And in fact, to be honest, what's remarkable to me, actually, is how little anger there is compared to just how unfair everything is at the moment. People are being very reasonable and patient, I would argue. But then there's a lot of also people who just feel apathetic, because for them, and especially for millennials, I always ask this at forums, put up your hands if you've ever felt like you've had collective power over the political system or a sense that your involvement in politics would change anything. And the vast majority of people say no, because so often politics is something that's done to them rather than that's done with them. And people are correctly surmising that a lot of politicians in Canberra just don't get. So I think there's a lot there. We do need policies that speak to people in the sense that we show that we recognise things need to change at scale. Rather than electricity rebates, we should be bringing the electricity system back into public hands and reversing privatisation, rather than just changing some of the negative gearing and capital gains tax discounts. Why aren't we building public housing at the scale we used to at the same time and introducing rent caps? There's a lot of stuff that I think we could be more forceful on as well, from a policy perspective.
- [08:10]
A
Coming up, what is progressive populism and could it work for the Greens?
- [08:20]
B
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- [08:51]
A
Is there a comparison to be made with what's happening in the UK at the moment? Because the Greens have become part of the kind of anti establishment surge there. They are taking votes from Labor. They're polling within sight of the major parties. Keir Starmer is being replaced as we speak by a Labor leader who is considered more progressive. So what lessons do you think there are there for Australian politicians?
- [09:14]
B
Well, people want change. Like, this is a moment where the economic and political system as it currently functions and works, is decaying and breaking. And people want change and not just tinkering. They want a political movement that's willing to offer substantial change that is commensurate or relevant to the pain and loss of hope that people feel. And that is evident across the country at the moment. And the way I think about the rise of one nation at the moment is a lot. And the way people are responding to it in the media and establishment politics is, reminds me a lot of the way people responded to Trump in 2016. Like, oh, my God. Like, the patterns are sort of incredibly clear. First, you have this. Well, it's Only going to be at 15%. He's never going to win. Porn Hanson's never going to win. And then you get to sort of the 30%, you're like, well, this is only happening because, you know, this sort of insinuation that there's just a bad section of the population and they're voting in a bad way, but the majority of people would never do that. And at no point is there ever a sense where people slow down and think, well, people are experts in their own lives. I believe that. Why are a lot of people, good, honest people, deciding that they want such a break with the status quo? And labor at the moment have decided that there's still like a deer in the headlights thinking that what this moment requires is this quote, unquote, steady hand, when what's clear is that any political movement across the world at the moment, especially in Western democracies, succeeds when they've recognised the scale of the challenges in people's lives and offer a comparable break politically. Like, policy wise, it's not that hard, but it does require taking on a lot of vested interests and corporate interests. And, you know, and I think Jeremy Corbyn, in 2017, off the back of nationalising all their utilities and building a million public homes, he was able to get this surge. Andy Burnham in the UK is partly popular because he's seen as bringing the bus system in Manchester into public hands and wants to nationalise water utilities. Similar to the UK Greens and Zach Polanski. Rather than this sort of tinkering, what they're proposing is big, qualitative structural change. And rhetorically, I think that's really important. The thing that it hasn't solved yet is that organisational question.
- [11:27]
A
And you're outlining this version of progressive politics that does embrace more populist ideas. You're really talking about trying to transform the economic system. Are those ideas, are they resonating within the decision making that are in the Greens right now?
- [11:42]
B
Yeah, I think so. I think there's always going to be a debate about specifics. Right. I feel it really in my bones that this is what we need to do. And, you know, we, as part of the Green Institute's work, we're running this survey of social and economic life where we go and speak to people and we don't try to win their vote, but we just ask them a bunch of questions about financial stress. And, you know, just as way of an anecdote to describe this, I door knocked on a pensioner's door. She used to be a cleaner she was in, you know, moderate amounts of financial stress, but most acutely, she was worried about her kids and she lived in public housing. She had voted labor her entire life. But she said to me in clear eyes and clear voice, I'm never voting labor again. I'm thinking about voting for Pauline. And we talked a lot. I got along really well with her. Honestly, I enjoy those conversations more than I've ever really enjoyed any conversation with any politician down on camera. Like, they're just more real people. And what was remarkable is, here's the things she agreed with. She was like, well, electricity bill is really expensive. And I was like, do you mind me asking, do you think we should, like, privatization was a mistake, right? Like, I reckon we should just bring it all back into public hands and run it for people and not for profit. She's like, yeah, absolutely. And I said, what about public housing? You live in public housing. That's a passion. And for me, like, do you think we should be building more? And she said, yeah, bill, bill, Bill, we need to build more public housing. What's happening to public housing is a disgrace. Like, there is this misconception in politics at the moment that because people are thinking about voting for Paul and Hansen, that makes them right wing, when actually what is happening is people are just feeling rejected by a political system that no longer listens to them. But then when you put to them what used to be very basic tenets of social democracy and now considered radical because of where the political system has shifted, they said, well, yeah, I still agree with those things, because it's not the case that the population is moving away from politics, the political system is moving away from people. And every conversation I have had with a one nation voter has become very apparent to me over the last few months that they would be perfectly willing to vote for a transformative platform if it was offered. And if you were able to reach them at their door and show that you cared and showed you were willing to listen and showed you were willing to recognise that we can't agree with everything and not to judge them for their political views, but to ask and understand where they're coming from. Which, you know, when you say it sounds pretty simple, but I really, really fundamentally believe that's where that needs to start. And, yeah, it gives me a lot of hope, actually, when I have those conversations.
- [14:14]
A
Well, Max, thank you so much for speaking with me today.
- [14:17]
B
Thanks.
- [14:28]
A
Also in the news, Labor's controversial NDIS overhaul has been delayed after the Greens secured an A8 week extension to a Senate inquiry into the bill. The deal means the Greens will back Labor's capital gains and negative gearing changes, including a new move to close a property loophole for self managed super funds. The NDIS inquiry is now due to report on August 14, but the Greens say they'll still vote against the bill in its current form after warnings from disability groups, providers and states about the scale and speed of the changes. And Australia's chemical regulator has decided not to ban the herbicide Paraquat following a decades long review despite concerns about a possible link to Parkinson's disease. The APVMA says Paraquat and Deerquat will remain legal but under tighter restrictions, including new limits on how, where and when the chemicals can be used. You can listen back to our episode from Friday titled farmers fear this Weed Killer made them sick. Why hasn't Australia banned it? That's in your feed. I'm Ruby Jones, this is 7:00am thanks for listening.