In the three years since the last federal election, Australia has experienced its worst bushfire season, a succession of catastrophic floods, and ongoing drought. That, combined with the high-profile campaigns of the so-called teal independents, has brought the climate crisis into sharper electoral focus.
It has also put the Australian Greens in position to gain up to three seats in the Senate, with a potential, though unlikely, addition of another lower house seat in Brisbane.
This could happen despite the Greens receiving less media attention than in previous years, with the battle for inner-city seats in Melbourne and Sydney dominated by independent candidates – who have also been fielding the majority of questions on how they would respond to a hung parliament.
The party leader, Adam Bandt, has spent much of the five-week campaign in Queensland, where the party hopes to pick up a Senate seat and make ground in the seats of Griffith, Brisbane and Ryan. They overlap areas held by the Greens at a state level.
The party also hopes to pick up a second Senate seat in New South Wales, where the state MP David Shoebridge is the lead candidate, and South Australia, where the sixth Senate spot will go to either the Greens, the Centre Alliance or Nick Xenophon.
If the Greens manage to pick up all three Senate spots it will bring their number on the Senate crossbench to 12. With Bandt in the lower house, that would make for the largest ever Greens party room.
“Everyone is taking published election polling with a grain of salt at the moment, particularly given the results in the last election, but on current trends we’re on track to be in the balance of power in the Senate, potentially in our own right,” Bandt says. “With a minority parliament looking increasingly more likely we may be in the balance of power in the lower house as well.”
Rather than sucking oxygen out of the Greens campaign, Bandt says, the campaigns of high-profile independent candidates have increased attention on core Greens issues.
“All of the people who are looking for an independent in the lower house will find the Greens to be the logical choice in the Senate, we hope,” he says. “On the whole it’s helped put climate on the agenda and helped show up the terrible climate policies of Liberal and Labor.”
With the exception of Kooyong, where the Greens polled second behind the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, in 2019 thanks to a high-profile candidate in the barrister Julian Burnside, the Greens have not targeted any seat where there is a pro-climate action independent. They are preferencing independent candidates in those seats and Labor across the rest of the country.
The former leader of the party, Christine Milne, says it has been “the best election for the Greens since 2010”.
“That was an election in which climate change was a major issue … Climate has not resonated with the community again until this election, but I really think it’s there now. That’s why the Greens are hopeful of ending out with the biggest party room they’ve ever had and I really hope it comes to pass.”
Polling for the Greens has varied from 15% in a poll conducted by Resolve Strategic for the Nine newspapers at the start of May to 9% in Wednesday’s Guardian Essential poll. In the 2019 election, their vote share was 10%.
Kevin Bonham, a psephologist, says the stronger vote is likely to be a result of Labor dialling down its climate policies than any new campaign strategy of the Greens.
“I don’t think the Greens are doing anything new or different. I think their campaigns have been the same for some time,” he says.
Bonham says that while the polls may overstate Greens support, the party has a reasonable chance of picking up additional Senate seats, although South Australia was less likely. A gain is less likely in the lower house, he says, particularly if there is a swing toward Labor in the seats where Greens also do well.
Failure to gain any Senate seats or increase the party’s primary vote in targeted seats will be a sign that the campaign needs to change, says associate Prof Kate Crowley, an academic at the University of Tasmania who has written extensively on the Greens as partners in minority government.
Crowley suggests the party may need to be less ideological and position itself not as a party of the left but a party of environmental and climate action, issues she says are bipartisan.
“If the teal independents are more successful [than] the Greens, then that just shows you that there are environmentally conscious people on the right that are waiting to be tapped on the shoulder that the Greens have been neglecting,” she says.
Bandt is unapologetically of the left. He has repeatedly said the Greens would not guarantee supply to a Coalition government, no matter its leader, saying: “I want this government gone.”
At a campaign launch in Brisbane this week he announced a shortlist of demands that the Greens would have in the event of a Labor minority government. That includes a ban on any new coal or gas developments, which Labor has ruled out. The oil and gas industry has already begun counter-lobbying.
Bandt says it would be the “toughest area of discussion”, but one that the International Energy Agency has said is necessary to keep global heating within safe limits.
“At some point we’re going to have to stop opening new coal and gas projects and it’ll only be the Greens who push for that,” Bandt says. “I think it will be very difficult for the next government, especially if they want to host a global climate summit in Australia, to continue to back new coal and gas projects. They will be hounded by the rest of the world if they’re pouring petrol on the fire while everyone else is trying to put the fire out.”
The list also includes adding dental care to Medicare, which builds on reforms secured by Bandt in the hung parliament after the 2010 election that covered dental care for children.
Also on the list are raising the jobseeker rate, free childcare and progress on “all elements” of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, which Labor has already committed to. The Greens have run a significant number of First Nations candidates, including an all-First Nations Senate ticket in Victoria and their lead Senate candidate in the ACT, Dr Tjanara Goreng Goreng.
Both Labor and the Coalition have said they will not enter into a power-sharing arrangement with crossbench MPs in the event of a minority government.
Milne has been a member of three minority governments in Tasmania and at the federal level. Only once, in Tasmania in 1996, did Labor choose to remain in opposition rather than strike a deal with the Greens.
“It is incredibly frustrating to watch this charade every time,” she says.
If no party wins an overall majority on Saturday, Milne says, it will be a good thing for the country and the planet.
“There will be meaningful action on climate change if there’s a minority government with Greens and others in the balance of power.”
