Drew Hutton had assumed he would live out his life a card-carrying Green. The 78-year-old retiree turned up to local branch meetings, staked party corflutes into the lawn of his home on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast and handed out how-to-vote cards long after stepping down from active duty in the party.
Given Hutton had been awarded life membership and his friend – and the Greens’ first national leader – Bob Brown had lauded him a “towering figure in Australian environmental and social politics” who, “more than anybody” (including Brown himself) was “responsible for the formation of the Australian Greens”, it must have seemed a safe bet.
But, on 20 July, Hutton will stand before the Queensland Greens state council and plead his case that they reverse a decision by its constitution and arbitration committee (CAC) to expel him.
Hutton will argue he has been purged from the party in a crackdown on free speech.
The former lecturer of politics and history will draw on symbolically powerful support. Both Brown and the party’s second national leader, Christine Milne, oppose Hutton’s expulsion and have written to advocate that his membership be restored.
The CAC, whose names are not publicly available, will argue it should not be, on the grounds Hutton used social media to provide a platform for transphobia.
For Hutton, the choice those assembled branch delegates make behind closed doors next Sunday will mark a turning point in the history of the Greens. Not because he still wields great influence within it – his time of having an upfront role in the party, Hutton says, has passed.
“The important thing isn’t me,” Hutton tell Guardian Australia. “The important thing is the Greens.
“Are they going to be a dogmatic, authoritarian party that exerts all this top-down control over members? Or is it going to be the sort of party that people like Bob Brown and myself originally created with a historic mission to try to push the world to a more sustainable footing?”
The CAC directed questions to the Queensland Greens’ convenor, Gemmia Burden. In a statement, she wrote that details of all formal complaints were confidential but noted that party rules “apply to all members equally”, most of whom “respectfully contribute a diverse range of views without running afoul of the code of conduct”.
“Respectful discussions of issues is the fundamental basis upon which members of the Queensland Greens make decisions,” Burden said. “However, commentary that targets people on the basis of their gender identity is harmful, not respectful.
“The Queensland Greens believe that trans rights are non-negotiable, and we do not tolerate transphobia or transmisogyny in the party.”
‘Authoritarian and antidemocratic’
The official story of the termination of Hutton’s membership begins on 21 June 2022 at exactly 3:50pm. It was a month to the day after a federal election which would prove a high-water mark for the Greens in Queensland.
The party added to its one lower house seat with three newly elected MPs – all from Brisbane. Queensland Greens were euphoric, pundits agog. The talk was of a “greenslide”; the state was, briefly, dubbed “Greensland”.
Hutton had been “very pleased” to see how much the party had flourished since he planted its seed by founding the Brisbane Greens in 1984 beneath the gloom of authoritarian and conservative rule under Joh Bjelke-Petersen.
But, with a click of a mouse, he was about to be embroiled in internecine war raging south of the Tweed.
Then Victorian parliamentary leader, Samantha Ratnam, had just removed Linda Gale from her recently elected position as state convenor because of an internal discussion paper Gale co-authored three years earlier. The paper aimed to prevent what it deemed was a move to “shut down any debate” on a “critical issue in feminism and women’s rights today”: the definition of a woman. Ratnam labelled the paper “transphobic”.
In New South Wales, feminist lawyer Anna Kerr had her party membership terminated for disrupting Greens actions and discussion groups with what was deemed transphobic views, including being quoted in the media as being “extremely disturbed” by a NSW Greens push to amend legislation to use the term “pregnant person” instead of “pregnant woman”.
On his personal Facebook page, Hutton labelled these moves “authoritarian and antidemocratic”.
“I believe in full human rights for trans people at the same time as supporting the right of women to be safe from patriarchal oppression,” he wrote.
“I am also prepared to say these things publicly. Unfortunately, in the Greens at present that would seem to make me a ‘transphobe’ … .”
Two days later, Hutton wrote what he said would be a “final statement” on the post before which he would close comments raging in the thread below, some of which he acknowledged had been “hurtful and disrespectful”.
In this lengthy statement, Hutton claimed his original post was not written because he wanted to “say anything about the trans-gender issues themselves” but because “deeply concerned” about party officials overturning the results of democratic elections and purging members for raising questions “progressives should not be afraid to address”.
“I stand with all women, cis and trans in their struggle and recognise the many non-binary members of our party,” he wrote, signing off with a plea for “inclusive, safe and respectful” policy and process discussions.
This would not prove Hutton’s last word on the subject.
‘Forced out’
A year later, after a complaint lodged against him, the CAC suspended Hutton’s membership until such time as he deleted a post criticising the Greens and removed comments made by others which it deemed transphobic.
The committee rejected the allegation Hutton himself had demeaned trans women, but found he had provided a platform for others to do so.
Hutton refused to comply, citing free speech – an issue for which he had once chained himself to a tree in Queens Street Mall and for which he had been thrown into jail by Bjelke-Petersen’s corrupt police force many times as part of a broader civil disobedience campaign which was, eventually, successful in the form of the landmark 1992 Peaceful Assembly Act.
A near two-year standoff ensued in which Hutton abided by the CAC’s directive he remain silent.
But the deadlock broke open on 15 March 2025 when the Saturday Paper ran the Hutton saga. He has not spoken to journalists about the matter before or since.
But in the months that followed he began increasingly sharing articles and opinions on Facebook which critiqued what he called “trans extremists”. Then, in the weeks before and after the federal election, Hutton spoke at two small rallies organised by a group called Woman Up Queensland, which describes itself as pro-women’s rights but whose opponents label it as a Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist – or Terf – group.
Hutton says his is not an isolated case, and claims he knows of more than 40 people who have been expelled or “forced out” of the Greens after voicing their position on gender.
“Almost all of them are women,” Hutton says. “They’re second-wave feminists, for the most part. Some of them are lesbians. And they are outraged.
“Some of them are opposed to the medicalisation of kids for treatment for gender dysphoria. Others are just outraged that there is this move on to give rights to trans people, but take them away from women.”
Most of those women don’t want to be identified, Hutton says, for fear of backlash. One who does though, and who fits all the aforementioned categories, is Cheryl Hercus.
In 2016, Hercus ran for the Greens in the federal seat of Goldstein in Melbourne. The retired feminist lecturer and author let her party membership lapse in 2019 after having to defend herself against a complaint that alleged she had “proven intransigent” and that her “promoting harmful transphobic views, articles and beliefs” online reflected her “deeply held beliefs”.
“I could probably add another half a dozen to that that Drew doesn’t know about,” Hercus says. “Women who were involved in the Greens a very long time who’ve just resigned in disgust or disappeared.”
Very real impacts
By taking to the soapbox, Hutton succeeded in forcing the hand of CAC which “terminated” his membership “effective immediately” on 24 June. This opened the door for Hutton’s long-sought appeal, denied him while his membership languished indefinitely suspended.
But while Hutton may have found support in a cohort who had left or been forced out of the party, his standing with many inside it had now been utterly tarnished. High-profile environmental activist Ben Pennings was one with whom online exchanges had become personal and vitriolic.
“It’s heartbreaking that Drew Hutton has left the fight for our precious places and a safe climate to become obsessed with a singular issue,” Pennings writes.
And while the debate rages, Ty, a non-binary member of South Brisbane branch – Hutton’s old stomping ground – who requested their surname not be published for privacy reasons, says they are the ones who live with the “very real impacts” of Hutton’s free speech.
“It’s really awful,” Ty says of Hutton’s posts and talks. “To go back into a world where our roles are determined by our genitals is bizarre and creepy and intrusive.”
A software developer in their 40s, Ty denies a generational rift between the Greens, saying instead the difference was between those “who actually know and interact with trans people and people who don’t”.
Nor does Ty believe the outcome of Hutton’s appeal will prove much of a turning point.
“Look, members who don’t line up with the party’s values that they commit to when they join as a member, including the social justice pillar … members leave when they don’t share those values any more,” they say.
“Some are asked to leave because their values aren’t compatible with having an inclusive party that actually focuses on actually doing the jobs the party was founded for”.
