At 12 years old, Minh Tam isn’t old enough to vote, but he claims to have convinced “about half a dozen” of his family members and parents at his school to vote for the Greens.
Spending election day handing out how-to-vote cards with his mum at Brunswick North primary school in the Victorian electorate of Wills, he was shocked when Greens leader, Richard Di Natale, turned up.
“You’re the leader of the Greens?” Tam asked in awe, before getting a selfie and a photograph. Tam had written an essay for school called “Greens are great”, so he believes he has some authority on why people should vote for them.
It is an army of grass-roots volunteers like Tam and his parents that the Greens hope will see them pick up extra seats in the aftermath of polling day, with their sights set on the Victorian electorates of Wills, Higgins, Batman, and Melbourne Ports, as well as Melbourne, where they hope their only lower house MP, Adam Bandt, will keep his seat.
Without the budget of the major parties to spend on television ads, and Di Natale failing to nab a place alongside Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten during the election debates, the party has relied on cold-calling and door-knocking by their volunteers.
Greens supporters spent election eve plastering target Victorian electorates with party signage, a move which reportedly led to vandalism and signage being ripped down by frustrated volunteers from other parties.
Police were called in Higgins after a Greens volunteer was allegedly bitten by a Liberal supports, Fairfax Media reported.
“It’s been wonderful seeing all the Greens material covering booths, there’s a strong Greens presence on all of our booths,” Di Natale said.
“People just say they’re sick and tired of the two old parties and they’re looking for change. They’re turning to the Greens and saying we’ve offered a really positive voice during this campaign.”
Reservoir North in Batman was Di Natale’s first stop on election day, where numerous Greens signs had been defaced overnight. More than 30,000 doors have been knocked by Greens supporters in that electorate alone, where the party’s candidate Alex Bhathal is contesting against embattled Labor MP David Feeney.
Feeney has largely kept his head down since it was revealed in the early days of the campaign that he had failed to declare his $2.3m negatively-geared home on the parliamentary register, a move which was followed by a train-wreck interview with Sky News, where he accidentally left Labor talking points documents behind, which were then leaked.
If Bhathal manages the tough task of winning Batman, where she has finished second to Labor at the past two elections and requires a swing of more than 10%, she’ll be the first member to have actually lived in the seat in the last 20 years.
“What I’ve really noticed here is that it looks like Labor have given up here,” Di Natale said after casting his vote.
“We got here at eight in the morning and there wasn’t a Labor person in sight while people were queuing up. That says everything you need to know how seriously they take this community.”
He spoke to older women in Italian and explained to them how to vote, with a high percentage of people in the suburb holding Italian ancestry.
“I’ve realised once you’ve got the nonnas of Darebin on your side it’s hard to not win,” Bhathal said, adding that “Italian grandmothers” had called her concerned about Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers.
“They’re really upset and distressed by what they’re seeing on Nauru and Manus Island,” she said.
“An Italian grandmother rang me just a few weeks ago to tell me that her grandson – she’s terribly proud of him – that he’s gay, and that she’s voting Greens because she wants him to be happy in his life.”
It was then on to Higgins for Di Natale, which is currently held by the Liberals Kelly O’Dwyer. But Greens candidate Jason Ball said people who had voted Liberal all their lives told him they had voted Greens for the first time on Saturday.
“It’s always been considered a safe Liberal seat but now, we have the opportunity of turning the seat Green on issues like seeking asylum,” Ball said.
“People in this area want to see a more compassionate and decent approach. They understand the science of global warming, and they want to see us transition to a clean, renewable economy. These are the people who used to vote for Malcolm Fraser or the old Malcolm Turnbull. Their progressive values are not represented in the liberal party anymore and it’s the Greens that offer them some hope and some integrity in politics.”
Di Natale then made a brief stop campaigning with Greens candidate Steph Hodgins-May in Melbourne Ports, which has been held by Labor for 110 years. While it is a marginal seat held by just 3.6%, Hodgins-May is virtually tied in second place with Liberal candidate Owen Guest, but after preferences will have a battle on her hands.
By the time Di Natale arrived at his final campaign stop in the electorate of Wills, in Melbourne’s north, he appeared relaxed, kicking a football with voters and embracing his sister, who was in line voting.
But he admitted he was feeling “a bit toey” about how things would go once polls had closed.
“We don’t know what the numbers will be yet,” he said.
“I’m sure there will be strong swings to the Greens in all of these key lower house seats, as well as increasing our vote overall. But it’s up to the people now.”
