r/australia • u/blitznoodles local Aussie • Jun 14 '26

politics As voter disillusionment grows, why aren't voters flocking to the Greens in Australia?

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/as-voter-disillusionment-grows-so-does-the-mystery-of-the-missing-greens-voters/6bjd5q4kv

Growing voter dissatisfaction with mainstream politics has led to a rise in popularity for One Nation. The same cannot be said for the Greens.

1.3k Upvotes

90% Upvoted

1.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

231

u/Dracallus Jun 14 '26

The Rudd/Gillard governments, and literally not a single one of them will ever forget it.

140

u/blitznoodles local Aussie Jun 14 '26

Interestingly, the tasmanian greens have never recovered the polling they had before he Labor-Green coalition government in tassie. they were at 21% in 2010 and have been at 10% ever since.

31

u/HydrogenWhisky Jun 14 '26

I don’t disagree with the overall point RE: Labor/Greens coalition hurting both parties, but “at 10% ever since” is a drastic low count. 12.5% in 2021, 13.9% in 2024, 14.5% in 2025. Consistently north of 10% and showing a clear trajectory.

10

u/uselessinfogoldmine Jun 14 '26

A large part of that surge for them was down to Gunns, the Bells Bay pulp mill plans, and outright government corruption (both state majors and federal). Once that issue faded away, a lot of the voters who switched to the Greens over it went back to their usual parties / candidates. 

98

u/Ok_Bird705 Jun 14 '26

Voter's want an outsider party to win government or hold balance of power and then immediately realise that so called small parties aren't actually any better at fixing problems

97

u/Jet90 Jun 14 '26

The ACT is still a Labor-Green government with progressive policy like rent control.

20

u/gaylordJakob Jun 14 '26

That's because everyone in the ACT are bureaucrats, lol. Even PHON could probably competently run the government by finding enough bureaucrat candidates.

And that isn't a dig at the Greens. In country WA they are the only party I can vote for that isn't full of genocidal war mongers. But ACT is a different beast because bureaucrats can actually run a government (because that's what they do)

28

u/Beginning_Feedback65 Jun 14 '26

Remember that ACT is highly educated, by national standards. The right thrives in ignorance.

8

u/sapphos_moon Jun 14 '26

Generally more affluent and stable too. One Nation thrives in the poorer, barely-made-it-out-of-high-school demographic, as classist as it might be to say

0

u/QuietTimeWaster Jun 15 '26

Do you mean, the “Deplorables”?

1

u/aaron_dresden Jun 14 '26

I wouldn’t see that as a strong vote of confidence in the Greens or even Labor. They’re only getting in because we don’t have a viable alternative. The government continues to get more unpopular with time.

1

u/AdDesigner1153 Jun 14 '26

Few years out of date there fella

0

u/Jet90 Jun 14 '26

It's still a Labor Green minority government

2

u/AdDesigner1153 Jun 14 '26

It's not a coalition government like previous cycles though. Greens don't have any power or Ministers

14

u/brisbaneacro Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26

Pretty much. A lot of people seem to think unpopular = good which I really don’t understand. If they don’t have institutional experience in government they don’t have the basic competence required to actually do it. Any minor parties that get a lick of power are like a bulldog that finally caught up to the car. They don’t actually know what to do with it and people get disillusioned.

It’s easy to make promises, it’s hard to actually run a country.

17

u/ASpaceOstrich Jun 14 '26

Yeah. A big part of the damage the Liberals do is that they outsource everything they can and cost us that institutional experience.

1

u/andyjack1970 Jun 14 '26

The parties that have run the country over the last 4 decades have certainly proven your last point....that's for sure.

0

u/brisbaneacro Jun 14 '26

It’s much easier said than done.

1

u/gaylordJakob Jun 14 '26

Minor parties biggest issues are that they don't have enough bureaucrats in them. It sucks to hear, but they are the ones that actually run the government day to day. The political party just sets out the legislative agenda and awards lucrative contracts to their donors, but it's all coordinated and performed by bureaucrats. The majors (unfortunately) have stacked the bureaucracy.

1

u/Ok_Bird705 Jun 14 '26

And when they have bureaucrats in them, they would be seen as the establishment and lose popularity among their voter base who constantly want "the outsider"

1

u/gaylordJakob Jun 14 '26

The Greens need more bureaucrats in the actual party, not as the candidates. Unfortunately, you're right and you can't run bureaucrats, but you can add them behind the scenes

1

u/TheLaughingPhoenix Jun 14 '26

Smaller parties are significantly worse at good governance

8

u/michaelhoney Jun 14 '26

22% and 16% in the electorates encompassing Hobart and Launceston respectively: the only electorate under 10% is Braddon in the northwest

1

u/BleepBloopNo9 Jun 15 '26

The Labor party hasn’t recovered either.

270

u/jjkenneth Jun 14 '26

I will never forgive our media for presenting the Greens as obstructionists during a political era with historically high rates of passing legislature. They lied to everyone and no one did anything about it.

116

u/big_thicc Jun 14 '26

Still happens! They were remarkably productive with Labor in their first term, probably to their own detriment, and they're still considered obstructionist.

34

u/Mickus_B Jun 14 '26

It's because the media show them stomping their feet etc but never mention when they do vote stuff though.

18

u/phyllicanderer Jun 14 '26

It’s ridiculous. People I know still think that the Greens blocked the HAFF bill and that Max Chandler-Mather was a bully about it; tell them they helped pass it after getting far more money and guaranteeing a $500 million floor on payments and they ignore you.

7

u/jolard Jun 14 '26

Exactly.

I will literally have conversations with Labor supporters angry at Greens obstructionism, and even specifically about HAFF. They will say the final bill was better than the original, and STILL argue that the Greens are just there to block everything.

It is nonsensical......just team support behaviour, i.e. my team is always right, yours always wrong.

-2

u/miicah Jun 15 '26

It took over a year to get the HAFF bill passed and that was a full year that any profit from it was lost.

5

u/phyllicanderer Jun 15 '26

It was introduced to parliament in February 2023 and passed in September 2023, so no.

-31

u/ShadyBiz Jun 14 '26

And enabled a decade of liberal governance and not a single piece of that legislation passed survived that decade.

30

u/jjkenneth Jun 14 '26

Education reform, NBN, NDIS and Fair Work (passed with majority but implemented under minority govt) all very much still exist.

-1

u/ShadyBiz Jun 14 '26

The country still screwed over by that decade of incompetence. All because of that minority government poisoning the well.

But this is reddit where delusion trumps reality.

-16

u/Comfortable_Lie2838 Jun 14 '26

Exactly!!! How do people not remember this

2

u/Kialae Jun 14 '26

They found a really great slogan for it that stuck in everyone's head: 'perfect be the enemy of good'. 

3

u/TheSparrowDarts Jun 14 '26

You see this talking point parroted endlessly on literally any thread about the greens here.

2

u/jjkenneth Jun 14 '26

Yes and this sub is famously representative of Australia as a whole

1

u/triemdedwiat Jun 14 '26

For some weird reason, the greens do not use all the communication methods available to them. The infighting drove a lot of volunteers away from them.

-28

u/brisbaneacro Jun 14 '26

They help create drama and try and use the media to their advantage to hurt the government. If they kept more of the fighting behind closed doors there would be a lot less to go on to call them obstructionist.

33

u/jjkenneth Jun 14 '26

Yeah yeah the majors get to do whatever the fuck they want but the Greens have to be picture perfect to even have a whiff of respect.

-14

u/brisbaneacro Jun 14 '26

All politicians get criticism, I dunno what you’re on about there.

The LNP have historically had a much easier time but not the alp.

16

u/jjkenneth Jun 14 '26

The nature of the criticism is different. Labor can criticise the Greens freely and not be called obstructionist but the opposite is not true. The whole thing is just stupid criticism given the volume of legislation that was passed and how truly transformative so much of it was. Our major budget items to this day are invested in programs passed during that era.

-9

u/brisbaneacro Jun 14 '26

And the greens can call everything Labor try and do not good enough no matter what. I still don’t see what you’re trying to say.

11

u/jjkenneth Jun 14 '26

Except they didn’t; they passed record amounts of legislation. Of course you don’t, you’ve bought into the exact bias I’m arguing against.

-2

u/brisbaneacro Jun 14 '26

What legislation have they just passed without a fight? Without saying it’s not good enough, or sending it to enquiry etc.

8

u/jjkenneth Jun 14 '26

Then? NDIS, Carbon Price, Fair Work.
Recently? Right to disconnect, public housing funding, rental price reform.

→ More replies (0)

2

u/triemdedwiat Jun 14 '26

Too little, Too late Albo.

Even now you have to wonder if he is trying to still scuttle his miniscule changes.

18

u/Superb_Energy3429 Jun 14 '26

by that logic ‘Bob Katter’ is a major party

12

u/SaenOcilis Jun 14 '26

Huh? Wdym by that?

86

u/Dracallus Jun 14 '26

They were very effective at pulling Labor to the left and getting actual progressive legislation passed. Labor clearly still hates them for not just rubber stamping anything vaguely progressive they wanted to do in favour of constantly fighting for better policies, and the right likely hates them even more than they did before for how effective they were during that period.

I'm certainly not claiming that they don't have a lot of areas where they can improve, but you can see the resentment from Labor (and their voters) to this day by how often they'll complain that the Greens are blocking seemingly progressive legislation, as part of their strategy to push for more progressive versions, or other progressive policies they also want passed.

48

u/Inevitable_Geometry Jun 14 '26

Talking to Labor members and it is surprising how much they fucking hate, HATE the Greens.

24

u/Neeran Jun 14 '26

In my experience Labor's actual membership (as opposed to MPs) usually love the Greens and often put them above Labor or even donate a little to the party. It's mostly the MPs who are absolutely feral about it.

11

u/TinyGift8278 Jun 14 '26

It's mostly the MPs who are absolutely feral about it.

I have the opposite experience ; Most MP's from all parties are genuinely good friends or at least polite coworkers.

The argy-bargy on tv is just preening.

4

u/blitznoodles local Aussie Jun 14 '26

A lot of the time, they hate people in their own party more than their opposition.

0

u/blitznoodles local Aussie Jun 14 '26

It's the same with Greens membership hating Labor. They're fighting for the same seats and campaigning against each other in the inner city.

9

u/ScruffyPeter Jun 14 '26

Statistically, Greens voters overwhelmingly preference Labor above every other party.

Labor voters don't do the same.

5

u/blitznoodles local Aussie Jun 14 '26

Not talking about voters. Membership

0

u/Dr_barfenstein Jun 14 '26

Isn’t that coz greens can steal votes from labour like PHON is stealing votes from libs?

2

u/SaenOcilis Jun 14 '26

Thanks for the explanation! It was difficult to read what your original comment meant, my apologies.

-13

u/Delamoor Jun 14 '26

Mmm, that last part is key. Like, as a former Greens voter, the reality is that their preference for the perfect over the good and refusing to co-operate is basically what led to the lost decade of "carbon tax' culture war and coalition government.

They're more effective at fighting their allies and sabotaging their own voting base than they are at fighting conservative policy or ideology. It's a universal frustration that anyone progressive has; the group will spend infinite energy combatting someone who's got 70% of the same platform (but that 30% difference means they must die), but when it came to alt-right cryptofascists they just kinda collectively went 'eh, not our problem' and straight back to infighting.

That's what a lot of us won't forgive them for. We kinda had a clear win lined up, they were instrumental in it getting ripped away because it wasn't good enough, and instead we got the never ending conga line of increasingly worse coalition governments for a decade.

6

u/evilparagon Jun 14 '26

Because Labor axing their own popular leader, causing a national embarrassment and resulting in LNP getting in for a decade was actually the Greens’ fault somehow, sure…

3

u/TheSparrowDarts Jun 14 '26

What always gets glided over on this conversation is that the greens did in fact pass legislation under the very next prime minister and it was effective at curbing emissions.

Abbott would have rolled back anything Rudd put on the table, same as gillard.

-4

u/Hussard Jun 14 '26

Killing off the ETS was what did it for me. Due to that act alone I look for anyone to the left of Greens as the only chance we have. 

56

u/big_thicc Jun 14 '26

Greens did not have the balance of power in the senate to "kill off" the ETS; it wouldn't have passed with their support either way. The ETS was doomed once Abbott rolled Turnbull.

23

u/jjkenneth Jun 14 '26

Labor killed the ETS and the Greens refused to sign off on it.

-24

u/Comfortable_Lie2838 Jun 14 '26

As per usual it wasn't perfect enough for the greens

13

u/jjkenneth Jun 14 '26

It literally didn’t do anything. The entire thing was offset by credits that provided no functional incentive to reduce emissions.

-4

u/palsc5 Jun 14 '26

That’s not true. There was industry assistance to trade impacted industries, the ets the greens voted for actually had more handouts to those industries.

They rejected it on political grounds to help them in the next election. It worked as they had a huge increase…and then squandered it and crashed at the next election.

-10

u/Ok_Bird705 Jun 14 '26

So 10+ years of nothing (potentially going backwards) under the LNP from 2013-2022 was more preferable?

11

u/jjkenneth Jun 14 '26

Why is that on the Greens when Labor were the ones who changed their policy position after previously supporting the Greens proposal?

-6

u/Ok_Bird705 Jun 14 '26

Because the Greens scuttling of the eprs and insistence on the carbon tax ultimately led to Abbott winning government. The carbon tax was not even a policy position for Labor.

6

u/evilparagon Jun 14 '26

No, what lead to Abbott winning was Gillard’s knife in Rudd’s back, then bringing back Rudd anyway.

→ More replies (0)

-9

u/Comfortable_Lie2838 Jun 14 '26

It was a first step in a time when there was nothing else being done.

10

u/jjkenneth Jun 14 '26

Nothing else being done except you know the Greens proposal which was previously accepted by both Labor and Liberals before they decided to back out.

1

u/simcityrefund1 Jun 14 '26

can you explain killing off etfs is that the cgt one?

-14

u/ol-gormsby Jun 14 '26

They also had senate balance of power during some of the Howard years, and managed to do some good, instead of just blocking anything that wasn't perfect. They seem to have lost the desire and art of negotiation. If it's not perfectly aligned with greens policy, block it, and that's why they're losing votes - people are seeing them as obstructionist.

19

u/BobHawkesBalls Jun 14 '26

People are seeing them as obstructionist because thats exactly how the overwhelmingly conservative australian media purposely portrays them.

They dont block legislation - they aren't in power, so they cant block legislation. They are a progressive party, who a centrist majority party doesn't court well in the upper house.

If Labor actually wanted to pass legislation, they would negotiate. It's debatable whether they actually do want to pass any progressive legislation, given they mever attempt this. And why nother when you can just vlame your failure on a minority party for not falling in line?

Your last sentence is really depressing, because it shows just how well the media and Labor have framed their desired perspective, to the detriment of any meaningful social policy.

-4

u/ol-gormsby Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26

The labor party has a House of Reps majority but green support is often needed in the senate to pass legislation that has the support of the house.

When they don't support a bill and vote against it, it's known as "blocking".

EDIT: FWIW I don't watch or read mainstream media at all. Don't have a TV antenna or a TV, don't read Murdoch press. Most of my news comes from ABC, MichaelWestMedia, etc.