As One Nation surges in the polls, Australia's Greens are struggling to maintain relevance, with internal critics and experts pointing to a failure to connect with voter anger and frustration. Despite a stable primary vote of around 12% in the 2025 federal election, the Greens lost their leader Adam Bandt and rising stars Max Chandler-Mather and Stephen Bates in the lower house, leaving them with just one member there.
Greens vs One Nation: Similar Concerns, Different Approaches
According to Essential Media pollster Peter Lewis, "Greens voters and One Nation voters have similar concerns, but very different policy prognoses." Both parties tap into dissatisfaction with the status quo, but while One Nation has capitalized on this mood, the Greens have flatlined. Associate Professor Jill Sheppard from the Australian National University notes that the Greens are "on stronger ground when they're criticising mainstream politics" but must address key issues like economic management, immigration, health, and education to make headway.
UK Greens leader Zack Polanski warned Australian counterparts at a Victorian Greens campaign conference in May: "Sometimes we rush to hope, we rush to solutions, so we don't quite connect in the same way." Polanski's approach has tripled UK Greens membership and nearly doubled their vote in 10 months. In contrast, Australian Greens leader Larissa Waters acknowledged the need to "meet people where they're at" and "hear their anger, then direct it at the real cause of their pain – the big corporations and billionaires."
Internal Frustration and Calls for Change
Within the party, some remain unconvinced. "We don't cut through," one insider told Guardian Australia. "We have a good message but we don't have good messengers." Another staffer said, "We set small targets and achieve small targets. The membership is tired of small wins." Former Greens senator Lidia Thorpe, who quit the party in 2023, criticized the party's messaging: "They're preaching to the converted, and they'll always stay at that 10% because they just talk to themselves." She added, "Let's face it, the Greens are very white privilege."
The party's post-election autopsy acknowledged that while policies like including dental and mental health care in Medicare were popular, voters weren't aware they were Greens policies. The review also pointed to "minimal media oxygen" and a fragmented audience as barriers.
Max Chandler-Mather and the Greens Institute
Max Chandler-Mather, who lost his seat in 2025, is spearheading a reboot of the Greens Institute, a political thinktank. He aims to research how everyday Australians experience politics and convert disillusionment into action. At a June forum, he proposed using data to identify new target seats, such as working-class Labor seats with high numbers of middle-class renters. Sheppard suggests the Greens could benefit from Chandler-Mather's outside-parliament advice, similar to how major parties use thinktanks to test ideas.
However, some within the party view Chandler-Mather's activism as part of an "outrage machine" that hurt the party's image. Despite this, Sheppard believes the Greens need a charismatic spokesperson outside parliament to strengthen their outsider status, much like Polanski, who leads the UK Greens as a London Assembly member without a parliamentary seat.
The Challenge Ahead
Waters, who has held her Senate seat for nearly 15 years, is described as a "reluctant" leader supported by a "risk-averse" team. The party faces the challenge of convincing voters to believe their message, not just see it as noise. Sheppard notes, "The Greens are a bit stuck because they have had so long around parliament that you start becoming like parliament. Almost by osmosis."
As Polanski's success in the UK shows, connecting with anger and frustration can yield electoral gains. Whether the Australian Greens can adapt remains to be seen, but the urgency is clear: with One Nation surging and the political landscape shifting, the Greens must find a way to break through or risk being left behind.
