Feeling blue about the new Greens

I’ve been a lifelong Greens voter – prior to the latest federal election, that is. I’ve worked in environmental programs for government and the NFP sector, and the Greens’ policies on the environment, supporting minorities, and challenging corporate influence over the political process always resonated with me.

I did not vote for the Greens in the last election. Other than a conspicuous absence of discourse about the environment, their obsessive fixation on Gaza while ignoring every other MENA (Middle East and North Africa) atrocity seemed like religious fervour, not compassion. They actually put up a candidate in the lower house whose response to October 7 was to say, “Hamas was justified in killing everyone and indeed every Israeli civilian deserves to die.” Yikes – not quite sure that’s a reflection of the values I hold dear. You could say I backed away slowly from the Greens this time round.

As the dust settled after the election and a new leader was elected, I crossed my fingers that they would take this opportunity to reevaluate, reset, and become the Greens I once loved again. I’m crossing them extra hard because the early signs are not good. In fact, it’s clear already that no lessons have been so much as taken, let alone learned.

A couple of days after the election, while the count was still ongoing, the Greens posted on their Instagram that they’d received a record number of votes. They didn’t. They suffered a negative swing of almost one point (or around 150,000 votes) in the Senate, with the lower house a little worse off than in 2022. Their posts remain uncorrected, but nitpicking aside, they should have done much better in light of the greatest shift leftwards in decades. People who are unhappy with the government and unimpressed by the opposition tend to look elsewhere, yet the Greens still lost votes. It seems a clear sign of voter rejection; nonetheless, their post-election self-perception seems bullish.

To further cement my view that the Greens are unaware they haven’t resonated with their traditional base, former party leader and my old hero Bob Brown said, “I don’t think they were hardline enough.” This reading of the room comes across a lot like Peter Dutton’s comment after the Liberals’ 2022 defeat: “Under my leadership, the Liberal Party will be true to our values.” It’s a failure to understand that you didn’t lose votes because you weren’t “you” enough – it’s a rejection of what you have become.

But what have the Greens become? What are they talking about post-election? First cab, new leader Larissa Waters said, “I know a lot of wonderful Jewish voters who are backing the Greens because they don’t want genocide either.” Wow. Just wow. I look at Waters’ Instagram to see what she’s saying about the ongoing genocide in Syria (nothing), or Sudan (nothing). Instead, she’s reposting interviews with Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur for Palestine who once said America is “subjugated by the Jewish lobby.” Not the Israeli lobby, the Jewish lobby.

There are posts about Greta Thunberg’s selfie ship. Mm hm. Oh, here’s something about pride. “Whenever Palestinians collectively speak up for their rights, we are bombed by Israel’s colonial army… Palestinian queers do not have the privilege to separate our sexualities from the colonial violence that determines our daily lives.” Other than crowbarring an attack on Israel into a post about pride month, which seems a tad unwarranted, it’s worth noting that Palestinian queers have a tendency to flee to Israel for safety and acceptance. This is, of course, not mentioned. “Happy Eid Al-Adha,” she posts. Nice! Let’s see… Passover… Pesach… Purim. Nope. She did join a rally to “commemorate 77 years since the Nakba” though.

David Shoebridge is the Greens’ new spokesperson for Foreign Affairs, Peace & Nuclear Disarmament. What does he have to say about Iran’s non-compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as reported by the International Atomic Energy Agency? After the US bombed Iran’s very real nuclear facilities, he said, “We are watching the lie of Iraq’s ‘weapons of mass destruction’ repeat itself.” No posts about the treatment of women in Afghanistan, the age of consent lowering to nine in Iraq, the ethno-religious violence in Syria, nor anything about Ukraine, though.

I want to love the Greens again, I really do, but their one-sided selective outrage is suggestive of either ideologically induced blindness or a deep ignorance of the issues they meme post about. “Abolish settler states, liberate Indigenous lands” they repost from the comfort of the Indigenous land they are settlers on, while ceaselessly criticising Jewish settlers and propping up candidates who think civilians deserve to be massacred. I’ve voted for them for 20 years, yet what I see is alien to me now. I don’t see my values reflected in their angry rhetoric, and I wonder if other Greens voters my age have trudged sadly away as well.

As a greenie in his 40s, still faintly hoping for a Greens that rejects extremism, stands up to power, shows compassion for everyone and not just their “allies”, and speaks for a perpetually vulnerable environment that needs a clear, intelligent and persuasive voice, I can only echo the words from other Greens: Party co-founder Drew Hutton (expelled from the party since) says they will broaden their base if they “…lose this terrible way they have of expressing their moral superiority over everyone else.” Ian Cohen, former Greens NSW MLC, says, “We’ve got to be careful not to lose sight of our environmental roots.”

Hear hear, Drew and Ian. Are the new Greens hearing this, too?

Pete Malicki is an Australian playwright, producer and business leader. He is not Jewish.