Some on the right have jubilantly written off the Greens as a political force because, by a quirk of preferences, they lost three of their four seats in the lower house and failed to win this electorate of Richmond.
The Greens vote was only a fraction less than it was three years ago, and this was quite likely caused by voters scared of Peter Dutton and voting for Labor first.
Dirty tactics
Also, there were well-funded dirty tactics employed against the Greens by vested mining interests. Notwithstanding, the Greens have 11 seats in the Senate and now hold the balance of power on their own.
Albo says the Greens should ‘get out of the way’ and let his government do what it wants.
He won 94 House of Representatives seats and the Coalition a meagre 44, but Labor only won 11 of those seats without preferences. If seats had been allocated on the basis of the share of votes, Labor would have won 52 and the Greens 18.
He would do well to remember that.
Now Senator Larissa Waters has been elected Greens party leader and Mehreen Faruqi her deputy, it’s a whole new ball game.
Larissa is an immensely talented and fearless advocate for the environment and the disadvantaged. She was a lawyer with the Environmental Defenders Office (EDO) and made history as the first woman to ever breastfeed her baby, daughter Alia, on the floor of parliament.
As she said after her election, she wants to see, ‘politics with a heart’. If Albo thinks she’s a pushover, he’d better think again.
Meanwhile, over in the devastated Liberal camp, they too have finally elected a woman to lead the party for the first time.
Sussan Ley is no pushover either. She has shown her capacity to bounce back.
She suffered from appalling sexism when she tried to become an airline pilot after having qualified to be a commercial pilot at 19.
They told her bluntly it wasn’t a woman’s job. Instead, she started a job as an air-traffic controller in her early 20s.
While at work, a male co-worker asked her: ‘How does it feel coming to work every day knowing you are not wanted because you’re a woman?’
Sussan was 23 and the impact made her hide in a cupboard, curl up into a ball and cry. That was in 1984.
It took 80 years for the Liberal Party to elect a woman leader.
Cleaning up the mess
Many women have remarked she’s just there to clean up the mess before a man takes over again when the Liberal Party has a chance of regaining government.
As well as the new leaders, other women are finally making inroads in the federal parliament.
Over half of senators are women and 63 of 150 seats in the House of Representatives are now held by women. Liberal women, as usual, are greatly underrepresented.
So, the question is: How will Albo deal with Larissa Waters and Sussan Ley?
It was disappointing to see Albo attacking the Greens so soon after his huge victory. He was biting the hand that fed him after so many of his colleagues were elected on Greens preferences.
Bob Brown and other Greens, appalled by his behaviour, are now advocating for an open preference ticket at the next federal election rather than automatically recommending preferences to Labor.
That would threaten Labor’s majority next time.
It’s very unlikely the Coalition, despite Sussan Ley’s best efforts, will get close to winning the next election. It would be a Herculean task to claw back nearly 40 seats.
Hopefully the newly beefed-up Labor government won’t be so timid making much-needed reforms, now that it seems safe for at least six years.
Many people, not just Greens, are calling for much swifter action on inequality, on lifting the JobSeeker allowance to at least the poverty level so those unable to work can both pay rent and buy food.
Public housing need
There’s an urgent need for faster action on public housing that has been neglected for decades.
The Greens squeezed an extra $3 billion for housing out of a reluctant government and were then pilloried for ‘blocking’ the inadequate Labor housing bill for a few months.
There’s also a vital need to accelerate the path to Net Zero.
Will the government listen to the pleas of people in need or stubbornly continue down its current conservative path? So far it appears it will be slow business as usual.
Depending how Sussan Ley operates, and harnesses her colleagues in the Senate to resist any overreach of the government, Albo may not have an easy ride.
If Sussan Ley chooses to work with the Greens, the unlikely allies could make a real difference.
Albo would be well advised to regard the Greens as partners, otherwise he risks driving them into the arms of Sussan Ley and her colleagues.
♦ Richard Jones is a former NSW MLC and is now a ceramicist.
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