Ruby Jones

I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to 7am.

Amid the seismic political shift currently underway in this country, there's been one party missing from the conversation, the Greens.

And it's curious because the conditions which have seen One Nation rise, frustration with the major parties, a slip in living standards, appetite for change, should suit the Greens and their anti-establishment politics.

So why are they lost in the political wilderness?

Today, former Greens MP and Greens Institute CEO Max Chandler-Mather on whether the Greens can mount a comeback and tap into the progressive version of Pauline's populist politics.

It's Wednesday, June 24.

Max, hi.

Hello.

Welcome to the show.

So, Max, since the last election, we've seen support for the major parties collapse and One Nation's popularity rise.

Pauline Hanson, according to some polls, is the preferred prime minister at the moment.

So tell me why you think we're seeing this surge in support for One Nation.

OK, so these two things that are underpinning the situation right now, a lack of trust in the political system and economic instability, people doing it tough...

One nation has clearly been able to speak to these people, but these are concerns that the Greens could have capitalised on to make their own political gains that doesn't seem to be happening at the moment.

So why not?

And one interesting statistic among all of this is millennials.

So One Nation is outpolling the Greens among millennials.

I think it's 18 to 16 percent.

And you're a millennial yourself.

This is a demographic that you spent a lot of your time trying to reach on housing in particular.