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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to 7am.
Chapter 2: Why are the Greens missing from the current political conversation?
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.
Chapter 3: What factors are contributing to the rise of One Nation?
Welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
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.
Oh, two things. One, massive increases in financial stress.
Chapter 4: How does financial stress affect political choices?
And it's been occurring since COVID and it's really starting to bite. And I think there is a wild underestimation actually at the moment, just how much financial pain people are in. There's over a million kids in poverty in Australia at the moment.
There are pensioners, single parents making tough choices at the supermarket about whether or not they buy enough food to eat that week or pay the rent. kids going to school without shoes, all sorts of things.
Chapter 5: Why are the Greens not capitalizing on current political concerns?
And in a wealthy country like that, that's unacceptable. And it is starting to bite now into higher and higher income brackets. And that pain is being underestimated by almost the entire political class. And the second feature is people are disconnected from politics.
You know, in the 20th century, you have these large collective institutions like trade unions that represented 50% of the workforce. Trade union densities collapse now to 13%.
Chapter 6: What role does disconnection from politics play in voter behavior?
And people are disconnected from politics in that sense and experience politics as an individual. And so I think there's this void at the moment.
I think One Nation, for a lot of people, are the chance to break with the status quo in some way, to at least start to change things because of the pain they're in, because of the sense of lack of hope that they have in mainstream politics and the sense that, and they're not wrong, the sense that the political class treats them with contempt. And they do.
Chapter 7: How can the Greens engage with disillusioned voters?
There is a real grain of truth in the fact that at the same time as politicians are paid over $200,000 a year, they keep turning around and talking about the fact that we all have to make tough choices. Well, they don't have to choose between feeding their kids and paying the rent. They don't have to give up on hope that their kids will ever be able to buy a home.
They don't have to figure out how they live on a pension that doesn't increase as fast as the cost of things at the moment. So, you know, I think there's that as well. And I think we kind of underestimate how smart people are, ordinary people are, and recognising that a lot of the political class does treat them with contempt and so they are responding in kind.
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?
Well, obviously, we could always do better. I mean, I think it's a broader question about how we think about change. And I've been very clear for a long time that change is not going to come through negotiations with the Labor Party or sort of tinkering around the edges in a broken political system.
And, you know, that might sound a little bit trite, but in really basic terms, in my experience in parliament, the way mainstream politics works is to serve large corporate interests. And certainly that's the role of the Labor Party these days.
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Chapter 8: What lessons can Australian politicians learn from the UK Greens?
And if you... might disagree with that.
It's worth just looking at some basic facts that we've seen massive declines in real wages at the same time we've seen big increases in corporate profits, the same time as the gas industry is making hundreds of billions of dollars, the Labor government would rather they don't increase taxes on them, or at the same time as they decide they're not going to increase the pension or build enough public housing for people to live in or do anything really meaningful to improve people's lives.
So there's that. And I do think we can always do better at articulating that and recognizing that pain. So there's that. I think also there's an organizational question, like for us really to reach people, we do need to be at their doors. We do need to be at their communities at a much bigger scale than we are right now.
And not there to preach or to tell people what to think, but literally just to ask what's going on in their lives and prove that we're an institution and a movement that in the first instance, once their politics dictated and directed by what people say they want changed in their lives. There's that as well.
And then finally, I think there's a lot of work to do to demonstrate that as a political movement, we are in opposition to the political establishment. And I think there's a lot of basic things we can do around. I think collectively, none of us should be flying business class for free. All of us should be giving up a part of their wage to front field meal programs in our communities.
We should be giving up a lot of the perks that come with being a politician and And I think we could do that collectively as a party. And that would be very meaningful for people because that demonstrates, I think, that we're willing to put our money where our mouth is. So all of those things, I think, would go a long way to helping.
And, you know, there's a lot of Greens MPs across the country who do that. But I think it's reasonable that I think anyone in the Greens would recognise right now that we could always do better in the context of a collapsing major parties and a surging One Nation.
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. So why do you think millennials are turning to One Nation and not the Greens?
Well, I think people feel a distinct lack of hope at the moment. I mean, and you know, it's just genuinely understandable. Like if you're a millennial, you have experienced, especially over the last 10 years, massive declines in living standards. Every time house prices go up another percent, that's another loss of hope that you'll ever be able to afford a home.
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