Former Crikey business editor Paddy Manning’s next big thing is a book on the Greens.

It will be published by Black Inc and due out next year. Manning told Crikey it was part history, part biography, part asking the question: is there room in Australia to sustain a third party in the long term?

“It’s a real inflection point for the Greens at the moment — are they a party of protest or a party of government?” he said. It’s an interesting period for the Greens, who weren’t really able to capitalise on the massive backlash against the major parties in the last election.

Manning wrote the cover story in the current issue of The Monthly on the topic — but he reckons there’s plenty more to say. The Greens have a reputation for being less transparent with media than the major parties, so does Manning fear he won’t get the access he needs? “I think they’re used to being ignored — they don’t know how to handle media interest in their own internal politics,” he mused when we asked him about it.

So far though, Manning says he’s getting good access. That will make a change from his last book — his recent biography on Malcolm Turnbull was completed without its star agreeing to an interview. Fingers crossed it’s less legally contentious too — as Crikey wrote last Friday, Liberal donor and businessman John O’Sullivan is suing Manning over three paragraphs in Born to Rule.