Adam Bandt has a picture of a coal-fired power station on the wall of his Fitzroy office.
The photo was a thank you gift from workers in the La Trobe valley, who the Greens Leader represented during his past life as an industrial relations lawyer. It’s a surprising choice for the leader of a party often dismissed as representing inner city elites out of touch with the blue collar workers in the resources sector. But speaking to Crikey at the end of another week when Australia’s broken, backward climate politics has been on full display, Bandt wants it known that he is not anti-mining.
“I’ve been very clear in saying the best job for a coal miner is another mining job. It’s not that we’ve got to shut down the mining industry, it’s just that we’ve got to get out of coal.”
Instead, Bandt believes mining communities can be at the centre of a just transition toward a renewable economy
“We’re blessed with the minerals that Australia’s going to need to dig up and process in a zero pollution world. Not only for making our batteries, but for making our green steel,” he says.
“Those places … [are] the best places for making green hydrogen and making green steel, and creating new export industries.”
Bandt also wants it known that Queensland is in play for the Greens. Conventional pundit wisdom says words like net zero are politically toxic north of the Tweed. In 2019, the story goes, Labor thought blue collar voters would deliver them marginals in central and north Queensland. Then former Greens leader Bob Brown came along with his Stop Adani convoy, antagonising parochial voters with deep ties to the resources sector, driving an anti-progressive backlash that helped a gleeful Scott Morrison stay in the Lodge.
But with an election looming, Bandt is optimistic about the Greens’ chances in metropolitan Queensland seats like Ryan, Griffith and Brisbane, where the party achieved a positive swing in 2019. He points to the party’s improved performance in the 2020 state election, where it picked up an extra seat, and an ongoing sense of momentum in the state.
This is part of Bandt’s ambitious strategy to become a kingmaker in a potential minority government. On top of Queensland, the party has a list of target seats – one in the NSW Northern Rivers, one in the ACT and five in Melbourne. He believes that should a tight election produce a hung parliament, Australia’s best hopes of aggressive climate action lie in a Coalition where the Greens drag Labor to the left.
It’s an ambitious call for a party which has seen its electoral performance plateau since Bandt won his seat of Melbourne – the party’s only lower house electorate – in 2010. It’s also a plan which makes Labor bristle. Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese has repeatedly ruled out such a coalition.
Despite sharing some progressive values, the relationship between Labor and the Greens has been fraught. Labor says the Greens have the luxury of not walking a tightrope between inner city progressives and mining workers.
Bandt, meanwhile, is critical of the Opposition’s failure to adopt a more ambitious medium-term emissions target for 2030. He also has little time for critics, both among Labor and the press gallery, who pin the blame for Australia’s decade of climate shame on the Greens’ refusal to back Kevin Rudd’s carbon pollution reduction scheme back in 2009, rather than Tony Abbott’s denialist wrecking ball.
“If Labor spent more time talking about what we did in 2010 rather than the one that got away and telling alternative stories about that, we might be closer to climate action in this country,” he says.
He points to the Gillard-Rudd minority government as a time when the two parties worked together to produce Australia’s only successful policy to reduce emissions, the now-repealed carbon tax.
“I’m sick of Labor throwing Julia Gillard under the bus. What was achieved in that Parliament was really, really good.”
Despite being a period of policy productivity, especially compared to the Morrison government’s lack of policy ambition, the Gillard years are remembered by some in Labor and the electorate as an era of acrimony and instability. But on climate, that instability hasn’t changed.
Morrison is headed to Glasgow next week, and so far can’t even commit to a net zero by 2050 target, the bare minimum to save face with allies like the United Kingdom and United States, because his own joint party room won’t agree. Any deal he reaches will likely come with billions in concessions to the Nationals and could include major subsidies to fossil fuel exports which go against the spirit of emissions reduction.
Even before a deal is reached, Bandt says the damage has been done by the decision, essentially made for Morrison by Nationals Leader Barnaby Joyce, not to improve on Australia’s 2030 emissions target. The capture of Parliament by the fossil fuel sector, whose influence is particularly strong among the Nats, has disfigured Australia’s debate on climate.
“We’ve got major parties, Liberal, Labor and National that all take coal and gas donations. Australia has effectively become a petro-state with Russia and Saudi, because politicians have been captured by the coal and gas lobbies.”
The only way Australia’s time as an international climate pariah can end is by removing the Liberals from office, Bandt says. Here, Labor and the Greens agree. And if the only way to do that is through a minority government, Albanese might have to hold his nose and reconsider his promise that Labor will only govern in its own right.
Correction: a previous version of this article said Adam Bandt won the Greens’ first lower house seat. He is the Greens’ second lower house MP.
Frankly, I don’t want Labor governing in its own right if the handful of current policies are an indication of what they have in store for us. At least the Greens have bold ideas to combat climate change & Bandt is speaking common sense about alternatives for coalminers.
Labor has a commitment to a strong federal ICAC & a commitment to inadequate emissions reduction. Apart from that their policies are unclear.
And there in your first paragraph, zut, is our major problem. It doesn’t matter which minor party (or group…independents anyone?) you are talking about, if they are in coalition, they have the power on 4.5% (Nats), or 10% (Greens) to enforce their views on the major party of government…usually one or the other that has a vote in the high 40’s%, 2 party preferred, in a hung parliament. That means that the wishes of the largest number of voters cannot be guaranteed. THAT IS NOT DEMOCRACY. That is a bastardisation of the concept.
At the present time, what we need is one of the parties of government in this country…Labor or Liberal…to have an outright majority of 50+%. If they don’t perform, then turf them out at the next election. The current government is way past its useby date in my opinion…so lets try the other side, using this formula. Of course the major parties need reform…and we desperately need a Federal ICAC…so let’s get on with the job!
It’s not democracy right now, is it? Or do you think, a party representing, what, 8% of the electorate holding us all hostage and basically providing an excuse for a rotten ‘government’ not to do the right thing is democracy?
If the Greens achieve their goal of winning the seats they aim for and convince Labor to work with them and be bold then I’m all for it. Nothing wrong with policies aimed at alleviating the inequality and stopping global heating. If the Greens can convince Labor to form government with them (and why not? if the choice is to govern with the Greens or lose without them…?) and push them towards social democratic, ethical, humane and environmentally sound policies… this surely would be an improvement from the current situation, no?
Australian politics is broken. More of the same (Coalition or ALP) won’t fix it. Let’s try something new. Labor + Greens + some sensible independents doesn’t sound too bad. In general, countries that rely on various parties being able to compromise and work together fare much better than countries like the US and Australia.
But it is NOT democracy…read my comment above to find out why.
Everything you say can be done by a combination of Labor/Greens/Independents in government, can also be done by a MAJORITY Labor government…more quickly and efficiently. I thought this would have been obvious to anyone after the shenanigans going on all this week involving the Libs and the gNats over net zero by 2050!
Nothing about Labor right now indicates that they will do as much of the right thing as is needed. Be it environment, human rights, healthcare, education, inequality, social benefits… They’re not the Coalition, sure, but we need much more than that. Much better than that.
Also, I wouldn’t be holding my breath for a majority Labor government. In fact, it’s a real possibility that Morrison will pull off another ‘miracle’. In which case we’re f*****.
But who cares… as long as Labor stays pure and keeps shifting ever further to the right instead of sitting down with the Greens and work out how they can help each other to help us.
The ALP is so desperate to differentiate itself from the Greens that it’s becoming more and more difficult to pick it from the Coal-ition. It even panders to the same vested interests as the Coalition
Remember that the Nats with 4.5% of the national vote gain 10 seats versus the Greens with 10% and a miserly 1 seat.
Perhaps, democracy is fashioning policy that represents the views of all citizens, not just giving a carte blanche to the majority party and their vested interests?
What you are suggesting will never happen…you can’t please all of the people all of the time!
In any democracy, the best one can hope for is rule by majority vote. Unless you want to live in a one party state or dictatorship?!!
And they have the only housing policy that has a chance to make a difference. The best labor can do is 5000 social houses, over 4 years, less than 2 in every village, town and city in the country. Pathetic!
Shedloads of jobs in rehabilitating coal mine sites, in construction of wind and solar farms on a fraction of various mine sites and in using the rest of the rehabilitated mine sites for forestry – the original and best carbon capture and storage.
With the mine owners paying the coast of the clean up.
Sorry – costs.
Shed loads of jobs re-deploying loggers to clear feral animals and weeds out of our forests.
Bandt needs to explain how he will get the private sector to invest in renewables, given the public sector is reluctant to tax or borrow to raise funds required for connection of solar/wind + pumped hydro storage schemes to the grid, and upgrade of the entire grid itself.
It’s time for Bandt to support a change in our monetary system, ie, authorizing Philip Lowe to issue debt free money to spend on the items above.
The planet will be cooked long before the market – and profit-seeking private investment – can bring about a transition to a green economy.
Despite sharing some progressive values, the relationship between Labor and the Greens has been fraught.
What an understatement!!
“Australia has effectively become a petro-state with Russia and Saudi”, except that they don’t have elections in Saudi Arabia.
or, for all intents and purposes, Russia.
You’re right, we have elections in Australia. Much good does it do us, yes? They’re won with lies and deceit and not with substance. (Apparently god gets involved too.) If we were a 3rd world country we look down our noses at we’d send election observers to observe.