I fear I'm at risk of developing a reputation as a killjoy. I don't enjoy writing articles criticising the Greens. But the party is still in a bit of a funk after some disappointing election results, and consequently, a lot of decision-makers seem to have lost their long-term strategic perspective, and are settling for whatever feels good in the moment. Lately, the Greens have been putting significant organising capacity towards a single-issue campaign for stronger taxation of gas exports. MPs (and branches) are organising political education events about it, pushing the PM on it in Question Time, and sending out emails encouraging supporters to sign petitions and put up 'tax gas exports' signs on their fences. I'm sure they're getting lots of positive feedback for doing so. Opinion polling suggests a 25% tax on gas exports now has majority support among Australian voters. The proposal has partially escaped containment, travelling far beyond the political nerds who usually pay close attention to federal tax policy debates. For many voters, the sweetheart arrangement gas exporters currently benefit from is serving as a straightforward exemplar of how the political establishment prioritises corporate profits ahead of the general public interest. So Greens campaigners who've had tough slogs doorknocking in elections or pushing more controversial issues are undoubtedly getting a buzz from feeling like most people are on their side for once. > View this post on Instagram > > A post shared by Steph Hodgins-May (@stephhodginsmay) Morale is important. If you want volunteers to keep showing up, political campaigning needs to feel fun – and like you're getting somewhere. But it's also important for political organisations to respect their supporters' intelligence and direct their energy effectively, articulating demands that broaden the parameters of debate, rather than only offering ideas that are palatable to those who wish to maintain the status quo. So I'm sorry if I sound like a party pooper, but in 2026, **taxing gas exports just isn't a bold or transformative enough demand to be worth the amount of energy the Greens are currently investing in it.** While the party has been pushing for the wider fossil fuel industry to pay higher royalties and taxes for years, the specific idea of a 25% tax on gas exports now has the backing of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, the Australia Institute, a range of independent and minor party politicians, and a cohort of high-profile social media influencers with massive reach. It's also most popular with male voters and older voters – demographics that the Greens have a harder time achieving cut-through with. I suspect the strong nativist arguments advanced by the likes of Konrad Benjamin of Punter's Politics might have something to do with this, but it's hard to say for sure. Is it possible that a lot of the people most excited about a gas tax don't care much at all about climate change, and just really resent the idea that Australia is giving away '_our'_ gas to '_foreign_ -owned companies' when domestic gas prices are so high? Polling from May 2026 commissioned by the Australia Institute appears to show the gas exports tax is substantially more popular among men than women Targeted seat polling seems to confirm that upper-middle-class voters – the kinds of people who are more inclined towards centrist reformism than radical change – are more likely to be excited about a gas export tax. This makes sense because at the end of the day, the proposal represents a modest reform to the established order, not a break with it. The continued extraction and burning of fossil fuels is having devastating impacts on the planet's climate. So it's worth asking why the Australian Greens are muddying the water with focussed campaigning on a gas export tax, when the science is very clear we need to end gas exports ASAP, and even the party's own policy platform calls for reducing gas exports to zero. At this point, debates about taxing gas feel a little like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic ## Free childcare and great teeth on a burning planet Over the past decade, the Greens have rightly shifted to emphasising positive aspects of the party's broader vision, highlighting that a more sustainable future doesn't have to involve deprivation and scarcity. The annual revenue from a 25% gas export tax – estimated at $17 billion – would be enough to pay for all Australians to receive free dental care or free tertiary education (but probably not both). But the social democratic vision of universal free education, childcare, healthcare (including free dental and mental health) etc. is really only a positive one if coupled with serious climate action. Ensuring young Aussies can graduate without HECS debt seems almost trivial when global warming is leading to acute food shortages, mass displacement of refugees and increasingly severe climate disasters. I don't want to downplay all the good stuff you could do with those billions of dollars. But when you think globally, the harm of extracting and exporting all that gas far exceeds any good that can come of the money (even assuming the government w _ouldn't_ just spend it on military killing machines and tech industry handouts, which seems more likely based on Albo's current demonstrated priorities). Consider the role Australia currently plays in international debates about climate action... When one of the world's wealthiest per capita nations says, "we can't afford to take serious climate action by ending fossil fuel exports – we need the revenue to provide for our citizens" that's _deeply_ damaging to global attempts to negotiate the rapid phase-out of fossil fuels we urgently require. Australia is now the world's second largest coal exporter and third largest LNG exporter. The harm from our huge fossil fuel exports is twofold – the carbon emissions from the fuel itself _and_ the wider political damage we do to global climate negotiations by refusing to end exports despite our national prosperity. Yes, taxing fossil fuel exports for a decade or so would provide revenue that Australia could – in theory – use to retrain workers, build renewable energy and fund other aspects of a just transition. That was a good idea when the Greens started pushing it 15 or 20 years ago. But it's 2026 now – we don't have decades to spare. Every year of additional gas exports contributes to more environmental damage than we could ever hope to compensate or mitigate via the extra tax revenue. Imagine saying "well yes we would've _liked_ to take serious climate action by ending gas exports, but we needed the money for free childcare" to a group of Nepalis or Haitians or Tuvaluans on the receiving end of global warming's most acute impacts. When right-wing parties (including Labor) are acting as though gas exports will continue for decades, and centrist independents are calling for higher taxes _without_ mentioning climate change, someone needs to be brave enough to argue for _ending_ __ gas exports as soon as possible – that responsibility falls to the Greens. ## Does a gas tax at least make it _easier_ to _end_ fossil fuel exports? While gas tax advocates frequently point to Norway's huge sovereign wealth fund as an example of how Australia should be reinvesting fossil fuel revenue, Norway's long-running approach of aggressively taxing oil and gas exports has not supported an urgently-needed contraction of the country's fossil fuel industry. Domestically, Norway is investing significantly in a renewable energy transition, but it also continues to issue new licenses for fossil fuel extraction projects. Norway's export volumes for crude oil and oil products have increased steadily in recent years (even before the Russia-Ukraine war). Crude oil production is now 200 000 TJ _higher_ than a decade ago. Gas exports have followed a similar pattern. The country's fossil fuel industry _might_ have grown faster if not for the high tax regime, but the key point is that _it's still growing_. Examples like Norway make me question the accepted wisdom within parts of the climate movement that making fossil fuel companies pay higher taxes and royalties to reduce their profit margins is a helpful intermediary step towards phasing them out altogether. Australia's recent political history reinforces this scepticism: the states whose budgets depend most heavily on revenue from mining also consistently advocate most assertively against stronger environmental laws that would restrict new fossil fuel projects. When governments become dependent on coal, gas or oil tax revenue to fund essential services, it can become politically harder, not easier, to phase out fossil fuels altogether. It's reasonable to conclude a stronger tax regime _might_ help slow the g _rowth_ of Australia's gas industry and make some marginally-profitable future gas extraction projects unviable. But even the Greens' additional comments on the senate committee report seem to acknowledge that a 25% export tax is too modest to actually shrink the industry. We have no evidence the gas export tax proposals currently being pushed by the ACTU, the Australia Institute and others would actually contribute usefully to a phase-out. In fact, they seem to presume exports would continue for at least the next decade. While a gas tax doesn't necessarily get us much closer to _banning_ fossil fuel exports, I could at least understand the Greens focusing on this issue if it was an obvious vote-winner. But even that doesn't seem to be the case... ## The Greens aren't winning votes by campaigning for a gas tax While a gas exports tax is broadly popular, there's currently no opinion polling or research suggesting Greens messaging on the issue is translating to meaningful growth in the party's vote share. David Pocock and other independent MPs are getting more coverage on the issue than the Greens, leading some voters who are concerned about it to swing to teal candidates first. And the dry technicalities of tax policy coupled with short public attention spans mean even parties like One Nation can say "yes, yes we also support taxing gas exports" and pick up disaffected voters while announcing policies that are actually way friendlier to the gas industry. Many Australians who support the general principle of taxing gas exports don't understand all the details, meaning even pro-fossil fuel parties can get away with policies that __sound__ like they'll address the problem Highlighting the major parties' favourable treatment of the gas industry certainly has an electoral impact in terms of reinforcing a more general anti-establishment sentiment. But rising anti-government resentment doesn't automatically increase the Greens vote when many voters see the party as part of the political establishment. Cul de sac politics: Have the Australian Greens hit a strategic dead-end?Why aren’t the Greens offering a stronger challenge to the political establishment?Jonathan SriranganathanJonathan Sriranganathan We perhaps saw evidence of this in the recent WA by-election for Secret Harbour. Gas exports weren't the _top_ issue in the electorate, but if Labor's decision to run a gas industry lobbyist angered some voters, that doesn't appear to have translated to any growth in support for the Greens. > View this post on Instagram > > A post shared by The Last Place on Earth (@last.place.on.earth) Perhaps another part of the problem is that while taxing gas exports _is_ widely popular, it's simply not the defining issue that swings people's votes in the way that a direct cost-of-living measure on housing or healthcare might be. "Do you think Albanese should implement a gas tax?" can yield a very different answer to the question "Does Albanese's failure to implement a gas tax mean you'll start voting Greens?" So the Greens are pushing for a policy reform that seems unlikely to win them many votes, and even if it were implemented, might complicate rather than hasten the move towards an outright ban on fossil fuel exports. Is this doing more harm than good by lowering people's expectations of what's possible? ## Narrowing the parameters of debate The tax gas exports demand presumes the continued existence of massive corporations that mine non-renewable resources (which they don't own) to sell them for a profit, while seeking every possible loophole to avoid environmental protections. There's no mention of nationalising these companies or converting them into worker-owned cooperatives. The political vision it sketches out is nowhere near as transformational or inspiring as imagining a world _without_ big profit-driven gas corporations. Fully Automated Luxury ColonialismGreen policies which are predicated on the continued non-consensual mining of Aboriginal land aren’t actually very green when you think about itJonathan SriranganathanJonathan Sriranganathan But even more concerningly, it arguably normalises the idea that we _need_ to continue exporting fossil fuel resources if we want decent public services like free TAFE and uni. If your message is "make uni free – tax gas exports" you're diverting attention from other potential revenue sources (e.g. taxing/seizing the _existing_ wealth of the mega-rich) that could easily fund free tertiary education even if fossil fuels were banned tomorrow. With time running out to end fossil fuel extraction and avoid major climate tipping points, this feels like a political dead end. Are the Greens suggesting Australia would tax gas exports for another 5 years – say until 2031 – and _then_ rapidly phase them out just when the federal Treasury is becoming accustomed to the extra tax revenue? Treating gas as though it's just another export commodity, rather than a fossil fuel that will cook the planet if we keep extracting and burning it, completely sidelines climate change from the conversation. But if you _don't_ focus on climate change as the strongest argument for making gas exports unprofitable, you end up mired in endless, inane arguments about how much tax you can extract without triggering capital flight and job cuts. The most prominent gas export tax advocates – David Pocock and Konrad Benjamin included – frequently use language that's calculated to stoke and appeal to nationalist sentiment, but rarely mention global warming at all when discussing the issue. This inadvertently serves the right-wing narrative that Australia must double down on its status as a petrocracy to guarantee its own citizens a good life, regardless of the global environmental impacts. If other major players behind the campaign had centred climate change in the discussion, and were clearly framing the 25% tax as an interim step towards banning gas exports, they would at least be educating their thousands of supporters about the urgent need to phase out fossil fuels. But they're presenting it as a revenue-raising measure, which means that even if phasing out fossil fuels _is_ their secret aim, they're not shifting more voters towards supporting that goal. If we'd starting properly taxing gas exports to fund a just transition away from fossil fuels back in 2005 or 2010, Australia would be in a much better position today. But that opportunity to capture tax revenue as we gradually phase out the industry has now closed. Fossil fuel exports must end as soon as possible, and the money needed to retrain workers for other industries, rehabilitate damaged landscapes, and fund investment in renewables will have to come from other sources. I'm not suggesting "end gas exports now" is necessarily a vote-winning message for the Greens. But "tax gas exports now" isn't either. So the party might as well embrace the most important role it currently plays in Australia's political landscape – broadening the parameters of political debate. For the Greens, making the environmental case for why a tax doesn't go far enough and why we need to rapidly phase out gas exports altogether offers several benefits: 1. It differentiates the Greens from the many other political forces calling for more moderate incremental tax reforms, and plays to the party's strengths by re-centering debates about the future of fossil fuels around climate change. 2. It will give Greens MPs more negotiating leverage if Labor _does_ end up moving on this issue and requires Greens support in the senate. 3. It helps delegitimise the gas export industry, forcing fossil fuel propagandists to work harder to defend their social license, which in turn makes concessions such as stronger taxation more likely. If you're pessimistically assuming there's no chance of banning gas exports in the next 5 to 10 years, and taking the view that we might as well try to tax them for now, arguing for an immediate phase-out is still the more powerful political position. The Greens certainly don't need to _oppose_ higher taxes on fossil fuel exports, but progressive forces will win the argument for a gas export tax sooner if the largest political party to Labor's left consistently insists on an outright ban. ## Some alternatives for the Greens to focus on A lot of Greens campaigners rightly want to be doing _something_ right now beyond waiting for the next election, and it's easier to build momentum when campaigning on an issue that already resonates with large segments of the public. So here's a quick brain dump of other ongoing struggles the party could focus on that have greater potential to swing votes, build supporter capacity _and_ win some unequivocally positive material changes... **Stand against artificial intelligence** : the party has a strong point of difference from Labor, Liberal, One Nation and the teals on this front and some Greens reps are already achieving cut-through in this space. A full-throated 'boycott AI' campaign could tap into numerous emerging concerns, from disinformation, deep fakes and algorithmic manipulation of public opinion, to the environmental and urban planning impacts of data centres, to intrusive AI-enabled surveillance, policing and automated warfare, to automation-driven job losses and worker precarity, to AI slop proliferation and its threat to the arts. Crucially, a campaign against AI can offer supporters more meaningful, tangible steps to take – reducing their own reliance on AI and refusing its incorporation into their workplaces, schools and universities – rather than just signing petitions and sending emails to disinterested politicians, which is mostly what the tax gas campaign seems to be doing. **Renters rights now** : regardless of what happens to Australian property prices over the next few years, it's likely millions of renters will continue struggling with high rents and poor housing conditions. For people on lower incomes, rent remains the _biggest_ cost of living stress, and high rents are also a major contributor to rising inflation. Max Chandler-Mather demonstrated that thousands of people across the country are willing to mobilise around housing justice campaigns (which is why the establishment attacked him so relentlessly). So why not double-down on earlier campaigning for a rent freeze, or even go a step further and demand government-mandated rent _cuts_ alongside stronger protections against unfair evictions? Improving rental affordability is a more effective vote-swinger than almost any other policy goal the Greens have been highlighting in recent years. Rental precarity won't go away anytime soon, and unlike the gas tax campaign, it's an issue the party can own without fearing the teals will take all the credit. **A fairer migration system** : a huge and growing cohort of voters (perhaps as many as three or four million) have close relatives living overseas, many of whom currently struggle to secure visas to enter the country (whether that's tourist visas for short-term visits or family reunion visas so that working-age citizens can resettle elderly parents here). The Greens have historically struggled to connect with these new migrant cohorts, but the rise of One Nation and the major parties' rightward drift on immigration policy means many of these voters are looking for a political home. The Greens could stand more firmly against anti-immigration rhetoric and lean into a message of racial justice and fair process, critiquing the long wait-times, high fees and low visa approval rates that many families grapple with. A 'fair go for migrants' campaign would offer progressive voters who are concerned about One Nation's rise a clear point of difference from Labor (whose current response to One Nation is to further tighten an immigration system that's already among the world's strictest). Such a campaign could form part of a deeper reorientation for the Greens towards being widely recognised as _the_ anti-racist, anti-imperialist party in Australia. Tens of thousands of Australian citizens are members of Facebook groups like this one - visa hassles are a significant, material concern for a massive cohort of non-Anglo voters who the Greens often struggle to connect with I could list numerous other issues – from domestic violence to disability justice – that the Greens could be putting resources into campaigning on. I'm sure party MPs are receiving enough positive feedback about the gas tax campaign from highly engaged centrists that it superficially _feels_ like they're onto a winner. But a deeper strategic analysis of what policy demands resonate with the most marginalised members of society, and actually move us closer to the kind of world we want to live in, might lead to very different conclusions about where the party should focus its energy. The world is already burning, and we're running out of time to turn things around. Fossil fuels are destroying the planet, so the right move for the Greens is to call for gas exports to stop, and argue the case for that position. Anything else is just hot air. _If you value critically reflective political commentary like this, please support my writing by signing up for a monthly subscription._ Subscribe _And if you live in Brisbane,_ come along to our next free community event!

The Brisbane Olympics isn’t ‘on the horizon.’ It has swallowed our horizon. But a mega-event which is controlled entirely by humans is only inevitable if the majority of us in the host region continue to think and act as though it’s inevitable. Saying “well the Olympics is definitely going to happen so there’s no point arguing about it” is not, in and of itself, a logical argument against Queensland withdrawing from its host city agreement with the International Olympic Committee (the IOC). I'm less interested in debating what our politicians are most likely to do – I want an intelligent conversation about what they _should_ do. There may well be cogent arguments in favour of hosting, but simplistically declaring “the decision has been made and can’t be reversed” is a lie, and shouldn’t be the end of the conversation. Ordinarily, summer Olympic hosts are only locked in 7 years in advance. So the IOC still has time to find a replacement (not that I think that’s our problem anyway). Pulling out of the contract would be controversial, but it's not impossible. The key question is simply whether the costs of doing so outweigh the benefits. In the lead-up to the 2024 state election, both the major parties understood how unpopular a big-budget Olympics was, and repeatedly promised they _wouldn’t_ spend billions on new venues – a promise which Premier David Crisafulli broke within six months. > The latest independent estimates suggest it will cost the Queensland government at least $20 billion to host the Olympics. Some major costs, like security, are extremely difficult to predict this far out. So we're most likely looking at a $20 billion _loss_ _after_ you factor in all the anticipated revenue from ticket sales and private sponsorship, and assuming South-East Queensland _won’t_ be affected by further major climate disasters (such as floods or heatwaves) over the next 6 years that would slow construction and drive costs up further. Interestingly, researchers from Oxford University have found that despite IOC commentary about wanting to encourage reuse of existing venues and support host cities to run more financially restrained games, recent summer and winter Olympics – including Paris 2024 – have experienced significant cost overruns. The projected losses would be even bigger except the Liberal National Party is also currently selling off a couple billion dollars’ worth of public assets – predominantly large inner-city blocks of land that would otherwise have been used either for parkland or low-cost housing. Those land assets are strategically important for a growing city and would have continued _appreciating_ in value, but the financial dunces of the Liberal National Party are offloading them to help fund construction of 30-year-lifespan stadiums that will _depreciate_ quickly. One of the early arguments for hosting – that Queensland would use the Olympics to leverage greater federal investment in regional infrastructure – has proved to be spurious. SEQ isn’t getting any new federal government funding for public transport projects, time-sensitive bridge reconstruction or public space improvements as a result of taking on the Olympics burden. Importantly, that conservative $20 billion figure is only the direct cost to government. It does _not_ include all the negative flow-on impacts of white elephant mega-projects and major event hosting, including: * over-inflated rents and accelerated conversion of homes into short-stay accommodation leading to rising homelessness and tighter household budgets * mass surveillance and widespread suppression of residents’ civil liberties * rising construction and building maintenance costs for individuals and businesses due to spiking demand for labour, materials and equipment * deferring and deprioritising crucial public projects that aren’t directly games-related * significant loss of trees and green spaces, the value of which can’t be fully quantified in dollar terms, and certainly isn’t included on Olympics balance sheets * the broader environmental harms such as higher fossil fuel emissions and consumption of non-renewable resources, none of which the LNP government is even pretending to attempt to offset. Thousands of Brissie homes have been converted to Airbnbs – Why did the council backflip on regulating them?As the rest of the world cracks down on short-stay rentals, Brisbane just opened the floodgatesJonathan SriranganathanJonathan Sriranganathan Decades of slick marketing have convinced most of us that the Olympics is primarily a sporting event. In reality, it’s a transnational profit-driven business juggernaut with some sport tacked onto the side. It’s no coincidence that from the outset, some of the loudest advocates of a Brisbane Olympics were property developers, and that multiple members of Brisbane’s Games Independent Infrastructure and Coordination Authority (GIICA) board have a background in property. Plenty of large corporations – construction and development companies, major tourism and events businesses, security and surveillance contractors etc. will take huge profits from a Brisbane Olympics (_if_ we proceed). Hosting will undeniably deliver some wider benefits, but they’ll be unevenly distributed, and for most of us, the costs and negative impacts will far outweigh the positives. Remember, the International Olympics Committee stitches up its own global sponsorship arrangements for the most lucrative elements of the games. It’s not like boutique locally-brewed beers are going to be served at Olympics venues – the IOC has already signed an exclusive supplier deal with AB InBev, the company that owns Corona. The same is true for many of the most profitable event-related services that Queensland businesses might have imagined cashing in on. Water-muddying arguments about job creation also shouldn't be over-stated. Of course if a government spends billions of dollars on _anything_ , it’s going to create a lot of jobs. But I’d much rather see jobs created building public housing, DV shelters, hospital wards, school classrooms, transport infrastructure or _local_ facilities for community sport and recreation, rather than massive stadiums used primarily to generate profits for gambling companies and other big corporations. Right now, the crucial question we should all be asking is: how much would it cost Queensland to pull out of hosting, and how does that compare to the likely costs and consequences if we proceed? The closer we get to 2032, the more expensive pulling out becomes. There will come a point in the next few years – probably around 2029 - where the costs to government of compensating the private sector and the IOC for cancelling signed contracts would exceed the costs of proceeding. But we’re not there yet. Many of the games-related contracts that would be most expensive to renege on haven’t yet been finalised. So much has changed in the world since early 2020 when Brisbane’s LNP-led council entered the _only_ serious bid for the 2032 Olympics. From increasing risks of pandemics and climate disasters, to emerging technologies creating novel security threats, to new global conflicts which will continue causing supply chain impacts to everything from fuel to food. Oxford University research suggests that Olympic host cities __always__ experience massive cost overruns Our host city contract with the IOC leaves us heavily exposed to global upheaval. Unforeseen price spikes and cost overruns are all born by Queensland taxpayers, as are shortfalls in anticipated revenue. Even the IOC’s comparatively modest financial contribution to Brisbane 2032 (which, by the way, is hundreds of millions of dollars less than LA is receiving for the 2028 Olympics) is contingent on the IOC successfully securing lucrative sponsorship and broadcasting rights deals. So if American networks aren’t willing to pay as much as the IOC hopes, Queenslanders wear the loss. Section 9(d) of the host city agreement specifies that even the IOC's main financial contribution of just $898m (USD) can be reduced at their discretion if broadcasters won't or can't afford to pay as much for the Olympics as they used to All I’m saying is that we should at least be asking the question: How much would it actually cost Queenslanders to tell the IOC to find another host? The push-ahead-at-all-costs crowd will of course raise the spectre of “damage to Brisbane’s international reputation.” But most people around the world would grudgingly respect a city that made the tough but responsible financial decision to pull out of such a bad deal. Undeniably, withdrawing will likely impact Queensland’s ability to attract other major international events in the next few years. But given that most mega-events are loss-making propositions for the public purse anyway, the value of those hypothetical future missed opportunities is negligible compared to the $20 billion+ cost of proceeding. The reputational damage to the IOC would be far greater. So if Queensland signals that it’s seriously considering withdrawing from hosting, that would at least give us more negotiating leverage to extract greater financial support and contract delivery flexibility. I’m not claiming the games will be an all-out disaster. If the two major parties proceed with what’s essentially becoming a blank-cheque approach, Brisbane 2032 may well prove to be a vibrant, well-attended event that raises the city’s international reputation and showcases some inspiring moments of athleticism and international camaraderie. It’s the rest of the state that’ll suffer: Public transport and public housing projects that go unfunded... Hospital and school upgrades that never get past the drawing board... Widespread environmental destruction... Rising homelessness... Deep, compounding harm to relationships with First Nations people... Cuts to a thousand smaller government services and programs that had tangible positive impacts on people's lives, but whose disappearance won't even make the news... For the Queensland government, one of the deeper negative impacts of pushing ahead will be entrenching the resentment and distrust of a large proportion of the state’s population. I’m talking about the millions of Queenslanders – particularly in rural areas and in South-East Queensland’s poorer, under-serviced sprawling outer-suburbs – who are under increasing financial stress, never _wanted_ us to host, and rightly recognise that their pro-Olympics leaders are prioritising big business ahead of homeless Queenslanders sleeping in cars and severely ill hospital patients who can’t access decent healthcare. As someone who’s deeply critical of nation-states and hierarchical capitalist governments, I’m not especially concerned that the LNP’s pro-Olympics bloody-mindedness will further corrode public faith in centralised government. But I’m mindful that grievances arising from feeling disillusioned and neglected can be weaponised by fascist reactionaries in ways that will ultimately harm all of us, with lasting consequences long after the 2032 economic sugar-hit has evaporated. As resentment grows, the LNP may well try to blame Labor for signing us up to host (which is an audacious lie given that the LNP-led Brisbane City Council initiated and drove the bid, securing support from Liberal Prime Minister Scott Morrison long before Queensland Labor got on board). But the LNP still has the power to withdraw from the host agreement. Responsibility for not doing so will rest primarily with Premier Crisafulli and Lord Mayor Schrinner, and perhaps also the federal Labor government who are enabling this madness by giving Queensland several billion dollars of funding for venue construction. Despite this, I don't foresee any direct electoral repercussions for the major parties on this front unless other political actors take a more assertive anti-Olympics position. At the very least, we must insist on a cool-headed analysis that focuses on the public interest (including environmental sustainability) as distinct from corporate sector interests. Fool’s gold: Have the QLD Greens picked the wrong lane for the Olympics?Maybe in a post-capitalist utopia, a harmless Olympics is possible, but the IOC host city agreement demands destructive consumerismJonathan SriranganathanJonathan Sriranganathan One of the stranger, more perverse impacts of Brisbane 2032 is that it requires its evangelists to deny the reality of what the world will look like 6 years from now. Other governments will be spending billions transitioning from fossil fuels to renewables, relocating entire neighbourhoods in anticipation of rising seas and more frequent coastal storm surges, and maximising the reliability of water and food supplies for a future of more severe droughts and famines. Meanwhile Queensland will be expending its finite resources to build stadiums. If we don’t want to pull out altogether, the least we can do is revert to the original proposal – a financially conservative, low-impact games that utilises existing venues, prioritising environmental sustainability and the interests of Queensland residents ahead of corporate profits. But right now, my vote would be to cancel Brisbane 2032 and tell the IOC to find some other sucker to exploit. _Thanks for reading. I would write stuff like this more often if more people subscribed to support me to do so._ _If you don't want to live in a world where literally everything you ever read is produced by AI slop machines regurgitating unoriginal ideas, now is a good time to chuck a couple bucks towards some independent _human_ writers..._ Subscribe Brisbane should redefine itself as a forest cityOne of Brisbane’s greatest assets and differentiators from other cities is our abundance of wildlife, vegetation and intact urban waterways. If we need an identity to celebrate, maybe we should embrace being a ‘forest city’?Jonathan SriranganathanJonathan SriranganathanThe future of Barrambin/Victoria Park: Stadiums or koalas?What if we re-imagined Barrambin as a space of ecological restoration, rather than cramming more stuff into it?Jonathan SriranganathanJonathan SriranganathanCourt challenges alone won’t save Barrambin, but could the Save Victoria Park campaign find a radical edge?Is being ‘anti-stadium’ but ‘pro-Olympics’ really the best strategy?Jonathan SriranganathanJonathan Sriranganathan

One of the stranger sideshows of this year’s federal budget was Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner announcing that Brisbane City Council is abandoning very minor reforms to regulate short-stay rentals ('SSRs') listed on platforms like Airbnb, and trying to blame it on Labor’s proposed changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax discounts. Given the rising number of Brisbane homes being converted into SSRs, the mayor’s questionable justification for his backflip didn’t attract the level of media scrutiny it deserved, particularly given that Airbnb is a top-tier Olympics sponsor. The housing crisis is even worse than it was in June 2022 when Schrinner first conceded he was concerned about investors switching to short-stay rentals, saying "we want them to put those properties back into the rental market for long-term use." Dozens of councils around Australia – from larger cities and towns to smaller coastal villages – have been introducing higher fees and tighter regulations for investment properties that are used as entire-home SSRs (as distinct from residential homes that are only temporarily listed on Airbnb when the residents leave on holidays). Byron Shire Council’s reasonably strict rules prevent investors renting out any property via platforms like Airbnb for more than 60 days per year (except in two specific beachside sub-precincts within Byron Bay and Brunswick Heads), while Sydney City Council is investigating banning Airbnbs altogether. Noosa Council (150km north of Brisbane) has one of Queensland’s tightest regimes, charging both higher rates (100% higher than residential rental) _and_ annual permit fees. The extra council fees and rates to operate an Airbnb rather than a long-term rental average around $3000 per year (depending on the property’s value). Crucially, Noosa doesn’t automatically approve or renew short-stay letting permits, and seems genuinely concerned about the amenity impacts on residential neighbours. Noosa's council is much more transparent than Brisbane's, routinely publishing details about the spread and impact of short-stay rentals The backlash and crackdown has been far stronger in many other parts of the world. New York has effectively banned whole-of-property short-stay rentals, as have numerous European and Asian jurisdictions. When other cities are taking both the housing market and neighbourhood amenity impacts of short-stay rentals more seriously, Brisbane’s sluggish response highlights that the LNP remain resistant to any policy change that could put downward pressure on property values. Before the 2024 council election, they showed promising signs of a shift on this front, but that’s all changed again as the Olympics approaches. ## Backing away from doing the bare minimum In 2022, under pressure from the Greens, and amid rising complaints from inner-city apartment residents about their buildings feeling like party hotels, the LNP-led council introduced a new ratings category – Transitory Accommodation – which charged 50% higher rates for residential houses and apartments rented out on platforms like Airbnb and Stayz on an ongoing basis. Reports suggested this only represented an average rates increase of around $600 per year – hardly enough to deter hosts who charge hundreds of dollars _per night_. But treating these properties differently from residential homes was at least a small positive step. In 2023, BCC quietly added another rates category – Owner Occupied with Guest Accommodation (see my extra comment below this article regarding the vague definition of this ratings category) – to cover situations where an owner lives on-site but rents part of their property (like a granny flat or guest wing) to short-stay guests. At the time, this rates category was a nominal 15% higher than the standard owner-occupier ratings category. The council has been gradually ratcheting up both these categories without drawing attention to it (in the 2026/27 rates resolution, rates for Transitory Accommodation properties are 70% higher than rates for residential rentals, and Owner Occupied with Guest Accommodation properties pay 20% higher rates than other owner-occupied homes. BCC also established a ‘Short Stay Accommodation Taskforce’ to investigate the impact of platforms like Airbnb and Stayz on housing supply and neighbour amenity. Unsurprisingly, the taskforce's June 2024 report was heavily shaped by whose voices it did and didn't listen to. The list of 36 stakeholders (p. 90 of the report) is dominated by property industry lobby groups and private corporations who directly profit from SSRs and/or have a general interest in residential property values continuing to rise. In 2024 the taskforce recommended a permit system rather than a ban or punitively high rates, and the administration drafted a new local law to create a registration framework for short-stay rentals. This included requiring owners to hold public liability insurance and provide BCC a 24/7 phone number for property-related complaints. While these don’t seem like particularly onerous requirements, it’s conceivable that the extra hassle might have deterred some investors from switching to SSR. The council also said it would crack down on SSRs in residential areas where the zoning doesn’t permit short-term rental accommodation (0perating whole-property Airbnbs in such areas is technically already illegal as it violates the council’s city plan, but the LNP administration hasn’t put much effort towards enforcing existing rules). In December 2025, the council was still publicly celebrating its plan for permits and stronger investigation efforts. Public submissions on the draft local law closed on 16 February 2026, and the new rules were supposed to take effect from 1 July 2026. But on 12 May, the mayor made a short speech in the council chamber announcing the council had changed its mind, saying of Albanese’s budget, “We know that what is being discussed in recent days and weeks about changes to federal taxation relating to housing investment has certainly created a high level of uncertainty in the market… we know that in this kind of environment, creating more regulation, more red tape and making housing investment even harder is not something we should be doing in this current situation of uncertainty.” Running disingenuous arguments about not wanting to discourage housing investment with ‘red tape’ is playbook LNP. But undertaking the long, resource-intensive process of drafting a new local law (including undertaking public consultation) only to abandon the reforms at the eleventh hour is very unusual behaviour for Brisbane City Council. I couldn’t find another example like this in at least the past 15 years. A few commentators have suggested that because the number of Brisbane properties leased as short-stay rentals represents a small proportion of total dwellings in the city, the spread of Airbnb isn't a major concern meriting further council action. But that narrative doesn't stack up to close scrutiny. ## How big is the problem? Pinning down an accurate estimate of how many Brisbane homes have been converted into short-stay rentals is a little tricky. Airbnb is the biggest platform operating in Brisbane, followed by Stayz/Vrbo and Booking.com. But there are also smaller operators who might only manage 10 or 20 properties, often targeting specific niche markets. They advertise on their own websites but sometimes also list the same property on multiple larger platforms (this is recommended practice for most investors). None of the larger sites publicly disclose how many unique property listings they have, and we don't even know exactly how Airbnb's market share in Brisbane compares to its competitors. But if we can at least count Airbnb listings, that gives us a conservative, lower-end estimate for the total number of short-stay rentals across the city. Thankfully, the non-profit service Inside Airbnb routinely scrapes Airbnb's listings to produce relatively accurate estimates and map trends over time. A screenshot of Inside Airbnb's publicly available data portable for Brisbane If you narrow the Inside Airbnb search to 'Only entire homes/apartments' and 'Only recent and frequently booked' you can exclude properties where residents are just renting out a spare room, or only renting out their home for a couple weeks a year when they're out of town. In late June 2026, that returned a figure of 2280 self-contained dwellings that appear to be permanently used as Airbnbs. As of 23 July, the number has already climbed to 2439. Add in a couple hundred for each of the other major platforms and we're _conservatively_ looking at over 3000 dwellings which could be housing locals but are instead used as short-stay rentals in the Brisbane local government area (with more in neighbouring council regions like Logan and the Redlands). Brisbane City Council's own data provided via council meetings seems to support this. In the 2025/26 financial year, the council applied the 'Transitory Accommodation' rates category to 2258 properties (this number has grown steadily each financial year since the category was introduced). So the council obviously hasn't identified _all_ the properties in Brissie that are being used as short-stay rentals, but their official figure is in a similar ballpark. Properties rated as 'Transitory Accommodation' in previous years - Brisbane City Council ordinary meeting, 2 June, 2026, Questions on Notice Data released by Brisbane City Council in June 2026 reinforces the picture from Inside Airbnb - the vast majority of short-stay rental investment properties are concentrated in Brisbane's inner-ring, in areas with larger numbers of units Apart from the obvious factors driving tourist demand closer to the city centre and public transport hubs, a key reason most Brisbane SSRs are apartments rather than free-standing homes is that under the council's local laws and city plan codes, short-stay rental generally isn't a permitted property use in areas zoned low-density residential. New apartment projects usually (but not always) include short-stay rental uses as part of their council development applications, so development approval for SSR automatically applies to all units in the new tower block. And in parts of the city zoned mixed-use, district centre etc., even free-standing houses _can_ legally be used for SSR. But most suburban Brisbane homes in residential areas _can't_ legally be rented out on platforms like Airbnb on an ongoing basis. That doesn't entirely stop owners from doing it, but they have to operate under the council's radar (if you suspect a home in a low-density residential area is being used as a short-stay rental, you can report it to the council – they usually require at least 3 resident complaints to launch a proper investigation). This perhaps helps explain why InsideAirbnb's count of the number of self-contained Airbnbs in a suburb like West End (61 properties), where the zoning of most blocks does _not_ permit SSR, is so much higher than Brisbane City Council's total West End count of all Transitory Accommodation properties on all platforms (25 properties). First image: InsideAirbnb snapshot of West End; second image: BCC's zoning map of West End - short-stay rental generally isn't permitted for any property within the light pink residential-zoned areas unless an owner has lodged a specific development application for their property (also requires compliance with higher fire safety standards etc.) In a city of around 550 000 residential dwellings, Brisbane's 3000+ short-stay rentals clearly aren't the _main_ driver of obscenely high rents and property prices. But once you start comparing the different datasets (including rental vacancy rates, census data etc.), you realise SSRs are a bigger factor than most policymakers seem willing to acknowledge. Rental vacancy rates have been persistently tight in Brissie for years now. At any given time, only a couple thousand homes are advertised for rent in the Brisbane local government area. And short-stay rentals are concentrated in high-demand inner-city suburbs with good public transport. These are the neighbourhoods with the highest numbers of rental properties, whose rental markets shape the baseline asking rents for the whole city. In the rapidly-growing suburb of South Brisbane, for example, roughly 1 in 10 investment properties are permanent SSRs. The same is true in Brisbane's CBD. In Bowen Hills it's around 1 in 15. A simplistic analysis that compares the estimated number of short-stay rentals to the total number of dwellings across Brisbane might underestimate and dismiss the impact of SSRs on rental affordability. But when such high proportions of rental stock in the inner-city are converted to SSRs, this tightens demand and drives up asking rents in market-leading suburbs like South Brisbane. And when newer 2-bedroom units in South Brisbane are routinely renting for upwards of $1000 per week, it would be naive to argue that isn't also impacting how much rent landlords in Greenslopes or Indooroopilly can get away with charging. The ability to convert homes into hotel rooms also boosts investor confidence. Prospective landlords know that if the bottom drops out of the long-term rental market, or the tenant they're price-gouging moves out at short notice and they're suddenly left with a vacant property, they can always switch to Airbnb. Even if only a relatively small number of investors actually do this, knowing it's always an option makes landlords in general more confident about squeezing their long-term tenants for higher rents. On the other hand, if hundreds of extra long-term rentals suddenly came onto the market due to tighter restrictions on short-stay rentals, that would have a significant and lasting impact on baseline advertised rents across the city (even if that extra supply were absorbed reasonably quickly). I suspect the LNP knew that when they backed away from introducing regulations here in Brisbane. A sudden, high-profile crackdown on Airbnbs could have depressed the rental market, pissing off all their property industry mates. ## The politics of how homes are used At this point it's worth mentioning that multiple LNP city councillors are themselves property investors with direct financial interests in property values and rents continuing to rise. At least one councillor, Krista Adams, has disclosed ownership of investment properties that she rents on Airbnb (although hers aren't in Brisbane itself). Excerpts from the register of interests of Holland Park Ward councillor (and former deputy mayor) Krista Adams Under current rules, owning investment properties doesn't prevent politicians from voting on council laws and policies that are likely to impact the revenue from or value of their investment properties. I think that's absurd – these councillors clearly have a conflict of interest on this issue. But this situation reflects Australia's cultural normalisation of treating housing as a commodity. Putting aside debates about exactly how many Brisbane homes have been converted to Airbnb, and what effect that change in rental supply has on affordability, the prevalence of short-stay rental platforms has a deeper negative cultural impact on how we view real estate. In Brisbane, the majority of buildings were specifically zoned, designed and approved as residential homes. Rightly or wrongly, across most of the city, the council's regulatory framework recognises that dwellings should be used primarily as housing for local residents even if houses _could_ hypothetically be renovated and converted to other more profitable commercial uses. While legitimate home businesses are permitted, the idea of repurposing entire homes for other activities that make more money is generally discouraged. Airbnb and other SSR platforms introduce a slippage into this landscape. If homes can easily be converted into hotels, this repositions housing as a commercial asset that _should_ be used in whatever way makes the most money. In fact, where real estate is owned by companies or super funds, directors may even have an _obligation_ to switch those properties to short-stay rentals if that will make more money for their investors. "It's my property – I should be able to do whatever I want with it!" is an increasingly common refrain among investors, even though it was never actually true. All manner of rules limit what people can and can't do with their properties, particularly in cities where space is in short supply. But by chipping away at the idea that housing should only be used as housing, short-stay rental platforms pour petrol on the fire, helping reconceptualise our residential neighbourhoods as mere assets waiting to be carved up for profit. So even if Brisbane was only home to a few hundred Airbnbs, I'd still argue for a ban on whole-of-dwelling short-stay rental conversions. But right now, there are _at least_ 3000, and the number is still growing. ## What's ahead of us? Since covid travel restrictions ended, the number of Brisbane dwellings permanently converted to short-stay rentals seemed to have been steadily increasing by about 200 per year, but the sudden increase _after_ the mayor announced he's backing away from regulation suggests the conversion rate is climbing sharply. Without tighter regulation or an all-out ban (as Sydney is exploring), it seems likely that rate could increase significantly in the years leading up to the Olympics. But anticipating how much demand there'll be for short-stay accommodation – whether actual hotel rooms or converted dwellings listed on platforms like Airbnb – is incredibly difficult. The loudest voices in the conversation have their own agendas and biases, with so many variables affecting a) tourist demand, and b) what kind of accommodation offerings emerge to meet that demand. There's lots of research examining the tourism impacts for previous mega-events. Some papers find that impacts to net tourism numbers are pretty small. Other research suggests the biggest host city tourism boosts come in the years immediately _after_ the games. But looking too closely at the experiences of very different cities in very different global economic contexts mostly just muddies the waters; both the domestic and international tourism industries – and indeed the broader world order – will likely have changed so much by 2032 that past experience hardly seems worth referring to. Even research commissioned by the Queensland Government concedes they don't really know how many additional tourists the games will attract. The 2021 KPMG report (notorious because of its questionable, heroic assumptions about the economic benefits of hosting) admitted "Findings in the literature are mixed about the size of the estimated tourism legacy benefits and the ability of major events to induce international tourism." Will international tourists still be willing to travel long distances to a mid-tier city like Brisbane despite worsening global warming and geo-political upheaval? Will Olympics-related tourism deter and displace the tourists who would've otherwise visited South-East QLD (as experienced by the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games and by several previous Olympic hosts)? How many domestic tourists from other parts of Australia will travel to Brissie for the games? No-one knows for sure. And anyone who pretends they can accurately model this stuff is bullshitting you. We _do_ know the government plans to adjust school holiday calendars for 2032 to align with the August games period. So I wouldn't be surprised if a decent chunk of Brisbane's population decides to travel interstate or overseas during that time, as occurred during the 2014 G20. If that happens, a lot of existing owner-occupier homes _could_ temporarily be used as short-stay accommodation to offset Brisbane's _alleged_ hotel shortage, without the need for an increase in permanent SSRs (I say 'alleged' because the Property Council of Australia – the group leading calls for more hotel construction – routinely uses whatever excuse it can come up with to argue for lower property taxes and less regulation in pursuit of its goal to keep real estate prices growing at absurdly high rates forever). But even if we don't know exactly how many tourists the Olympics itself will attract, we know that if the LNP succeeds in their more general goal of dramatically expanding South-East Queensland's tourism industry over the next two decades, many more dwellings will be converted into SSRs. International experience suggests that once tourism becomes a major part of a city's economy, the transformation of inner-city and beachside neighbourhoods into short-stay precincts can happen quickly, with abrupt, difficult-to-predict growth in SSRs as neighbourhoods reach tipping points. When 1 in 5 homes in your neighbourhood are Airbnbs, maybe you'll still feel like you live in a genuine community. But once 1 in 4 or 1 in 3 become tourist accommodation, the loss of community connection might prompt remaining long-termers to move out too, accelerating the transition. BCC's long-foreshadowed crackdown on Airbnbs may in fact have helped stem the tide. Now that's been shelved, property management companies are reminding investors how easy and profitable it is to run an SSR in Brissie. This over-simplified graph from one property management company exemplifies how the industry is already celebrating BCC's Airbnb backflip to encourage more investors to switch to short-stay rentals Crucially, Inside Airbnb highlights that Brisbane now has dozens of hosts listing multiple properties. Some of these are real estate agencies or property management companies like Bedspoke, which specialise in short-term rentals, while others are freewheeling individuals who take out multiple long-term residential leases on well-located properties, then rent them out as short-stay rentals – a lucrative hussle that requires no up-front investment beyond your standard rental bond. An excerpt of InsideAirbnb's long list of Airbnb hosts with multiple listings (several of these hosts also list dozens of properties on the Gold Coast and elsewhere in South-East Queensland) The rising number of operators managing SSRs that they don't actually own underscores how much of a problem this could become for Brisbane's inner-city housing market. When Brisbane renters line up to inspect an apartment in South Brisbane or Fortitude Valley, they're no longer only competing against other prospective tenants who want to _live_ in those properties, they're also competing with would-be hotel room operators who can afford to pay much more to rent the same property, because they'll be sub-leasing it for hundreds of dollars per night (the LNP's permit scheme wouldn't have addressed this growing issue anyway). ## But _why_ the backflip? None of this gets us much closer to explaining _exactly_ why the council went from actively promoting its long-awaited permit system in December 2025, to backing away from it six months later. The council's vague, feeble argument that it's because some small, undefined proportion of Airbnbs are sometimes used as domestic violence crisis accommodation or by flood victims awaiting insurance payouts doesn't stack up to close scrutiny. After the public submissions period closed, the council would have reached out to the state government to confirm it had no objections to the local law (which can't take effect without Queensland government support). So it's possible that even though BCC wanted to proceed with the new scheme, Schrinner's state LNP colleagues overruled him. I still think it's possible the International Olympics Committee applied direct pressure on the Queensland government given that they're hoping to convince Airbnb to extend its global sponsorship of the Olympics beyond 2028. But if there _is_ a digital trail, even a Freedom of Information request would likely run up against 'commercial in confidence' redactions. Anyone – especially journalists – who gets a chance to put questions to Lord Schrinner should be asking him directly about this. What was the _real_ reason BCC backed away from its long-awaited new regulatory framework? Did the IOC make a direct request? And now that Brisbane has signalled it _won't_ regulate SSRs (thus enticing more property investors to switch), how fast would the growth rate have to get before BCC re-evaluates its position? The proportion of SSRs in Brisbane isn't yet as high or concerning as in many larger cities that attract bigger tourist numbers. But the numbers are growing faster than they were a year or two ago, particularly in the inner-city neighbourhoods that most heavily shape asking rents across Greater Brisbane. The smart move would be to ban or at least heavily restrict them now, _before_ the Olympics pressure for more short-term accommodation really kicks in and existing tenants are displaced en masse. Every additional home that's converted into a short-stay rental effectively represents another local family that will struggle to find stable housing. But I don't see the LNP turning their recent 180-reversal into a full 360 without significant public pressure. _To support more in-depth local political analysis like this, please consider signing up for a paid subscription._ Subscribe _Oh and to the full-time journalists and policymakers who I know are reading my articles to save time on your own research work, maybe consider making a one-off contribution of a couple bucks to share the love around..._ Chip in a couple bucks as a one-off

When confronted with racist, irrational calls for 'monoculturalism,' many of us seem unable to offer effective counter-arguments beyond "but don't you love ethnic food!?" The most commonly articulated benefits of multiculturalism boil down to the idea that life is better and more interesting when our communities feature a wider range of music, dance, food and fashion. I definitely agree with that perspective, and I'll even concede that for _some_ people who are nervous about unrestricted immigration, celebrating different cultures' cuisines and entertainment forms might be compelling. But it risks flattening and obscuring some of the most significant benefits of promoting cultural diversity and cross-cultural exchange. Entire academic fields – anthropology, cultural studies, ethnolinguistics etc. – have evolved to study this stuff (often with vigorous methodological and philosophical divergences between disciplines). Whole libraries of research unpack the differences between cultures and the advantages of encouraging cultures to mix, including important debates about what terms like 'multiculturalism' and 'cultural pluralism' even mean (spoiler: definitions vary). But very little of that knowledge seems to be informing Australia's current mainstream political debates about multiculturalism. This is particularly frustrating when you remember that Australia has been a culturally diverse continent for tens of thousands of years, with many different Aboriginal cultures and language groups co-existing and influencing each other. Personally I'm more a fan of polyculturalism than orthodox multiculturalism. Decades of government multiculturalism policies have reinforced Euro-centric boundaries between supposedly-static ethnic and linguistic groups through siloed funding of ethnic community associations, cultural festivals etc. This has left us all culturally poorer than if Australia had embraced a more anarchic and fluid approach to cultural mixing. At its worst, liberal multiculturalism teaches us to engage with other cultures only by consuming whatever superficial elements can be easily packaged up and commercialised. But putting aside those debates for now, the main reason our society should embrace _some kind_ of cultural pluralism or cultural diversity is not simply so Australians get access to a wider range of foods or musical genres, but because **different cultures _see_ the world differently.** They value different things in different ways. And they remind us that different ways of life are possible. In modern Australian society, what we value, how we relate to the non-human world and how we solve emerging problems is heavily shaped and constrained by capitalism. So promoting a healthy contest of cultural values is an _essential_ counter-weight to the dominant western capitalist cultural narrative that you should only worry about small in-groups of close friends and immediate family, competing selfishly with everyone else in pursuit of maximum financial wealth. We have much more to learn from encounters with different cultures than how to cook the perfect paneer kofta or dance to a samba rhythm. A clash of cultural norms doesn't have to be abrasive. It can also be generative and illuminating... How should we manage conflict? If someone says something you strongly disagree with, is it better to avoid the topic to protect their feelings and preserve the peace, or is starting an intense argument to thrash out the matter actually a greater show of respect for your relationship? Do we defer uncritically to leaders and authority figures, or treat their power with intense scepticism? How should we care for and show respect towards our elders? Do we warehouse them in nursing homes out of sight and mind, or do we work through the messy challenges of inter-generational co-living and socialising? How much do we value education? And what kinds of education are most important? Do we think young people should start working in paid jobs before they've even finished high school? Or focus exclusively on their academic studies and exploring what paths they want to take in life? Is intellectualism held in high regard, or treated as a sign someone is 'out of touch'? When raising young children, do we rely on nuclear family models where women stay home and shoulder most of the care work alone? Do we expect government-subsidised services to share the load? Or do we strive to establish broader communal childcare networks involving friends, neighbours and extended family? Is our environment simply an amalgamation of resources that we endlessly extract? Do we see other animals merely as products waiting to be processed for meat or wool or milk? Or do we see ourselves as inextricably – perhaps even spiritually – connected to the non-human world, with moral responsibilities to care for and protect it? What is our relationship to abstract concepts like time? Is it linear? Or circular? Does it flow consistently like tap water, or in irregular bursts and pulses like summer rainstorms? Is being punctual a show of respect to your co-workers, or is lack of punctuality an act of anti-capitalist resistance against your exploitative boss? Does an injustice experienced 20 years ago matter just as much as an injustice that occurred yesterday? There are _so many questions_ that different cultures might offer differing answers to. A hypothetical monocultural society probably wouldn't even be capable of critically debating such issues. Currently in Australia, cultural exchange is still contaminated by power imbalances between the dominant colonial-capitalist culture and other racialised groups (whether First Nations cultures or other Asian, African, American and continental European cultures). Even supposedly inclusive government jargon like 'culturally and linguistically diverse communities' reinscribes this inequality by recognising a patriarchal Anglo-Australian baseline that other cultures are seen as 'diverse' in relation _to_. In a truly pluralistic society, where different cultures are endlessly interacting and cross-pollinating on a more even footing, people can engage with a wider range of worldviews and possibilities for how we structure our lives, making informed choices about what approach best suits a given context. The folk traditions – the stories, dances, songs, clothing, culinary practices – that a superficial conception of multiculturalism focuses on will often encode and pass on cultural norms, values and moral lessons. Ultimately though, it's those contrasting values and worldviews themselves that more meaningfully distinguish cultures, and are the most substantive advantage of cultural pluralism. Perhaps one reason so many right-wing political figures rave against multiculturalism is because exposure to different cultures shows us that there are many different ways for humans to live and organise our communities. Cross-cultural encounters can remind us that a life of endless drudgery, precarity, hyper-competitive individualism and spiritual impoverishment under capitalism is not the only option on the table. Euro-centric, capitalism-friendly multiculturalism has limited our horizons by obscuring the more fundamental differences between cultures – and thus the deeper benefits of cultural diversity. But when you start unpacking those deeper divergences – individualistic vs collectivistic, hierarchical vs egalitarian etc. – you learn much more about yourself and your own community, and can have more far meaningful conversations about what direction we should all be heading in together. Someone _please_ mention this to the 'progressive' politicians and ABC presenters whose only defense of cultural diversity seems to be "but we wouldn't have kebabs!" _I'd love to know what people think of these ideas. Feel free to leave a comment below. And if you value writing like this being freely available to the wider public, without paywalls or intrusive ads, please consider subscribing to my newsletter._ Support radical political commentary

_No Phones, No Phascists_ is a recurring free-entry, all-ages, counter-cultural community event in Holland Park West... _This page will be updated at least monthly to confirm details of the next event and to announce any last-minute changes in case of wet weather etc. (please share the link to this page with anyone who doesn't use social media)._ We're gathering in person to share music, art, radical ideas and good company. Join us for a free community event organised outside the confines of technocapitalism in a backyard in Holland Park West. Meet new people. Catch up with old friends. Soak up some poetry. Maybe even dance a little. At a time of rising fascism, it's crucial we create and maintain free spaces where we can converge face-to-face and build community. The 'no phones' theme isn't a hard-and-fast rule (it's ok to have a phone on you - just leave it in your pocket or bag as much as possible), but we encourage everyone to be present in the space and resist getting sucked into your device. ### **Details for next event** : **When** : Friday, 26 June 2026, 4pm to 8pm (sometimes runs a little later) **Where** : Understory, 30 Joachim St, Holland Park West **Line-up includes** : Andy Paine, Clover Love, Noisy Nige & Joka, poetry by Ahvela River **BFU Groundings:** from 5:30 to 6pm we'll feature a Brisbane Free University discussion about the relationship between fascism and queerphobia **Also...** * Open mic from 4pm to 5ish (first in, best dresssed) – PA system and basic drum kit provided (instruments can plug directly into PA if required) * Art-making and zine-making under the house * Home-cooked vego meals and warm chai available (gold coin donation) – please BYO bowl, cutlery and mug if you can Nearest bus stop is Birdwood Rd at Wellers Hill (a short walk through Joachim St Park). More frequent bus services run via Logan Rd or Holland Park West bus station. Most parts of the venue are wheelchair accessible but unfortunately the toilet is not DDA-compliant (we're working on this). For more questions or to volunteer/perform, email [email protected] ### **Previous events** : * Friday, 29 May – featuring Rivermouth, Songs of Tom Smith, Lamisse Hamouda * Friday, 24 April – featuring A Dingo Named Belle, Nathan Kearney, Louis Whelan, Milly and the Maths Show * Friday, 27 March – featuring Rivermouth, Saro and Andrew (of Midnight Sound Machine), Baque Australis

Political campaigners often keep doing what they've always done even if a tactic no longer works, perhaps just out of habit, or because they've become emotionally attached to out-dated arguments and perspectives. But sometimes they switch tactics because they've analysed the current landscape, thought deeply about the pros and cons of change and made an informed decision to try something new. In Queensland's recent Stafford by-election, the local Greens campaign did the latter, deciding to run an 'open ticket.' That means that instead of the Greens how-to-vote ('HTV') flyer suggesting a specific preferencing order, the flyer just said 'vote 1 Greens and number every box.' The Greens HTV for the 2026 Stafford by-election Various minor parties and independent candidates have increasingly been taking this approach in recent years. Labor even did it in the federal seat of Macnamara in the 2025 federal election. But for the Queensland Greens it was a noteworthy strategic shift – over the past decade, the party has consistently given its supporters a specific recommended order for how they should number preferences on the ballot. Personally I didn't learn about the Stafford by-election open ticket until early voting had opened, and I understand local Labor campaigners actually heard about it before most of the Greens membership did. At the time, I said I was on the fence about the decision. I wrote on Facebook, "I think it's probably the wrong call by the party, but I can see some strong persuasive arguments in favour of the move too." The Courier Mail misreported this as me 'slamming' the Greens, which even for them was an absurdly sensationalist degree of spin. Courier Mail headlines are frequently sensationalist and inaccurate Three weeks down the line, having observed the public reaction to the move and the results of the by-election, I'm not ashamed to concede that I was wrong: I've changed my mind**,** and I now think that **in the current political climate, running open tickets that don't explicitly recommend preferences to Labor is something that the Greens should consider doing in almost every electoral contest around the country**. My two strongest concerns about the open-ended how-to-vote flyer were: 1. If the Greens didn't explicitly encourage their supporters to direct preferences to Labor ahead of the LNP, slightly more Greens voters might preference the LNP, making it easier for the LNP to win the seat off Labor. 2. A HTV that showed empty boxes on the ballot paper might lead to more Greens voters than usual just voting 1 (even though the flyer text still said "number every box"). If someone just votes 1 and doesn't number the other boxes, their vote is declared 'informal' and isn't counted. So if Greens voters weren't paying attention and failed to fill out all the boxes, this would hurt the Greens primary vote. In this by-election, neither of those fears materialised. The party trusted their voters to make up their own minds, and roughly 86.5% of Greens voters ultimately preferenced Labor ahead of the LNP (slightly higher than the 83.7% of Stafford Greens voters who preferenced Labor in the 2024 state election). Stafford by-election ultimate preference flows as reported on Antony Green's blog Data collected by Greens scrutineers also suggested that _in the entire electorate_ , only around 30 Greens voters (out of over 4000) just voted 1 without numbering every box on the ballot paper (and thus had their vote declared 'informal'). That rate was actually lower than for supporters of other parties – a higher percentage of Labor and LNP votes were declared informal because they didn't number all the boxes. Every party always has a small number of supporters who ignore or misunderstand instructions, and only vote 1 without numbering every box, leading to their votes not being counted. But the Stafford result suggests that, at least for the Greens, handing out open ticket HTVs won't lead to a higher rate of informal votes due to incomplete ballot papers. Another fear I had about the open ticket tactic was that we'd be attacked for the decision by various other political parties. That certainly happened. The Labor establishment – including various union bosses – immediately went after the Greens for this move, even though Labor has done the same thing in the recent past. But those attacks didn't appear to hurt the Greens _at all_. Our 3-party-preferred vote (the proportion of voters who preferred the Greens over Labor and the LNP) was higher for this by-election than in the 2024 general election. I'm cautious about over-generalising from the results of a single by-election. _Maybe_ there are some electorates around Australia where Greens voters are less engaged and explicit HTV guidance might be more important. Perhaps for upper house contests, there's a stronger case for giving voters clear recommended preference orders. But the main electoral strategy arguments against the Greens running an open HTV are starting to look very weak. Ultimately though, if the Labor party can't convince Greens voters to preference Labor ahead of the far-right Liberals, that's not the Greens' fault – it's Labor's. ### Conventions can be broken The Greens issuing an open ticket didn't actually help the LNP in practice. But much of the criticism of the Greens decision was more abstract, along the lines of "not explicitly recommending preferences is inherently wrong because it means you're telling voters that the LNP or Family First are no worse than Labor or the Socialists!" Basically these critics were claiming there's an established principle that a party _must_ use its how-to-vote flyers to signal to its supporters which other parties most closely align with its values. The more I thought about this argument, the less convincing I found it. The Greens were very clearly saying to voters "we trust you to choose your own preferences" – they even printed that on their flyer. Certainly, if the Greens had said publicly "we're not recommending an order of preferences because all the other parties are exactly the same" I'd be much more concerned. There were times in the 1990s when some Greens spokespeople _did_ make those kinds of comments while running open tickets, and even a few occasions where they made _favourable_ comments about the Liberals to justify not specifically recommending preferences towards Labor. I still think that was a bad approach. But simply saying "we won't tell you who to preference" is quite obviously not the same as saying "you should preference the LNP ahead of Labor." Related arguments that how-to-votes serve a valuable public education function by showing voters which other parties a particular candidate has most in common with also don't strike me as compelling in the case of an established party like the Greens. Maybe if a low-profile independent is running and most voters have no idea what they stand for, their preference recommendation might reveal relevant insights about their ideological leanings. But even for independents, and certainly for the Greens, it's the other messages and policies on their campaign materials that more effectively communicate that kind of information. The major parties certainly don't use how-to-votes to rank the other parties in order of policy alignment. Labor always preferences Greens candidates higher than the Liberals, even though in terms of overall policy positions and the direction they're taking the country, Labor in 2026 is much, much closer to the Liberals than they are to the Greens. In reality, there are no 'principles' about what a HTV means or how it should be used beyond what political parties themselves decide. There's no rule book or constitutional provision that says "not publishing a preference recommendation means you think all the other parties are exactly the same." Those are just conventions that most candidates choose to follow. But just because Labor says "this is what a how-to-vote means and this is how you must use it" doesn't mean we must assent to that. Handing out a how-to-vote flyer is simply a tactic used to achieve certain political goals. And for the Greens in 2026, goal priorities should necessarily shift now that Labor has swung so far to the right, and is so deeply unpopular with so many voters. The Stafford result suggests that for now at least, whether the Greens recommend preferences via how-to-vote flyers does _not_ have much bearing at all on the goal of ensuring the far-right don't win more seats; the vast majority of Greens voters are choosing for themselves to preference Labor higher than the Liberals or One Nation. But _not_ recommending a preference order _does_ help achieve two other important Greens goals: 1. Drawing more voters away from the major parties and One Nation, and 2. Pressuring the major parties – particularly Labor – to adopt more progressive positions in order to attract preferences from Greens voters ### By distancing the Greens from Labor, an open ticket HTV wins more votes for the Greens than it loses 10 years ago, some of the biggest barriers for people who might consider voting Greens were that it was a "wasted vote" because "the Greens could never win," or that the Greens were a single-issue party who "only cared about the environment." Neither of those were true, but many voters still thought that way. Today, those kinds of barriers come up less often. A far bigger concern for swinging voters is the idea that "a vote for the Greens is just a vote for Labor." This message has been perpetuated by various conservative forces for years, and is now accepted at face value by millions of voters. For the Greens, being perceived as too closely aligned with Labor is increasingly a net loss electorally. Labor's primary vote is trending downwards long-term, and the Greens risk being dragged down with them if the party doesn't make it absolutely clear that it's not Labor's lapdog. This graph from Antony Green's blog shows how the primary vote of both the major parties is trending downwards - it doesn't show the even sharper declines in popularity since One Nation's 2026 surge A few years ago, there was a cohort of progressive Labor voters who were open to switching to the Greens _if_ they felt confident this wouldn't undermine Labor and strengthen the Liberals. I encountered these voters regularly when campaigning in suburbs like West End and Woolloongabba. For that group, hearing that the Greens worked collaboratively with Labor made them feel comfortable switching from voting 1 Labor, 2 Greens to 1 Greens, 2 Labor. But those kinds of voters are now either consistently voting 1 Greens, or are more firmly sticking with Labor after Labor's relentless, disingenuous attacks that the Greens were blocking progressive reforms. While that voter cohort matters less, there is now a much, much larger group of people who are pissed off with the entire political establishment – especially Labor. Many of these voters are turning to One Nation, but some could be convinced to vote 1 Greens if not for the party's perceived Labor affiliation. If the Greens are seen as too close to Labor, it's harder to win over anti-establishment or socially-progressive Liberal voters who are turned off by the modern Libs' far-right positioning, but strongly dislike the ALP. But it's also harder to win over Labor voters who've become angry with Albanese and want to tell him to get stuffed. Right now, the dominant political choice that's shaping the voting decisions of more and more Australians is not 'left vs right' but 'establishment vs anti-establishment.' The far-right understands this, and has worked to position the Greens as part of the political establishment, and specifically as an appendage of Labor. Overturning the widespread perception that the Greens are too supportive of Labor requires a bigger, multi-pronged strategic reorientation. The Greens switching to running open tickets will not, by itself, reverse that damaging reputation. But it will probably help. ### Forcing the major parties to work harder for Greens preferences For years, Labor has benefited from consistently strong preference flows from Greens voters, in part because the Greens ordinarily encourage their supporters to preference Labor ahead of the Liberals/Nationals. Consequently, there's little incentive for Labor to work hard to convince Greens voters to vote 2 Labor. Labor can keep drifting to the right, chasing voters who are ideologically more aligned with the Liberals, Nationals and even One Nation, knowing that even as it loses more and more left-wing voters to the Greens, the vast majority of those votes will flow back to Labor via preferences. But if the Greens stop actively encouraging supporters to direct preferences to Labor ahead of the Liberals, Labor starts to feel more pressure to appeal to those voters. We could see Labor adopting rhetoric and policy initiatives that are deliberately targeted to win back Greens primary votes, or at least ensure that Greens voters do still preference Labor even if their party isn't explicitly telling them to. I should acknowledge this effect won't be as strong in the short-term. Labor strategists saw the Stafford by-election results too, and understand that a strong majority of Greens voters are currently in the habit of directing preferences to Labor regardless of what the Greens put on their HTVs. But that habit is shaped by numerous factors including the Greens' long-running how-to-vote practices. If the party starts running open tickets more frequently, after a couple of election cycles, other parties will likely recognise that the preferences of at least some Greens voters are up for grabs, and act accordingly. We might, for example, see urban Liberal or teal independent candidates announce the odd policy or project that's calculated to attract the preferences of Greens voters. If Labor, the Liberals and other emergent political forces start seriously competing for Greens voters' preferences, this will – in a small way – likely help shift Australia's political compass closer towards Greens policy goals. It's very difficult to predict how significant the medium-term impact of Greens open tickets would be on Labor's political positioning, but the pushback from Labor MPs around the Stafford by-election suggests it does at least make them nervous. ### Telling the right story matters The Greens made a mistake in failing to publicly explain the open ticket decision in advance of voting opening for the by-election. There was no proactive press conference or social media comms plan. My understanding is that this was a failure on the part of the party hierarchy rather than the fault of Jess and her local campaign team. Looking ahead, the benefits to the Greens of switching to open ticket HTVs for most elections depends heavily on how the party sells and justifies the decision. State and federal party leaders should call press conferences, line up podcast interviews and produce their own social media assets highlighting that the Greens will no longer recommend preferences to Labor, because Labor is actively hostile to Greens values and policy priorities, and the Greens are not Labor's lapdog. The story about _why_ the Greens make this change is arguably more important than the change itself. Of course, local Greens branches and campaigns should retain the flexibility to issue numbered HTV recommendations where that makes sense for their local context – particularly in situations where other progressive independents or minor party candidates might be able to unseat Labor or Liberal MPs if enough Greens preferences flow their way. But a broad message of "we trust voters to make up your own minds, and we won't do secret preference deals or act as a preference funnel for any other party" sends a clear signal that the Greens are breaking with the political establishment and responding to growing public frustration with the two major parties, while reminding Labor it can't take the Greens for granted. I'm not suggesting this one change would, by itself, draw thousands more people to the Greens or slow One Nation's rise. There's much more the party can and should be doing to win over voters who are pissed at the major parties and looking for alternatives (keep an eye out for a longer article I'm working on about that). But right now, the Greens are stagnating, and there's no evidence that's suddenly going to change unless the party shakes up its approach. This is the time to question established conventions, throw a bunch of stuff at the wall and see what sticks. Persisting with the status quo while One Nation surges is a recipe for Greens political irrelevancy and a brisk march towards fascism. Establishment vibes: Do ‘extreme Greens’ criticisms hit harder when we’re no longer ‘doing politics differently’?We can’t beat them if we play by their rulesJonathan SriranganathanJonathan SriranganathanTowards a new political orientation for the GreensThe Australian Greens’ overall strategy and approach simply isn’t working as well as we need it to - so what changes should we consider?Jonathan SriranganathanJonathan Sriranganathan _Thanks for reading! If you value this kind of political analysis and commentary, please consider signing up for a paid subscription to my newsletter..._ Support my work

Periodically in Australian politics, everyone starts talking about a ‘scandal’ where a state or federal government has misspent ‘millions of dollars.’ Maybe it’s pork-barrelling in a marginal electorate, or a well-connected private school receiving a public grant to build their third gymnasium. Sometimes media commentators will get really excited about a policy change that’s predicted to shift property prices by 2 or 3 percent. Yet when a _local_ government misspends several million dollars, or makes zoning changes that drastically inflate property values, very few people seem to care, and often the media doesn’t even cover it. Australia suffers from a major mismatch between the quantity and quality of reporting and commentary regarding state and federal government decisions, compared to decisions that are almost as significant (and often have a _more_ direct impact on people's lives), but which are functionally made by local councils. This is particularly the case in Queensland, where council amalgamations have created larger city and regional councils with bigger budgets and more policy-making autonomy. But even in states where the councils are smaller, and state governments more frequently micro-manage or block local government initiatives, long chains of rubber-stampers mean that highly consequential decisions are heavily shaped by low-ranking council officers or part-time councillors with no subject matter expertise, and little external scrutiny or accountability. > **Case study 1** : In November 2025, Brisbane City Council announced City Plan amendments that functionally reduce the percentage of a block that must be set aside for trees and green space when the site is developed – in practice, this will mean some highrise development sites that previously had to reserve 10% of site area for deep-planted trees will be approved to build right up to the property boundaries (with a couple of bushes in concrete pot plants in lieu of genuine green space). > The change drastically increases the development potential for tens of thousands of properties across the city – you can build on more of the block, which means you can squeeze in more units or larger houses. So this benign-looking city plan amendment could increase the sale value of a large $10 million development site (e.g. a few neighbouring houses with big backyards) to $12 or $14 million. > When old, rundown houses in a neighbourhood are selling for $2 or $3 million each because of their development potential, this flows through to increased property values on nearby apartments and houses even if those other properties can’t easily be redeveloped. > There’s no guarantee that more apartments will actually be built as a result of this change. But across the Brisbane Local Government Area, the city plan amendments to deep planting rules could quietly inflate the total value of Brisbane real estate by several billion dollars. > **Case study 2** : From 2016 to 2020, BCC spent **$115 _million_ **widening a 700-metre stretch of Lytton Rd in East Brisbane from two lanes to three lanes in each direction. The project removed dozens of established trees, ate several hundred square metres of public parkland, and crucially, involved the compulsory acquisition and demolition of approximately fifty privately-owned residential homes. > The Lytton Rd widening was supported by both Labor and the LNP, and while residents’ protests over the years certainly attracted some media coverage (particularly before the shrinking of Quest Newspapers), the council got off very lightly in terms of critical reporting and commentary considering how costly and disruptive the project was. Today, Lytton Rd remains as congested as ever. There’s no strong evidence that the project reduced travel times along the corridor compared to baseline congestion projections if it hadn’t gone ahead, or indeed if some of the $115m had instead been spent on introducing high-frequency bus services and peak-hour bus lanes through Brisbane’s eastern suburbs. You can find similar examples in towns and cities across Australia. In regional areas where councils sometimes own critical infrastructure (e.g. Rockhampton Regional Council owns the town’s only airport, which is also a key hub for Central Queensland’s large fly-in, fly-out mining workforce), council decisions have massive ramifications for major industries. Several big-budget federal programs are also effectively guided from the bottom up by local councils. For example, the Roads to Recovery program allocates roughly $1 billion each year to local council road projects, but very few people outside the bureaucracy ever closely interrogate whether councils are spending this money sensibly. In Brisbane, a whopping $3.35 million from this fund is currently being spent installing traffic lights at a minor suburban intersection in Tarragindi (total cost is $3.65m, with the council funding the balance), most likely so the local LNP councillor could claim to have ‘delivered’ something other than dog off-leash areas and playground upgrades. In Brisbane, there are hundreds of potential projects that would represent better uses of $3m+ of federal money, but the whims of a single councillor and a couple of car-focussed traffic engineers ultimately dictate where this money flows. Much of the Roads to Recovery money across the country is being spent on road-widening or intersection-widening projects which reinforce car-dependence and do nothing to support public or active transport. They’re a lucrative cash cow for private construction contractors, but represent terrible value for public money. No journalist is writing in-depth stories asking whether Gold Coast City Council's $58 _million_ project to expand car capacity on Yawalpa Rd, Pimpama is good value for money, but they should be. The project has so far received two rounds of federal Roads to Recovery funding – $7.7 million in 2024/25 and $9.5 million in 2025/26 plus a bit of State Government funding. Maybe this is actually just a rant about how entrenched car culture is and how all levels of government are still wasting huge amounts of money expanding road capacity to carry more cars (in spite of all the evidence that this doesn't work) without ever being criticised for it. But that phenomenon is closely connected to the fact that so many road infrastructure spending decisions are either made or heavily influenced by local councils that few people pay much attention to. When I first took office as a Brisbane city councillor back in 2016, there were four journalists sitting down the front of the meeting chamber in city hall to report on proceedings. ABC, Brisbanetimes, Quest News and the Courier Mail all had reporters assigned specifically to cover local government affairs in South-East Queensland (these reporters were separate from the Brisbane-based political journos covering state parliament). Quest News still had at least a dozen printed newspapers and _multiple_ reporters covering local government news across different parts of South-East Queensland. The biggest TV stations – channel 7 and channel 9 – also had dedicated local affairs reporters for Brisbane who were often producing multiple stories about Brisbane City Council debates and announcements each week, and various local radio stations who took their lead from either ABC or Courier Mail routinely picked up stories. Australia’s mainstream media was already well into its ongoing decline at this point, and resourcing, airtime and column space dedicated to local government news was less than in the early 2000s. But it still felt like the media at least cared about what was happening on Brisbane City Council, and in the smaller councils of neighbouring satellite cities like Ipswich and the Redlands. Crucially, several of the print journalists assigned to cover local government were senior, experienced reporters who were savvy enough to cut through the spin, and had enough time to interview and interrogate a range of sources, rather than just taking a couple of quotes from the mayor’s office and a couple from the opposition councillors. Today, the reporters who are occasionally assigned to local politics stories generally don't have much background knowledge about how councils really work or the context behind major decisions. There are still several great Brisbane-based journos covering local politics – the ABC’s __ Kenji Sato and Brisbanetimes’ __ Felicity Caldwell are two of the most astute – but they’re all split across a broader range of beats and responsibilities, with less capacity for deep-dive investigative reporting than in the past. The overall quality and quantity of mainstream media coverage regarding local government and related local policy issues has dropped noticeably in Brisbane, and the same is true in other capitals. The decline in coverage and scrutiny of regional council decision-making is perhaps even more pronounced. The dearth of regional papers, radio stations and TV reporters means that even on the occasions where local affairs _are_ covered, ‘news stories’ often involve little more than copying quotes from resident Facebook groups or uncritically regurgitating media releases from the mayor’s office. 2020 coverage of NewsCorp shutting down many of its regional newspapers and laying off hundreds of journalists I don't know which came first – public disinterest and disengagement from local government, or declining mainstream media coverage. But it's now a self-reinforcing cycle. While both emerging independent media and social media influencers/commentators are to some extent increasingly filling other gaps left by the hollowing out of mainstream media, that's not happening as much for local politics. The rewards for chasing audiences wherever you can find them (rather than people who are geographically concentrated in a particular city or region) mean that even as we’re seeing a diversification and fragmentation of coverage and commentary about national and international affairs, new media still isn’t even close to replicating the depth and breadth of reporting and analysis we used to get for local government decisions and issues. In some cities, various local channels and stations are partially meeting the appetite for greater understanding of local issues. For example in Brisbane we have videographers like Adam Young of THE Brisbane Channel, who produces well-researched Youtube videos and now a podcast about issues like housing, urban planning, transport etc. Younger generations are also getting in on the act, with quirky volunteer-led projects like Tight Knit collective drawing more attention to council issues, as well as individual commentators like Immyonboard, who are starting to translate growing online audiences into organised advocacy groups. But in Brisbane at least, even the largest of these kinds of channels doesn’t yet have the clout to significantly impact policy outcomes or political priorities, or to secure timely responses from the mayor’s office. THE Brisbane Channel’s most popular videos generally attract up 20 000 unique viewers – very impressive for a one-man operation, but still far short of the reach that mainstream media coverage of local affairs would have attracted a decade or two ago. In a city of millions, you need to be reaching very big audiences for politicians to start worrying about what you’re reporting on. I'm not arguing for any specific response to this phenomenon. There's certainly a gap for local councillors and advocacy groups to build larger audiences communicating directly with residents, but of course this leads to a less holistic picture of what's going on and what different political actors are saying and doing. I would love to see more independent media focusing on council decisions and local politics. But I can appreciate that if the mainstream media and wider popular culture isn't signalling that local government matters, it's harder to build an audience that's interested in it. Mostly I just wanted to remind readers that things weren't always like this. The near-total absence of meaningful media scrutiny over significant local council decisions is contributing to an environment where, outside of election campaigns, most mayors and councillors don't seem to care very much at all what the majority of residents think. This, in turn, leads to less council resourcing allocated towards public consultation and engagement, and ultimately a failure in public imagination regarding the radical potential of local government. But I'll save that for another article. _If you'd like me to put more time towards covering hyper-local stories around South-East Queensland, this is your chance to vote with your wallet. Please subscribe for $1/week to support me to write more about local politics from a radical/progressive perspective._ Support local reporting

Dear friends, Hope everyone's doing ok in this world of rising fascism and gaslighting politicians. Before I jump into this newsletter, I'd love your opinion: I'm trying to decide how much time to spend producing longer written articles as opposed to other forms of communication like short videos or podcast episodes, and I'm also working out what topics my readers would like me to focus on. Please fill out this simple 2-question survey to let me know what you think (feedback via email is also welcome). I've just published a deep dive into the differences between the Queensland Greens and Queensland Socialists, informed by an interview with their Stafford candidate Liam Parry (the state electorate of Stafford is having a by-election because the sitting MP recently passed away). Queensland Greens vs the new Queensland Socialists: How different are they?On closer inspection, the new party is taking a very similar strategic approachJonathan SriranganathanJonathan Sriranganathan Shortly after the article went up, I learned the QLD Greens are running an 'open ticket' in the by-election, where they'll say to voters "Vote 1 Greens and number every box" but don't make a specific recommendation on _who_ to direct preferences towards. I wrote a long post on Facebook about this if you're interested. In short, I lean towards the view that right now, in Queensland's current political context, it would've been better for the Greens to clearly recommend a preference order so that the party isn't attacked for helping the LNP win a seat, and that departing from this established practice is something that should have been foreshadowed and discussed openly with Greens supporters well in advance. But I can also see how the Greens refusing to act as a dutiful preference funnel for Labor puts more pressure on Labor to be more progressive, and _might_ have an overall positive impact in the medium-term. I guess time will tell. Further down this newsletter, I've included links to my other recent articles, plus details about our next _No Phones, No Phascists_ event on Friday, 29 May. First though, here are a few dot points about random stuff that in the past I might have made social media posts about, but are now just for my newsletter readers... * it was disappointing (but unsurprising) that after Nazis coordinated to boo First Nations speakers at Anzac Day ceremonies, major party politicians and many other public figures strongly criticised the disrespect shown, but stopped short of actually defending Welcomes to Country and Acknowledgements of Country robustly... to effectively resist hard-right culture wars, we have to repeatedly and proactively make the case for _why_ these practices have political value and are so important * the strength of the pushback against the Queensland LNP's proposed absurd over-regulation of ebikes is a reassuring reminder of how much more latent political power Brisbane cyclists have today than even a couple of years ago. Perhaps it's time to use that power more intentionally to proactively push for separated bike lanes, 30km/h urban speed limits etc. There's another critical mass bike ride protest coming up in Brisbane tomorrow evening at 5pm. I'm currently in Central Queensland staying out west of Mackay, so I won't personally make it along, but I hope it gets a good turnout * the rapid uptake of AI is destroying the planet _and_ people's brains – those of us who crave a better world need to steadfastly boycott its use, and prompt friends who are becoming dependent on it to think more critically about the harms it causes. I learned recently that Future Super, Australia's _supposedly '_ ethical' super fund, is increasing its investment in AI startups, so I'm now asking questions of Future Super and thinking of moving my superannuation elsewhere (recommendations welcome) * a while back, I wrote about how the campaign to Save Barrambin/Victoria Park from being destroyed by costly Olympic stadium projects needed a more radical edge... I'm excited by recent developments wherein local First Nations land defenders have established a protection camp on site. I had a great time visiting the camp recently and I encourage anyone who has the time to get down to Herston to support and protect it – apparently bulldozers could roll in as soon as 1 June The bigger issue on my mind in recent weeks is that the US/Israel illegal invasion of Iran and Lebanon is triggering _major_ downstream effects in terms of energy access, food supplies etc. Lots of economists are predicting that the cumulative global economic shocks and disruptions will be _worse than covid,_ but right now the Australian government, and Australians more generally, don't seem to be acting like we're entering a new, more intensive stage of the polycrisis (apart from stocking up on toilet paper). As global warming's impacts worsen, compounding with fuel and fertiliser shortages, major structural upheaval is becoming increasingly likely. I certainly don't pretend to know exactly how we should respond to all this. My instinct is that building stronger, better-connected communities is an important piece of the puzzle. But at the very least we need to stop deluding ourselves and recognise that for ordinary people, business as usual might soon be over. Maybe it's time to prep some more veggie garden beds! Anywhere here are the other articles I've published recently in case you haven't already found them.. I published this piece just after Queensland police began arresting people for using the pro-Palestine phrases the LNP have partially criminalised. It includes an explanation (which I offer for the purposes of education and for public interest criticism of government policy) of why Zionist claims that the phrase 'from the river to the sea' is 'antisemitic' don't stack up. From the Tweed River to the Coral Sea, Queenslanders must push back against Zionist fascismIt might start with banning just two phrases, but it won’t stop there unless we resistJonathan SriranganathanJonathan Sriranganathan This very locally-focussed article ended up triggering a segment on ABC News radio. Responses from several residents seem to have confirmed that yes, amazingly there _are_ still one or two lace monitors living in Highgate Hill on Brisbane's inner-south side. The last goanna in Highgate Hill (Has anyone else seen it?)Maybe inner-city green spaces have more habitat value than we might assumeJonathan SriranganathanJonathan Sriranganathan And here's another one about Queensland politics, analysing the limits of the Greens' recently-launched campaign calling for a "people's Olympics." Fool’s gold: Have the QLD Greens picked the wrong lane for the Olympics?Maybe in a post-capitalist utopia, a harmless Olympics is possible, but the IOC host city agreement demands destructive consumerismJonathan SriranganathanJonathan Sriranganathan ### No Phones, No Phascists Since my last email newsletter, we've successfully organised two Friday night backyard parties titled _No Phones, No Phascists_ in Holland Park West, revolving around the themes of resisting fascism and minimising dependence on devices like smartphones. We're running them on the last Friday of each month and we're hopeful we can sustain them on an ongoing basis. They've been joyful and nourishing gatherings featuring a wide range of ages and demographics. Everyone reading this email is warmly invited to come along to our next iteration of the event on **Friday, 29 May, from 4pm to 8pm in the backyard at 30 Joachim St, Holland Park West.** My hip-hop/folk band Rivermouth will be playing a set, as will local artist Tom Smith (and friends). Musicians are welcome to bring along your instruments either for the open jam, or to have 5 to 10 minutes to yourself on stage for an open mic slot. We'll also have art-making spaces set up under the house, and vegan meals and chai to fill your bellies (gold coin donation, BYO bowl and mug if possible). The yard backs onto Joachim Street Park, so there's plenty of space for kids to run around in and quiet spots by the creek to retreat to if you find big events a little intense. We'll have a couple of fires going in the backyard to chase away the cold (if someone wants to bring marshmallows to share at the next one that might be nice!). We've been averaging over 100 attendees at each event so far, but can always squeeze in a few more, so please come along and invite your friends (and also mark Friday, 26 June in your diary so you don't miss the next one). If you're interested in volunteering to help organise the May event, please flick me an email (or just hang around at the end of the night to help with packing up). That's about it for this update. If you're one of the several hundred free subscribers who currently receives this newsletter, and you're in a position to jump up to a paid subscription to help me fund my writing and organising work, I'd be incredibly grateful. The more paid subscribers I have, the more writing and organising work I can make time for. Upgrade to a paid subscription Hopefully I'll see you at _No Phones, No Phascists_ on 29 May, but either way, enjoy reading! Warm regards, Jonno _For the benefit of any new subscribers, here are a few other older articles you might like to check out..._ Ironing out creases – West End’s cultural flatteningHow is gentrification changing the culture of the Kurilpa Peninsula?Jonathan SriranganathanJonathan SriranganathanAnarchy in the riparian zone: Does liminal life fertilise radical imaginations?In such a controlling, heavily-surveilled city, less-regulated liminal spaces like creeks and riparian zones are still serving as laboratories where residents can experiment with different ways of living and relating to each other, trialling unorthodox approaches to social problem-solving, climate adaptation and genuine resilience-building. This is something that should be celebrated and valued.Jonathan SriranganathanJonathan SriranganathanBlurred rituals: Do poppy services at funerals amplify the emotional resonance of Anzac Day?On artificially connecting nationalist military traditions to the intense grief at a loved one’s passing…Jonathan SriranganathanJonathan Sriranganathan

Around 2017, ideological and strategic divergences between Greens parties in different states were becoming more noticeable... The QLD Greens were aligning more closely with the NSW Greens, with a stronger critique of neoliberalism, and a greater emphasis on housing justice, wealth redistribution and public ownership of essential services. Meanwhile southern Greens parties were looking more centrist and reformist, watering down their political rhetoric and policy demands for fear of being branded 'extreme.' Victorian Greens senator and federal party room leader Richard Di Natale embodied this strand of Greens centrism with his close-minded response to the emergence of youth-led proto-faction Left Renewal. An eternally embarrassing December 2016 Guardian article where Greens leader Richard Di Natale tried to distance the party from critiques of capitalism and nationalism This was the political context in which the Victorian Socialists emerged, forming through cooperation between Socialist Alternative, Socialist Alliance and various other independent socialists (Socialist Alliance later pulled out in 2020). I was excited to see the new party form and build momentum in 2018; I hoped it would pull the Victorian Greens further to the left. After Adam Bandt became the federal leader in 2020, he more clearly positioned the Greens as a left-wing social democratic party, and the Victorian Greens membership preselected Lidia Thorpe (ahead of human rights lawyer and millionaire property investor Julian Burnside) to replace the retiring Richard Di Natale. But the Greens continue to be characterised by an ideologically diverse supporter base, particularly in terms of how openly the movement talks about capitalism and systemic change. In Queensland in 2018, there was less momentum for an overtly socialist party paralleling the Victorian Socialists. The sorts of young, anti-capitalist activists who might have started such a push were instead winning influential leadership roles _within_ the Queensland Greens. Several of Brisbane's most active Socialist Alliance members even quit that group to become enthusiastic Greens campaigners. To register a political party to contest Queensland elections, you need at least 500 members. While Socialist Alliance runs federally, it has never been able to muster the required 500 Queensland-based members to achieve state registration. But now in 2026, the Victorian Socialists are taking their brand nationwide. A new party, the Queensland Socialists, are on the cusp of formal registration, claiming up to 800 interested members. Socialist Alliance isn't involved, leaving Socialist Alternative as the dominant and driving force behind Queensland Socialists. So I thought it was timely to chat to Liam Parry, a member of Socialist Alternative, a spokesperson for the Queensland Socialists and their candidate for the Stafford by-election (you can watch or listen to my full interview with Liam via the embedded players at the bottom of this article). You can also find the video of our discussion at this link Liam will actually appear on the by-election ballot as an independent because the party's registration hasn't been finalised, but they're confident of reaching the 500-member threshold when the Electoral Commission completes its checks. (For those who are interested, the Greens have put forward local teacher, unionist and solid Palestine ally Jess Lane as their candidate for Stafford.) I have to acknowledge up-front that my scepticism towards Socialist Alternative could be colouring my analysis of the Queensland Socialists. But I'm trying to look past that and see the positive potential of this new party. Cul de sac politics: Have the Australian Greens hit a strategic dead-end?Why aren’t the Greens offering a stronger challenge to the political establishment?Jonathan SriranganathanJonathan Sriranganathan As a Greens member who generally feels the Queensland Greens are nowhere near bold or radical enough in terms of policy, rhetoric or broader strategy, I'm primarily interested in three overarching questions: **_Are there fundamental differences between the strategy/approach of Queensland Socialists and Queensland Greens that mean the Socialists will have a more significant positive impact?_** **_Will the emergence of the Queensland Socialists help push the Greens to adopt a bolder strategy or political orientation?_** **_Is there anything significant in the new party's DNA that will insulate them from establishment pressure towards liberal reformism and co-option?_** ## Meeting voters where they're at vs broadening the parameters of debate The policies and initiatives candidates lead with at election time understandably attract the most public attention. Although a party may have many other policy positions buried on obscure webpages, it's the ones that make it into social media posts, printed campaign materials, media coverage and speeches that signal a party's priorities and have the biggest potential impact on the broader political landscape. But most voters don't make their mind up based on details of specific policies – they vote based on a broader impression of the party's image, values and goals (which policies can help illustrate). The vision and overarching political critique definitely matters. In our interview, Liam tells me, “We want to be starting a conversation in Queensland and around Australia that capitalism as a social system that puts profit ahead of human life is fundamentally wrong and we want to build a total alternative rather than negotiating within it.” When I ask him whether there are any _Queensland_ Greens positions or policies that he disagrees with, the only one he points to is the party not taking a strong enough anti-Olympics stance (which I've also criticised). I won't over-analyse Liam's printed campaign materials for the Stafford by-election. I can imagine how rushed things must be for a party that has barely formed to get their comms together for a snap campaign, and I expect their messaging will get more sophisticated over time. But I think it's cool they're emphasising the idea of making politicians take a pay cut (which was also something I talked about in my councillor campaigns). Complaining about politician salaries can sometimes distract from bigger systemic issues, but calling to tie them to those of teachers or nurses taps effectively into anti-establishment sentiment. It's certainly more progressive than the Greens, who only require their politicians to donate 10% of their salary to the movement, and generally haven't had much else to say about politicians' salaries (some Greens elected reps like myself and Max Chandler-Mather did voluntarily donate much more of our income to non-profit projects, but this was the exception rather than the norm). Every other position on Liam's flyer aligns with Queensland Greens policies and goals. They're also using the same core campaign tactics – doorknocking, letterboxing flyers, and the occasional forum. Looking further afield at the headline policies Victorian Socialists have focussed on in successive state elections, they don't actually seem dramatically different from the Queensland Greens. Both parties have campaigned for rent freezes and more public housing construction, free public transport, strong carbon emissions reductions, more funding for health and education, and a state-owned public bank. When you dive deeper, the Victorian Socialists go further in _some_ policy areas. For example, they've stated they want to "Cap at two the number of homes that any individual can own" and "Bring into public ownership properties that have been vacant for more than two years without extenuating circumstances." But because these bolder demands mostly aren't mentioned in campaign materials, interviews and social media assets, they're largely irrelevant unless/until the Socialists win enough seats to make concrete demands of governing parties. In the 2025 federal election, you could've swapped the names and branding on the two parties' flyers and few people would've been able to tell the difference. The messaging on Greens and Socialists How-to-Vote materials in the 2025 federal election was __very__ similar Thinking through my conversation with Liam and looking at Victorian Socialists campaign materials, I'm struck by how the policy demands the Socialists highlight during elections are much more moderate and reformist than their stated long-term goals. The campaign platforms look more like social democracy than revolutionary socialism. Calling for a rent freeze presumes the continued existence of landlords who charge rent (even though their ultimate goal is a world without for-profit landlords). And proposing to establish a state-owned bank falls short of abolishing or nationalising _all_ private for-profit banks. Basically the new Socialist parties seem to be taking a similar approach to the Greens: call for policies which can be implemented _now_ _without_ major systemic change, and which are calculated to appeal to swing voters who might not yet have an appetite for more radical transformation. Liam acknowledges this, saying via email "I think we do want to raise demands for things that could be delivered now, which connect with people while also trying to push politics to the left and making an argument to people who are more on the fence." This is a rational electoral strategy. If a minor party isn't winning over more voters (and ideally threatening to take seats off larger parties), its impact on wider political discourse and outcomes will be negligible. But it makes any Queensland Socialist critique that the Queensland Greens are 'too reformist' seem less credible given that their headline policies are so similar, and both parties are making similar compromises in crafting platforms that meet voters where they're at. ## A clearer vision and direction? Messaging-wise, the main distinction between the Queensland Greens and Queensland Socialists isn't in the policy platforms. It's that the Socialists are more explicit about their ideological critique and long-term vision. “I suppose for us a difference would be that we want to be explicitly anticapitalist and foreground that in the way we talk about what needs to happen," Liam says. His campaign flyer includes the phrase "Capitalism is screwing the working class, migrants, students and the poor." Liam emphasises that the Queensland Socialists see contesting elections as just one element of the struggle, and recognise systemic change won't come through the ballot box alone. “For the socialists our starting point would be that we want to use parliament as a way to call out the capitalist system and encourage people to get more active in every sphere of society and not just see these things as being solved through parliament.” But that notion isn't actually so different from the Greens. Section 3.3 of the Queensland Greens' constitution begins: > "Our view of social change involves more than merely the substitution of one lot of decision makers with another lot who will act more responsibly. > We aim for changes that will empower all people and allow them to act in greater harmony with each other and the rest of nature. Therefore, while contesting elections is an important part of our strategy it is by no means the only one. We will also be involved in grassroots campaigns which are essential if destructive and undemocratic values in the community are going to be seriously challenged by our movement. ... " Many Greens members are indeed very active in various social movements and community projects, but this work mostly doesn't happen under the party's brand (unless it's organised by a particular election campaign team or MP's office). It'll be interesting to see whether, as the Queensland Socialists grow, their non-electioneering work occurs through unions and groups like Socialist Alternative, or as party-controlled initiatives. Greens volunteers after a cyclone prep sandbag-filling session While the Greens share the Socialists' insistence that electioneering isn't the be-all and end-all, they've always been vaguer about exactly what kind of system and society they're aiming for. The party's federal charter (also adopted in the Queensland Greens constitution) clearly implies pretty substantial systemic change, with phrases like "We aim to transform the political, social and economic structures that oppress people and to develop a rich, participatory cultural life that enables the flourishing of a new democratic movement for progressive change." But it doesn't mention the words 'capitalism' or 'socialism.' Personally I don't mind the Greens being more agnostic and open-ended about the long-term destination than the Socialists are. 'Socialism' has multiple competing strains and definitions; hitching your wagon to such a heavily-laden ideological label can be a turn-off for some potential supporters. A lot of people are, like me, rightly critical of centralised government and top-down bureaucracy, and thus wary of political projects which seem like they just want to nationalise everything, even if that's only a transitionary step towards decentralisation and local democracy (I've previously been critical of the Greens for not appreciating this). But I still think Greens messaging should be more explicitly anti-capitalist, and offer supporters a clearer diagnosis of exactly why the system is failing. 7 years as a local politician turned me off ‘big government’ – but there are other alternatives to neoliberal capitalismThere are big differences between centrally-administered public services, and localised, non-profit community-controlled servicesJonathan SriranganathanJonathan Sriranganathan The Greens' relative ideological open-endedness means it draws in supporters with a broader range of political inclinations. This has been both a strength and a handbrake. I can't help but envy Queensland Socialist members who will likely never have to sit through exasperating housing policy workshops where you have to spend hours convincing conservative party members why landlords shouldn't exist. But I also appreciate that the Greens serves as a space for political education where less radical members can come on a journey towards a more robust critique of the status quo. Ultimately though, I think we need to be cautious about placing too much emphasis on what a party says its governing ideology and long-term vision is, and pay much more attention to how it purports to wield power and guard against co-option. Remember, Queensland is o _n paper_ already home to one very large and long-running socialist party... Let's read from the 'Objectives and Principles' section of the ALP's constitution (my emphasis added in bold): > "The Australian Labor Party had its origins in: > (a) the aspirations of the Australian people for a decent, secure, dignified and constructive way of life; > (b) the **recognition by the trade union movement of the necessity for a political voice to take forward the struggle of the working class against the excesses, injustices and inequalities of capitalism** ; and > (c) the commitment by the Australian people to the creation of an independent, free and enlightened Australia. > > The **Australian Labor Party is a democratic socialist party** and has the objective of the democratic socialisation of industry, production, distribution and exchange, to the extent necessary to eliminate exploitation and other anti-social features in these fields." The co-option and degeneration of the Labor party reminds us that it's all well and good to _say_ your goal is system change, but if you're chasing votes and influence within a capitalist system, you need to have some damn good answers as to how you'll ensure your MPs and senior staffers won't be corrupted or disciplined by the pursuit of power. ## Are the Queensland Socialists structurally resistant to co-option and centrist drift? History offers numerous examples from around the world of left-wing parties that start with radical and even revolutionary aims, but gradually sell out or roll over under establishment pressure. The most familiar pattern sees rank-and-file party members losing control over their own MPs, while a smaller layer of senior staffers and/or volunteer office-bearers (time-rich members whose privilege enables them to attend endless meetings and take on influential unpaid committee positions) become the proxy for the wider movement. Those kinds of people are often so busy with internal party machinations that they're increasingly disconnected from grassroots activism on the streets. Consequently, both the MPs and the non-parliamentary power-brokers become more susceptible to centrist/liberal rhetoric and arguments for incremental reformism, leading to compromises and capitulations that uphold the status quo rather than transforming it. They inevitably fold when faced with direct corporate sector threats such as capital strikes (this is basically where big business says to politicians "If you pass those laws we object to, we'll have to pull our investment/shut down our operations in your city and leave hundreds of people unemployed/without services"). At least within the Greens, the party policy platform is still determined by ordinary members through long, slow, democratic processes. But those policies don't usually provide much guidance for how Greens MPs should vote when someone _else_ is in power. The toughest parliamentary strategy decisions – whether to support major party initiatives that are good in some ways and bad in others – are made by politicians and staffers _without_ meaningful involvement of the wider membership. In a state like Queensland, where the hard-right LNP holds majority in a single-chamber parliament, there's much less pressure on our lone Greens MP, Michael Berkman, to roll over. Whereas at the national level, and in states where the Greens have 5+ MPs and perhaps the balance of power, Greens politicians and staffers spend so much time talking to each other, to the mainstream media, to centrist lobbyists, and to senior public servants who've been indoctrinated into neoliberalism, that their exposure to ordinary people outside the political establishment is comparatively limited. I've seen some socialists argue that when Greens senators have made questionable calls to support federal Labor bills, it's simply because the Greens are "all small-l liberals" or "more interested in maintaining the capitalist system than transforming it." I think that's certainly true of a (not-insignificant) minority of members and MPs, but it's a superficial and unsophisticated misdiagnosis of what's really going on. In a hierarchical representative political system, even politicians and staffers who're genuinely keen on major systemic change can be seduced by or feel pressured into reformist strategies if their parties and wider movements for social change have no way to hold them accountable and insulate them against the pressure to moderate their positions, especially when those MPs are also democratically responsive to thousands of centrists/conservatives in their own electorates. After all, if you're not winning votes, you're basically irrelevant. And most Australian voters aren't revolutionaries (yet). A party needs robust structures, processes and cultural norms to protect its MPs from this pressure. In our interview, Liam's answers to my questions about all this feel a little naive. He concedes that Queensland Socialists members probably won't all get a binding vote to tell future MPs how they should vote in parliament on controversial bills. "Sometimes it isn’t really feasible to have a discussion of all members," he says. That's fair enough. But it means that in practice, ordinary Queensland Socialists members won't have any more control and influence over how their MPs vote in parliament than Greens members currently do. “I don’t think we’ve got this totally worked out yet," he concedes. "We’re pretty open to different ways to figure that out.” “I think a principle would be having party leadership that isn’t just the electoral members and that has the ability to discipline elected members if they vote the wrong way.” To me, that also sounds pretty much the same as the Greens. While the Socialists' commitment to restrict future MPs to a teacher's wage might help a little, I can point to multiple examples of local councillors on low part-time salaries who've also succumbed to liberalism. The other potential shields against co-option that Liam identifies – encouraging members to be active in unions, staying connected to protest movements etc. – are also all things the Greens do. Even where rank-and-file members have strong left-wing values and commitments to grassroots struggle, that doesn't automatically flow through to the behaviour of MPs. This is how the system eats usA non-specific cautionary tale about your favourite political partyJonathan SriranganathanJonathan Sriranganathan ## Vanguards within vanguards Liam is at least clear that the initial political culture of Queensland Socialists leans heavily away from centrist compromise. “My attitude is that we want to be a hard and militant minority and have to take positions that even when they’re not popular we have to do it based on our principles.” Socialist Alternative is a major factor here. Its members hold the majority of seats on the new Queensland Socialists executive committee, and SAlt organisers appear to be leading the messaging training sessions for campaign volunteers, facilitating party meetings etc. I’ll save my specific criticisms of SAlt’s organising methods and tactics for another time (I should at least give their spokespeople a chance to respond to those critiques before I publish them). But broadly speaking, SAlt takes the view that movements for social change can easily be derailed by liberals/centrists if the majority of participants don’t already have a robust critique of capitalism and imperialism (not an unreasonable conclusion). So they aim to insert a vanguard of revolutionary socialists into any emerging political force to steer it. Thus SAlt organisers frequently create or co-opt groups like Students for Palestine, Students for Climate Action etc. whenever there’s growing public concern about an issue. SAlt seem to be following this pattern with Queensland Socialists. Liam acknowledges that SAlt members may caucus privately about what direction Queensland Socialists should take – for example, what policies the party should campaign on, which seats they should focus on – then all go to the Queensland Socialists meeting and argue for their agreed position. As Liam puts it: “We think it’s an important democratic right to have internal groupings ... we’re not the only internal grouping within the [Queensland] Socialists – there’s also a grouping called the Communist Caucus.” Defined factions or tendencies haven't emerged in the Greens, partly because the party makes most decisions through democratic consensus processes (apart from preselection ballots). Whereas in the majority voting systems used by the emerging Socialists parties, whoever controls 51% of the votes effectively wields 100% of the power. It seems likely that in practice, Socialist Alternative's 70 or so members will function as a radical tail wagging the Queensland Socialists dog. A Justice for Palestine protest in Brisbane - Socialist Alternative don't necessarily have the biggest numbers, but they do often bring the biggest banners and the most megaphones Of course if the vast majority of Queensland Socialists members (who are not affiliated with Socialist Alternative) are unhappy with how the SAlt-dominated executive committee is steering the party, they could theoretically just vote them out or call a general meeting to agree on a different strategy. But those hundreds of non-affiliated Queensland Socialists members likely won't all have each other's contact details or accessible forums in which to organise. From observing Socialist Alternative's track record in numerous campaigns over the years, I expect (but remain open to being proved wrong) that within party decision-making spaces where every member present gets a vote, they'll mobilise enough time-rich, SAlt-affiliated young people to control the outcome. Or if the broader Queensland Socialists membership outnumbers them and backs a tactic or policy that Socialist Alternative strongly opposes, SAlt members will quietly withdraw their labour or ignore the decision and do their own thing anyway (justified on the basis that the naive majority have been sucked in by liberal propaganda). Liam insists Socialist Alternative wants Queensland Socialists to be legitimately democratic. I guess time will tell how feasible that is in a traditionally-structured party with effectively just one large faction. I've never been a SAlt member, so I might be way off here, but my impression is that within the Queensland branch, the group's strategy is predominantly shaped by around 15 people who all share very similar politics and activism experiences. This means that even though Queensland Socialists will have 500+ members, key decisions will be led by a fairly small and insular vanguard. Given how diverse the voting public is, this might not be a good foundation for crafting messages and campaigns that appeal to your average worker or pensioner. It's hard to predict how this kind of vanguardism might impact balance of power situations where future Socialist MPs must decide whether to support incremental reforms or hold out for bigger victories. In non-electoral campaigns, I've seen examples where SAlt have doggedly argued for maximalist no-compromise positions, and also situations where they've acted much more like reformists than revolutionaries. What does seem clear to me though, is that for the foreseeable future, Queensland Socialists' key strategic decisions will be shaped by the Socialist Alternative bloc more-so than the broader party membership. ## What does this mean for the Greens? Queensland's preferential voting system means that even if the Queensland Socialists do well in elections, and start eating into the Greens primary vote, this won't significantly hurt the Greens' chances of winning seats. In the same way that Labor felt able to ignore growing Greens support until the Greens got so popular that they were starting to win Labor seats, the Greens generally won't feel electorally threatened by the Socialists. This means there won't be much pressure on the party to adopt more radical positions unless anti-capitalist Greens campaigners also push for it. But it would be arrogant of the Greens to dismiss the Socialists altogether. The fact there are _at least_ 500 left-leaning, politically-engaged Queenslanders who see value in contesting elections and are willing to join Queensland Socialists rather than the Queensland Greens reflects a growing sentiment that the Greens haven't been bold and radical enough when it really matters. More importantly, the majority of Queensland Socialists recruits seem to be younger people who will likely have more time and energy for campaigning. The Greens have never put a lot of effort into organising and recruitment on university or TAFE campuses. The larger uni campuses all have Greens-affiliated clubs, but the party itself doesn't allocate ongoing staffing resources towards campus organising, relying mostly on over-stretched staff in MP offices to do this work. In contrast, Socialist Alternative _pays_ a couple student activists in each state to organise other students on campus, and is now funnelling those people into Queensland Socialists. So while the Greens might not be worried about losing too many votes to Queensland Socialists, over the next few years they probably _should_ be worried about losing hundreds of potential young volunteers who are attracted to the more overtly anti-capitalist brand. The other tangible concern for the Greens will be if Queensland Socialists decide to contest Brisbane City Council elections, which use an optional preferential voting system. The Liberal National Party routinely puts substantial resources into telling voters to 'just vote 1,' which discourages Labor, Greens and other minor party/independent voters from allocating preferences. This results in a high preference exhaustion rate that helps the LNP retain control of Brisbane even though their primary vote is below 50%. Basically, the more progressive minor parties that run, the harder it becomes for the Greens to win seats off the majors. If the Socialists run in target Greens wards, this will make the Greens' path to victory slightly harder, and could prove decisive in tight contests. This gives the Queensland Socialists an obvious bargaining chip. They could approach the Greens and offer not to run in crucial council seats if the Greens commit to including certain initiatives and messages in their election campaign. It's a shame Queensland Socialists weren't formally registered as a party in time for the Stafford by-election, as it would've given everyone a clearer indication of how much latent appetite there is for overtly socialist politics in suburban Brisbane. As it is, Liam might get 4% or 5% running on the ballot as an independent, but that won't tell us anything useful about support for socialism. Right now, I don't see the Queensland Socialists as being a fundamentally different kind of political project from the Queensland Greens. The party structure and distribution of power seem fairly conventional, with the main tangible distinction being the central role of Socialist Alternative. But they still hold a lot of value as a critical mirror for larger progressive parties. When Queensland Socialists put forward policies like "cap the number of homes an investor can own" or "limit politicians to the same salary as teachers" this poses a question for the Greens – '_if they can call for it, why can't you?'_ – which will hopefully pressure Larissa Waters, Michael Berkman etc. to be bolder, and help broaden the parameters of mainstream debate. Currently, both parties are essentially pushing in the same direction. For Socialists who think the Greens are too centrist or reformist, the key question remains: what, in practice, are you actually doing differently to ensure you don't go down the same path? Audio recording: Interview with Liam Parry 0:00 /3197.674666 1× _Phew! Geez that was a deep dive wasn't it?_ _If you value political writing that digs beneath the surface, please sign up for a paid subscription so I can put more time into this work (I promise I'll use some of that time to cut out unnecessary paragraphs in future articles)._ Support writing like this _Thanks heaps!_ Towards a new political orientation for the GreensThe Australian Greens’ overall strategy and approach simply isn’t working as well as we need it to - so what changes should we consider?Jonathan SriranganathanJonathan SriranganathanCul de sac politics: Have the Australian Greens hit a strategic dead-end?Why aren’t the Greens offering a stronger challenge to the political establishment?Jonathan SriranganathanJonathan Sriranganathan

Fifteen years ago, while visiting a friend in Highgate Hill, I found myself on the old pedestrian bridge that cuts across Rosecliffe Street Gully, and spotted something I'd never expected to encounter in the inner-city. This little forested gully, on the back side of Beenung-Urrung, feels a long way from the city, even though it's only 1.5km from South Bank train station. Its steep slopes have never been completely cleared of vegetation, and despite the presence of many invasive plants, the gully remains a slightly-surreal reminder of the thick jungle that dominated much of the area before the British invasion. As you climb down the slimy old steps to the footbridge that connects Rosecliffe St to High St, the houses and units on both sides of the gully are completely obscured by trees. Here and there, beams of sunlight penetrate the dense, shady canopy to bounce off long snaking vines and thick carpets of moss. In the middle of a rapidly-growing metropolis, these tangled, feral, forgotten green spaces have an otherworldly, almost magical quality. So that afternoon on the bridge, it felt both surprising _and_ perfectly normal when I saw a live goanna clinging motionless to the trunk of a large tree. The lizard was a few metres above me and at least 10 metres from the bridge, so I can't say I got a really good look at it in the dim light, but I feel certain it was a goanna – a lace monitor – and not a smaller eastern water dragon (which are common in many vegetated areas of the 4101 postcode). Lace monitors (left) grow much bigger than eatern water dragons (right) which are common in inner-Brisbane (Image credits: Shillings1005 and Edward Bell) I returned repeatedly to the Rosecliffe gully over the years, but never saw the monitor again. And no-one else I spoke to about it had ever seen a goanna in Highgate Hill. Even an immediate neighbour of the gully who walks her dog across the bridge daily says she's never seen one there. Lace monitors typically have quite large ranges. Even in an area with abundant, varied food sources, an individual goanna would ordinarily roam across a territory of a couple dozen hectares at least (but ranges can be much smaller around National Park campgrounds for example). The nearest known goanna populations on the south side of the river are 6km away in Toohey Forest. It's hard to imagine a lace monitor travelling safely from southern Tarragindi to Highgate Hill on a regular basis without falling foul of cars or dogs. So a lot of people understandably scoff at the idea that a reptile as big as a lace monitor could survive in a very small remnant patch of jungle in Highgate Hill, surrounded by busy roads and effectively cut off from larger bushland reserves. 0:00 /0:24 1× Is it really so crazy to think a goanna might still be living around this gully without anyone noticing? Over the years, I'd begun to wonder if I'd imagined it, or had just misidentified a really large water dragon. But in January 2024, a resident on West Street in Highgate Hill – 500m north of the Rosecliffe gully, on the _other_ side of busy Gladstone Road – photographed this goanna scrambling up a tree in their yard. Photo via iNaturalist report from Norman Creek Catchment Coordinating Committee That's right – we have a recent, confirmed sighting of a decent-sized goanna in a Highgate Hill backyard, about 400 metres north of the Rosecliffe gully. If you look at West Street on a map, you'll see what an odd location it is to find a lace monitor in. But you can also see how an intrepid goanna might follow the vegetated corridor leading through backyards down towards Park Road West, and cross Gladstone Road to reach the top of the Rosecliffe St gully. While some online sources suggest wild goannas have an average lifespan of 10 to 15 years, lace monitors have been reported to live up to 40 years in captivity. It's _possible_ that this 2024 sighting was actually the same individual I saw 15 years earlier, which would be pretty cool. Goannas have a broad diet, which includes eggs, small reptiles, mammals, birds, insects and scavenged carrion. _If_ a monitor could find suitable nesting spots, and avoid major threats like cars and big dogs, it could probably find enough food in the gullies and yards of Highgate Hill (heck, a goanna could survive exclusively off roadkill possums on Gladstone Road and Dornoch Terrace). We have several possibilities to consider... A) the goanna spotted in West Street was an escaped pet, or had intentionally been trapped in a bushland reserve and relocated to the city (seems _very_ unlikely) B) goannas _are_ ranging between Highgate Hill and existing habitat areas much further south like Toohey Forest, despite the distance and geographical barriers C) this goanna happened to be washed down the river in a heavy storm from an upstream riverside territory such as Oxley Creek, and got a little lost in inner-city backyards while trying to find its way back home D) a lone, completely isolated goanna has survived in the southern end of Highgate Hill for decades, scurrying between the tangled riverside gullies on the western side of Gladstone Road, and leafy private backyards that are increasingly being cleared to make way for boomer-tomb mcmansion renovations E) the Highgate Hill goanna has a slightly larger territory, following the intertidal zone along the river's edge, which connects it to other heavily vegetated green spaces in Dutton Park and the South Brisbane Cemetery without having to cross too many busy roads Personally, I think _E_ is most likely. The sandy intertidal zone along the river's edge is an unbroken wildlife corridor used by a range of species, and isn't easily observed from the back decks of the houses along the ridge tops. So a secretive goanna – or a mother-daughter lineage of goannas – could be moving between Dutton Park, the river's mangrove fringe, and the gullies of Highgate Hill, _very occasionally_ venturing up the ridge and across Gladstone Road. Several established trees at the northern end of the Rosecliffe Gully were cut down in late 2023. Could this have displaced a goanna across Gladstone Road to where it was spotted in West Street? A _very_ _rough_ possible range for the Highgate Hill goanna - but if it were moving across such a big area, how come there aren't more sightings? Interestingly, goannas are parthenogenetic – meaning females can lay viable eggs without fertilisation from a male. So it's possible a female lace monitor that was living in Highgate Hill in the mid-1900s could have bred successfully (even after her territory was cut off from potential mates by post-WWII development and habitat fragmentation), with multiple generations of local female goannas surviving into the 21st century. As this aerial photos from 1936 shows, the gullies on the south side of Highgate Hill were somewhat larger and better connected 90 years ago, but have never been cleared entirely One element I find strange about this – and which is also why a _B_ scenario (where an urban goanna moves across a much larger range from Highgate Hill to Toohey Forest) seems even less likely than _E_ – is that there has only been _one_ publicly reported sighting in all these years. Other large reptiles like carpet pythons are regularly spotted throughout suburbs like Dutton Park, Highgate Hill and Annerley, with photos posted on social media groups and on citizen science platforms like iNaturalist. Brisbane's south side is full of eager, observant wildlife lovers who diligently document everything from moths to skinks to beetles; if one or more lace monitors were regularly moving through the suburbs, including crossing busy roads, wouldn't more people have seen something? I don't pretend to know exactly what's going on here. But now that I know I'm not the only person who has seen a goanna in Highgate Hill, I'd love to find out if anyone else has encountered it. So this article is really just a callout for information to help me solve this little local mystery... **Have you ever seen a goanna in the backstreets or gullies of Highgate Hill?** If so, please email me at [email protected] or post up in the comments. And please also log any photos via the non-profit iNaturalist platform. Blue markers show lace monitor sightings on iNaturalist across Brisbane's south side (circle markers are not specific locations)... Interestingly, there are no reported sightings on iNaturalist of lace monitors in/around Whites Hill Reserve, but plenty in Toohey Forest. If anyone has an explanation for what happened to the Whites Hill goannas, please let me know ## Why does this even matter? Lace monitors are still reasonably common in South-East Queensland bushland reserves further away from the city centre. But relentless suburban sprawl is fragmenting these populations, creating a real risk of genetic bottlenecks due to inbreeding (they're already classified as an endangered species in Victoria). If, however, enough densely-vegetated green space is preserved _within_ suburban landscapes for lace monitors to move around safely, their future might be a little brighter. The persistence of one or more goannas in an inner-city suburb like Highgate Hill feels important to me because even a lot of progressive residents and policymakers no longer consider urban green spaces (whether private yards or public parks) as being conservation-worthy native habitat areas, and primarily focus on designing and managing them to best serve human recreation needs. But what if we recognised that networks of vegetated parks and private yards _can_ support a more diverse range of species – including larger animals like 2 metre-long goannas? This strengthens the case for letting the grass grow long and planting denser understorey vegetation (not just scattered trees and manicured lawns), as well as being more thoughtful about factors like light pollution, rodent poison use, and of course car speed limits. 0:00 /0:14 1× This old water dragon wasn't spilling any secrets about local goannas For city-dwellers, 'connection to nature' shouldn't just be about trees or water views alone. As George Monbiot writes in Feral, we stand to lose more than we realise if we fail to make room for wild animals... > "It creates a dull world, a flat world, a world lacking in colour and variety, which enhances ecological boredom, narrows the scope of our lives, limits the range of our engagement with nature, pushes us towards a monoculture of the spirit.” Encounters with wild animals – especially something as impressive as a large goanna – help remind us how big and beautiful the world is, and snap us out of the monotonous consumerist complacency that urban life keeps force-feeding us. Brisbane's biodiversity is what makes it special, and sets it apart from so many other cities around the world. At a time when we're losing so much to thoughtless, profit-driven development, the idea that a wily goanna can surreptitiously eke out an existence in the inner-city, sneaking unnoticed past the gentrifiers' motion-sensor security cameras, is pretty damn cool. If nothing else, it would help keep those bush turkey numbers in check. _Thanks heaps for reading! For more of my writing, sign up for a subscription to my monthly newsletter..._ Subscribe Could Brisbane bring back Christmas beetle swarms?Beetles don’t give a toss about property boundaries or surveillance camerasJonathan SriranganathanJonathan SriranganathanKoalas are trying to return to Greenslopes and Annerley – but they’ll need our helpYes, this is kind of a good news storyJonathan SriranganathanJonathan Sriranganathan

It's 2020, the dawn of the 21st century's third decade. Covid-19 is killing millions across the world, homelessness and poverty are rising rapidly across Australia, and tens of thousands of people in our city have been taking to the streets to call for climate justice and an end to systemic racism. At the same time, many of the most powerful people in Brisbane are spending long hours in private meetings.... "What were they talking about?" you may well ask. Those politicians, property developers and business execs weren't meeting to discuss pandemic responses or housing policy or global warming or the Black Lives Matter movement. They were plotting to ensure that our city would host the 2032 Olympics. While Queensland Labor is often blamed for signing us up to host, the push initially came from the LNP-dominated Brisbane City Council. Graham Quirk and Adrian Schrinner eventually convinced Liberal Prime Minister Scott Morrison to back the bid, and it was only after both the local and federal governments joined in calling for Brisbane to host that Annastacia Palaszczuk and the Queensland government grudgingly came to the table. While the bid had been in the works for years, the definitive city council vote took place on 23 March, 2021. I was the only city councillor to vote against Brisbane hosting the Olympics (my main reasons were outlined in this post). Despite hosting being supported by most of the media, by Liberal, Labor and Independent councillors, and of course by lobbyists for major industries like property development and tourism, I was reassured to discover a large chunk of the general public seemed to be on my side. > Yesterday, Brisbane City Council voted on whether to commit to hosting the Olympics in 2032 (assuming the International... > > Posted by Jonathan Sriranganathan on Tuesday 23 March 2021 Strangers in the street stopped to congratulate me on saying 'no.' Even some people who really loved the Olympics could see actually hosting it was a bad proposition for Brissie. So I was surprised and disappointed that over the next few years, other state and federal Greens reps didn't come out as strongly against hosting as I had. Greens MPs helped run a strong campaign opposing the proposal to demolish and rebuild the Gabba as the main stadium (which would have shut down the area's only public school), but key spokespeople stopped short of saying publicly that we should pull out of hosting entirely. Now in 2026, the latest messaging from Greens state MP Michael Berkman and federal MP Elizabeth Watson-Brown revolves around "an Olympics for the people." Michael's website explains: "Our _Olympics for the People_ campaign is a six year push for a better deal for Queenslanders." Basically this seems to be about saying 'the Olympics are coming and we can't stop that, but what would have to change in order to ensure hosting the Olympics delivers a _positive_ legacy for our city (and the wider state)?' Elizabeth Watson-Brown's speech in the House of Representatives on 24 November, 2025 (page 165 of this PDF) exemplifies this political orientation, with phrases like "the Brisbane 2032 Olympics Games are an opportunity to leave a lasting and positive impact for the regular people of Brisbane" and "We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reshape our city." While Libby's goals obviously differ, these kinds of lines wouldn't seem out of place in a property industry conference or a Liberal party fundraiser. > $15B for zero new homes or public transport?! We can get a better deal from the #brisbane2032 #olympics 💚 > > Posted by Elizabeth Watson-Brown - Greens MP for Ryan on Friday 27 February 2026 I was grateful to be invited to speak at Elizabeth and Michael's recent "Olympics for the people" summit. It featured insightful speakers and prompted some great discussions. But I worry their overall "people's Olympics" narrative is both ineffective for building Greens political support _and_ intellectually dishonest, in that it conveys the false impression that an ethical or net-beneficial Brisbane Olympics is even possible. In thinking through whether the Greens are taking the right strategic approach, I flicked off some questions to Elizabeth and Michael. To their credit, Michael Berkman replied (on behalf of both of them) with a detailed and thoughtful response. Rather than cherrypicking, I figured I'd republish my questions and his answer here in full, before diving into further analysis. Here's what I asked: * _Considering all the likely social, economic and environmental impacts, do you agree that it's _impossible_ for South-East Queensland to host an Olympics that's overall net-beneficial for our city and the world?_ * _If you think an ethical Olympics event _is_ possible, what policy priorities would you consider necessary to ensure the positives outweigh the negatives?_ * _Does the Greens push around an 'Olympics for the people' reinforce the flawed premise that hosting an Olympics can be a good thing, and thus weaken opposition to specific negative impacts? For example, if the public accepts the general proposition that a 'good' Olympics is possible, isn't it then easier for conservative politicians to argue that key projects like the Barrambin stadiums must proceed?_ * _For several years now, the Greens have avoided taking a firm, outright anti-Olympics position, and instead focused on positively-framed demands like "we need athletes village public housing" and "we need more public transport investment" (alongside our critiques about negatives like the Barrambin stadiums). This strategic approach seems to have yielded no tangible victories or concessions – why double down on it when it doesn't seem to be working?_ * _Thinking strategically, if the Greens' goal is to extract as many positive concessions and outcomes as possible, isn't it stronger and more effective to start with a firm negotiating position of "the Olympics are terrible and will cause lots of harm" to pressure the establishment into placating concerns and delivering some of the things you're calling for?_ * _The Greens seem to be appealing to voters who want to see the positives of hosting the Games and who are turned off by 'party-pooper Greens' who 'say no to everything.' But presumably, as the Games draws closer, the Greens will be siding publicly with First Nations-led protests against the games, with criticisms of expanding surveillance and securitisation, and with global justice movements calling for Olympic boycotts on the basis that countries like Israel are participating, at which point the Greens are inevitably going to turn off the pro-Olympics crowd anyway. Are you chasing a constituency that you have no hope of retaining?_ * _Do you have any robust, statistically representative public opinion data suggesting that the majority of Queenslanders are broadly and unwaveringly pro-Olympics?_ * __If_ your electorates of Ryan and Maiwar are majority pro-Olympics, but Queensland voters as a whole lean towards Olympic scepticism, should you represent your own voters' views or the views of the Queensland/Australian public as a whole?_ Here's Michael's response: > "Regarding whether a ‘good Olympics is possible’, our current thinking, and this was also discussed at a workshop at a state council, is that there needs to be a separation between people’s love of sport and enjoying a big event, from the economics and power relations embedded in the Olympics as they play out in our system. > There is no essential reason why there couldn’t be an Olympics event that is run in the interests of everyday people. To genuinely pull that off would likely require a paradigm shift in our government and economic system, but that’s part of the purpose of the approach we are taking. > Regarding the idea that an ‘Olympics for the people’ stance might “weaken opposition to specific negative impacts”, we think the answer is the opposite. It is _because_ the campaign is aimed at raising people’s expectations, and suggesting that there should be a way to deliver an Olympics in a way that benefits everyone, that we are more able to critique the negative impacts (such as privatisations of public land, house price/rent increases, etc), since we’re pointing to a concrete alternative the government should or could have taken. > People will rightly understand that the Olympics won’t be stopped, and we think that means an entirely anti-Olympics position will mean that the critiques of the negative elements won’t reach a wider audience of everyday people. > It is important that the polarisation we’re drawing is not “Olympics vs everyday people”, certainly not “big sporting event vs everyday people” – it _is_ between an Olympics run by and for the rich vs something that works for regular people. > To suggest this approach should be dropped because we haven’t won any concessions yet is premature – the Greens have only just started putting significant energies into this, and it's not clear that a directly oppositional approach would be more successful. > The Greens are, or should be, a coalitional party. We will indeed continue to support groups that oppose the Olympics on various grounds if they align with our values, but there is no essential reason that these can’t be brought within a frame of an Olympics for the People. > The meta level approach of an Olympics for the People in no way precludes vigorously supporting (or even initiating) a campaign to stop the privatisation of public land, or opposing wasteful, destructive stadium projects, and our reps are working on those campaigns already." I really appreciate that Michael took the time to provide such a comprehensive response. If you emailed these kinds of strategic questions to most other Queensland politicians, you'd be lucky to get two or three sentences of contrived spin, and probably wouldn't receive a reply at all. Generally speaking, I think Michael is doing a great job as an MP. His team pretty reliably make the right calls when presented with tough strategic choices. But having read through his reasoning on this issue, I find myself wholly unconvinced. ## Does the Greens position win over swing voters and/or meaningfully impact political discourse? To disengaged/inattentive voters, 'Olympics for the people' messaging is barely distinguishable from an uncritical 'pro-Olympics' position, particularly when summarised and simplified for media dissemination. Unfortunately, Queensland Greens MPs currently don't have the reach to communicate a more detailed, nuanced message (except perhaps to their own small mailing lists and existing supporter bases). The Greens aren't going to win many votes off the major parties by being seen as pro-Olympics, especially in a context where the Queensland Labor opposition is also broadly pro-Olympics but critical of the LNP's public asset sell-offs and excessive spending on stadiums. There are more votes to be won with a message of strong Olympics scepticism. Headlines like this one convey the impression that the Greens are generally pro-Olympics Leading into 2032, as venue construction costs balloon, civil liberties are stripped away, and low-income renters are evicted so their homes can be turned into Airbnbs (side note: Airbnb is a major Olympics sponsor), the Greens' _current_ Olympics messaging and orientation will not position them well to capitalise on growing voter frustration with the mega-event. But it also doesn't seem likely to win any significant policy changes. Right now, neither the LNP nor Labor pay much attention to Greens policy demands unless a groundswell of public support for a Greens proposal makes the major parties worried about losing votes over the issue (the most significant recent example of this is the Queensland Greens demand for free public transport leading to the introduction of 50 cent fares). So if a Greens announcement or policy demand doesn't resonate with a large chunk of the general public, it generally has negligible influence over government policy-making. The harsh reality is that the Greens' initial media push regarding "a people's Olympics" made no discernible dent in Queensland's political discourse. Elizabeth and Michael attracted some limited mainstream media coverage focussed on their calls for an Olympics public holiday, but the story dropped out of the news cycle pretty quickly. Their social media assets also didn't travel very far online. This is in part because aside from the public holiday idea, the 'Olympics for the people' campaign isn't calling for anything new or sensational enough to gain online traction – the Greens have already been pushing for more investment in public housing, public transport, waterway restoration etc. for years. But I also suspect it's because at a deeper level, the messaging just didn't strike a strong chord for many Queenslanders. 7NEWS Queensland on Instagram: “Would you take a dip in the Brisbane River? How about an extra public holiday in July? They’re among the ideas being put forward by the Greens as part of their wishlist for the 2032 Olympics. @melwightman”178 likes, 3 comments - 7newsqueensland on February 28, 2026: “Would you take a dip in the Brisbane River? How about an extra public holiday in July? They’re among the ideas being put forward by the Greens as part of their wishlist for the 2032 Olympics. @melwightman”.Instagram If, like me, you think the Olympics is an irredeemably negative phenomenon that's a waste of resources and a distraction from more important issues, Michael and Elizabeth's framing doesn't work for you, because it comes across as too sympathetic to the Olympics (especially in terms of how the media reported it). Whereas if you're already firmly pro-Olympics, calls for more frequent public transport and for athlete villages to become public housing _might_ reinforce your view that the Olympics can be a good thing, but probably aren't exciting enough to motivate you to join a campaign or even share social media posts. And if you don't have strong opinions about the Olympics either way, nothing about this campaign is striking enough to grab your interest. Most Queenslanders will fit into one of those three groups. I _suspect_ a majority would lean towards scepticism or outright hostility to the Olympics, but I don't know for sure. Neither do the Greens. Michael's response didn't answer my question about public opinion polling. I take this as confirmation of what I already assumed – Greens MPs and strategists have no independent statewide polling or survey data telling them what the general public thinks of the Olympics. So in deciding what messages will play well with the electorate, Michael and Libby's offices are relying on rough impressions based on general mainstream media discourse, and on the tone of commentary from the small subset of voters who proactively contact MPs (and who aren't necessarily representative of the wider Queensland public). Right now there are no indications that an "Olympics for the people" message is going to win over lots of voters, which in turn means this campaign isn't giving Greens MPs any additional leverage over the major parties regarding demands like public housing investment. Michael's suggestion that "there's no evidence that a directly oppositional approach would be more successful" seems to ignore the experience of the global NOlympics movement; activists organising across different host cities over many years have found they gain greater public traction and leverage by articulating a robust, unapologetic critique of the Olympics as a whole, rather than merely calling for reforms to Olympics delivery models. Court challenges alone won’t save Barrambin, but could the Save Victoria Park campaign find a radical edge?Is being ‘anti-stadium’ but ‘pro-Olympics’ really the best strategy?Jonathan SriranganathanJonathan Sriranganathan My deeper concern though, is that in suggesting "There is no essential reason why there couldn’t be an Olympics event that is run in the interests of everyday people," Greens spokespeople are ultimately deceiving themselves and their followers. ## A 'good' Olympics is impossible It’s well-established that hosting the Olympics is a loss-making proposition. The world comes to have a party, while locals bear the costs for years to come. The International Olympic Committee's (IOC) host agreement heaps all the risk and cost onto Queensland – there's no way to avoid this liability while proceeding as a host. But even if Brisbane were to somehow run a profitable Olympics and use the money to pay for good stuff like public housing or cleaning up the river, that profit margin would only be possible through some combination of exploiting workers, ripping off tourists, giving advertising platforms to unethical multinational corporations, and unsustainable exploitation of the environment. Even ostensibly pro-capitalist liberals understand the Olympics is a dud proposition for host cities In terms of workforce, total population, gross regional product, and housing stock, **South-East Queensland will be the smallest Summer Olympics host in decades.** While larger host cities like Beijing, London, Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo, Paris and Los Angeles _might_ be better able to absorb the impacts of such a major event, a smaller city like Brisbane will feel them more dramatically. Brisbane is already seeing the upward pressure on housing costs, construction material and workforce capacity shortages, and delays to urgent, essential projects that would otherwise take priority if not for the Olympics. Cost overruns will most likely be financed by public asset sales and/or increasing state debt. Importantly, hosting doesn't involve the IOC handing Queensland any additional funding for public infrastructure, environmental restoration or any of the other 'positive legacies' that might hypothetically flow from an Olympics, and the IOC's financial contribution _doesn_ 't cover the full operational costs of running the games. Hosting means Queensland has _less_ money to spend on essential public infrastructure and services, not more. At best, hosting gives South-East Queensland another argument that it deserves a larger share of federal government public funding than other parts of Australia. But five years on from Brisbane winning the bid, that argument hasn't translated to anything concrete. The only federal contribution has been $3.4 billion towards building stadiums we don't need. There's no practical reason why Greens demands for public housing and other infrastructure need to be linked to the Olympics. Any funding the government might use to build more public homes, rail lines or bike lanes could be spent on those projects even if the Olympics _weren't_ happening. But let's be generous to the Greens and assume hosting _did_ somehow contribute to better public transport services, a major public housing boost, more parks and community facilities, improved natural habitat spaces, more investment in the arts and cultural institutions etc. Even with all that included, the Olympics would _still_ be deeply problematic... ### The shit is baked in The host city has no control over major IOC sponsorship agreements with deeply problematic corporations like Coca Cola and Airbnb. There's no way for Brisbane _not_ to platform these brands unless we pull out of hosting altogether. – Top-level sponsorship agreements include exclusive venue catering rights. So locally-brewed beers and Queensland institutions like Bundaberg Ginger Beer will **not** be sold at Brisbane 2032 stadiums – only Coca Cola soft drinks and AV InBev beers (they own Corona) are allowed to be sold. There's also currently no ecologically sustainable way for hundreds of thousands of people to fly all the way to Brisbane for a 2-week event. Once you factor in _all_ the impacts of an event like this, a 'carbon-neutral' or 'environmentally sustainable' games will never stack up. Revenue from ticket sales, broadcasting rights and corporate advertising will never be enough to cover the costs of mitigating the negative environmental consequences. From a governance perspective, the distraction factor is significant. In our hierarchical political system, time-poor government ministers, mayors and senior department officials frequently become decision-making bottlenecks. Every hour that the Queensland premier, a city council committee or a group of public servants spends planning or reviewing some element related to hosting the Olympics is time that could and should be spent addressing myriad other more pressing issues. At a broader level, the Olympics is basically a pissing contest between competing imperial powers and extractivist petrostates. Medal tallies primarily reflect how much money different countries are able and willing to allocate towards supporting and training athletes, reinforcing the entrenched inequalities between the winners and losers of neoliberal capitalism. The entire exercise in competitive nationalism is highly politicised, reflecting many of the biases and injustices inherent within the current global order (take, for example, the IOC's decision to exclude Russia from the 2024 Paris Olympics while supporting Israel to participate, or the ongoing practice of describing the Taiwanese team as 'Chinese Taipei' so as not to aggravate China). Underneath the glossy facade, the Olympics is not so much about nations putting aside differences to compete in a spirit of harmony and friendship, as it is a consumerist profit-fest for multinationals and a massive PR exercise in sportswashing colonialism, imperialism and all manner of human rights abuses by major powers and their allies. I'm not saying the Olympics is _all_ bad. Of course there are also positives that flow from sharing a collective experience where you feel connected to millions of people around the world who are watching the same impressive feats of human strength and skill. But the negative costs and effects outweigh the positives, especially for the host city. The most generous reading of the Greens approach is that they _know_ a genuinely 'net-good' Olympics _is_ impossible under the current colonial capitalist global order (Michael's comment about a "paradigm shift in our government and economic system" alludes to this). So starting a conversation about what would have to change for a true "people's Olympics" to be possible is just a tactic to lead followers along a very long journey towards critiquing imperialism and neoliberalism. But that's an incredibly slow, indirect and inefficient way of trying to teach Queensland voters that 'capitalism = bad.' And if your argument for a "people's Olympics" is actually premised on a major political and economic paradigm shift, it seems odd to then argue that "People will rightly understand that the Olympics won’t be stopped." Why is stopping the Olympics considered more farfetched than transforming entire political and economic systems? Perhaps what's ultimately going on here is that Greens strategists have confused "meeting voters where they're at" with "parroting back voters' knee-jerk opinions about an issue that they haven't given much thought to." If you simply ask someone "what do you think of the Olympics?" after they've been bombarded with pro-Olympics propaganda from politicians, the property industry and the IOC, maybe they'll say something positive about it. But it won't be a deeply-held, unshakeable conviction. I've had plenty of conversations with people who have a default positive orientation towards the Olympics but who, once offered an alternative perspective to the IOC's spin, will agree that we'd be better off putting our resources and time towards something else. The Greens have a responsibility to educate the public and explain the significant flaws and harms associated with the Olympics, rather than watering down the critique because they've concluded (based on vibes rather than hard data) that voters will be turned off by it. As alluded to in my questions to Michael, over the next few years the Greens will likely support various protest causes that will be perceived as derailing or undermining Olympics preparations. This will ultimately turn off strongly pro-Olympics voters despite Greens attempts to find an illusory middle-ground. So the party will be better off electorally if it can convince more voters of the truth – that the Olympics are, on balance, a bad thing. The silver lining for the Greens is that the "Olympics for the people" campaign has so far gained so little traction that the party could easily still pivot towards a more oppositional stance without it seeming like a major backflip. If MPs are worried about turning off some voters by being too negative, for now it would perhaps be better not to talk about the Olympics at all. But one way or another, the Greens will have to decide where they really stand eventually. _Thanks for reading! To keep these articles freely available to the wider public, and support me to write more stuff like this, please consider signing up for a $5/month subscription..._ Support radical political commentary The future of Barrambin/Victoria Park: Stadiums or koalas?What if we re-imagined Barrambin as a space of ecological restoration, rather than cramming more stuff into it?Jonathan SriranganathanJonathan Sriranganathan

Dear friends (and subscribers who I haven't actually met yet but who would probably be my friends if we got to know each other), Sorry it's been so long between updates. As mentioned in my last newsletter, I became a father last September! This week, my son Sunny is six months old. Parenting has been a whimsical, joyful experience, but writing took a backseat for a while there. Going forward, I'm hoping to return to monthly updates with a few articles per month about radical politics, green urbanism and whatever else takes my fancy. You can listen to and read some political reflections on my first months of parenting via this article... WTF? Non-birthing partners can’t stay at the hospital with their newborn?A recent radio discussion about parenting, plus a rant about how public hospitals keep parents apart from their newbornsJonathan SriranganathanJonathan Sriranganathan Further below is a rundown of other articles I've churned out over the past month. I hope you enjoy catching up on some of what I've been thinking about. First though, I wanted to invite you to a new, free, monthly event I'm helping organise, and which my hip-hop/folk band Rivermouth will also be playing at... ## No Phones, No Phascists Lately I've been feeling that Brisbane doesn't have enough free-entry, non-commercialised recurring community events where radical and counter-cultural folks can meet and connect. Lots of us seem to be craving opportunities to build face-to-face relationships that aren't mediated by social media platforms or by formal political organisations with prescriptive agendas. In a time of rising fascism, it's crucial we create and maintain free spaces where we can converge and build community. So from 4pm to 8pm on Friday, 27 March, we're holding a free event called **No Phones, No Phascists** in a private backyard at 30 Joachim St, Holland Park West. The 'no phones' theme isn't a hard-and-fast rule (it's ok to have a phone on you – just leave it in your pocket or bag), but we encourage everyone to be present in the space and resist getting sucked into your device. The 'no fascists' rule is a little stricter. This event is proudly anti-racist and queer-friendly. Everyone's welcome except TERFs/fascists/genocide-apologists. Rough program: 4pm – open jam – musicians feel free to bring your instruments 5pm to 5:40ish – open mic for solo acts, duets, comedians and poets – maximum 5 minutes for spoken word and 8 minutes for musicians (including setup time) – capped list, so please arrive by 4:15 to guarantee a slot (poets if you haven't memorised your work, we encourage you to read out of a notebook rather than off your phone screen) 5:45pm community announcements – anyone can promote local community events/projects/protests 6pm – Baque Australis – Brazilian drumming group 6:20ish – Saro and Andrew (of Midnight Sound Machine) - funk/soul duo 7pm – Rivermouth – 4-piece hip-hop/folk band This is an all-ages, family-friendly event held in a private backyard. We’ll be serving vegan soup for dinner from around 5:30pm (gold coin donation to cover costs, please BYO bowl and spoon if you can). We may run out of food – first come, first served. Please note that street parking is very limited, so we encourage public/active transport if you can. The nearest bus stop is the Birdwood Rd Wellers Hill stop, just 300m walk through Joachim St Park (direct buses from the city during peak hour, plus the 179 runs regularly from Garden City and from UQ/Boggo Rd/Buranda). Or you can walk 700m to high-frequency bus stops on Logan Rd, or 1km to the Holland Park West busway station. Cycling access is super safe and easy - you can ride all the way from the city/South Bank/Woolloongabba on fully separated bikeways via the Veloway without having to mix with traffic. BYO food and drinks is fine, but no hard drugs or smoking on the property + please don’t overdo the alcohol – this is not a piss-up. Importantly, this is a zero-waste event – it would be great if you can take all your own rubbish home with you. Quiet, comfy spaces for breastfeeding available. Venue is partially wheelchair accessible (email me if you have questions about this). If you'll be in Brisbane on the last Friday of the month, please come along and spread the word to friends. There's a Facebook event at this link. ## Recent writing If you don't have time to read everything I've written lately, I think this piece is perhaps the most important. Cul de sac politics: Have the Australian Greens hit a strategic dead-end?Why aren’t the Greens offering a stronger challenge to the political establishment?Jonathan SriranganathanJonathan Sriranganathan Many of you will have seen that while the UK Greens are surging in the polls and now represent one of the strongest opposing forces to far-right, xenophobic political parties, the Australian Greens have largely faded into the background. I don't want to pretend that this analysis is a complete picture of everything that's going on, but I think it highlights some relevant factors that Greens supporters should attend to... And this piece should be of interest to anyone who likes thinking about the future of our cities and wants to see more sustainable, equitable alternatives to endless, car-dominated suburban sprawl. ‘Missing middle’ medium density just ain’t happening – we need to talk about retrofitting suburbia instead of replacing itSuburban sprawl won’t disappear in a hurry - so how can we make it more sustainable?Jonathan SriranganathanJonathan Sriranganathan It focuses mostly on Greater Brisbane, but the critique and alternative vision are equally relevant to other Australian cities and towns, and in fact to most other car-dominated cities around the world. For those wanting some good news, this article might be a welcome counterweight to all the sadness and horror that's unfolding in the world right now. Koalas are trying to return to Greenslopes and Annerley – but they’ll need our helpYes, this is kind of a good news storyJonathan SriranganathanJonathan Sriranganathan I really enjoyed researching and writing this one, and I hope it encourages more people to pressure local and state governments to get serious about reforesting suburban Brisbane. And here's one more article about a very niche, local concern around Woolloongabba/Buranda. If I'm honest, I don't think it'll be of much interest to people who don't live in the immediate vicinity, but it's a good case study into how the Liberal National Party are quietly removing parkland from Brisbane's city plan without anyone noticing... Brisbane City Council cutting parkland by stealth: 30 Tottenham St, Woolloongabba case studyYet another long-awaited park expansion is being quietly removed from Brisbane’s city planJonathan SriranganathanJonathan Sriranganathan ## Other worthwhile stuff While you're here, for anyone who didn't see it at the time, I though I'd also reshare this article I published back in January 2025 explaining why some unhoused residents turn down private sector boarding house accommodation and continue sleeping rough. Recently, Brisbane City Council again forcibly moved on rough sleepers from Musgrave Park en masse without warning, and has been lying to the public by claiming that those people were offered suitable alternative accommodation options. Hopefully this piece helps contextualise what's going on. Queensland’s boarding house trap: Why some people ‘prefer’ a tent in the parkThe rough news is that if you agree to live in a place like this, you’ll also be removed from the public housing waiting listJonathan SriranganathanJonathan Sriranganathan Recently ABC Radio Brisbane interviewed me about my thoughts on the Australian Greens' political strategy and orientation. You can watch the discussion here... I also wanted to remind Brisbane-based readers that if you want timely news of upcoming radical events, you might also like to subscribe to the Brisbane Radical Events Diary mailing list, which sends out a weekly round-up of what's happening in our city on the activism front. And if, like me, you've lost trust in mainstream media altogether and have been looking for more alternative news sources that offer some critical analysis of what's going on in the world (and how it's being reported), I recommend checking out Lamestream – their twice-weekly podcast is well worth a listen. Thanks for reading and thanks in particular to my paying subscribers. Your financial support gives me the time not only to think, research and write about important issues, but also to organise community events like No Phones, No Phascists. Hopefully I'll see you in the backyard on 27 March! Warm regards, Jonno

<p>The older bloke walking the wannabe-horse sees us staring up at the tree canopy and smiles.</p><p>"You won't find any koalas around here," he tells me confidently (perhaps a tad patronisingly).</p><p>"Oh really? Do you walk this way often?" I reply.</p><p>"Yep... Lived here thirty years. There's no koalas on this side of Nursery Road, but I sometimes see them down in Mansfield where I work."</p><p>"But we saw one in that tree there just last week."</p><p>He clearly doesn't believe us... Squints at me like I might be a little stupid, or I'm trying to con him somehow.</p><p>I pull out my phone to show him the photos and video.</p><p>His eyes widen. He looks back and forth from the images to the tree I'm talking about, like he's seeing his neighbourhood in a completely new light. His massive dog is getting impatient though, so he smiles and hurries off (without really conceding that he was wrong). But as the hound pulls him along, I notice him scanning the tree canopy above the footpath, maybe for the first time in years.</p><p>The brief interaction reminds me that most people have very little idea about what kinds of creatures are moving through their backyards and local parks after dark, or what might be watching them from the trees that grow alongside their regular walking route.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2026/02/Koala-holland-park-west-1.jpeg" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="900" height="1020" srcset="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/02/Koala-holland-park-west-1.jpeg 600w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2026/02/Koala-holland-park-west-1.jpeg 900w" /><figcaption><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">We spotted this fella in Holland Park West between the high school and the motorway, but koalas are easy to miss if you're not paying attention - a lot of people would've jogged straight past</span></figcaption></figure><p>In a world of seemingly endless environmental destruction, I look for glimmers of hope wherever I can. It turns out there are a few right here on Brisbane's south side...</p><p>In the 1980s, koalas were considered locally extinct in Toohey Forest and Mount Gravatt Outlook Reserve.</p><p>Up until the late 1920s, the Queensland government <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-30/killing-koalas-90-years-since-qld-month-long-open-season/8839720" rel="noreferrer">actively encouraged hunting of koalas</a> for their furs, with over 600 000 koala pelts (yes, you read that number correctly) collected and sold in August 1927 alone. Between the intentional hunting of literally <em>millions </em>of Queensland koalas, and decades of widespread tree-clearing as the city sprawled outwards, it's not surprising Brisbane ecologists couldn't find them in this patch of remnant urban bushland, entirely surrounded by housing and industrial development.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2026/02/image-4.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="1634" height="1078" srcset="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/02/image-4.png 600w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w1000/2026/02/image-4.png 1000w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w1600/2026/02/image-4.png 1600w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2026/02/image-4.png 1634w" /><figcaption><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">The combined area of Toohey Forest, Mt Gravatt Outlook Reserve and the uncleared parts of the Griffith University site covers approximately 640 hectares, making this one of Australia's largest urban bushland areas </span><i><em class="italic" style="white-space:pre-wrap">within </em></i><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">the boundaries of a capital city</span></figcaption></figure><p>But today in Toohey Forest, koala populations are growing steadily on both sides of the M3 motorway, and the marsupials are increasingly spreading beyond the reserves and across the suburbs. Based on <a href="https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?taxon_id=42981">reported sightings and movements</a> (which only provide a partial picture of all the places koalas are moving to), it looks like koalas from Toohey/Mt Gravatt are now pretty close to linking up with the more established population in Whites Hill bushland reserve (if they haven’t already done so).</p><p>Unfortunately, they're also <a href="https://www.facebook.com/whiteshillreserve/posts/pfbid02UT6KvhND8jJPvDWY6X8ZMBfAD4Np55pHhZJMRwQ9qCzBCZMxcUm64njAyeuKsJkYl" rel="noreferrer">frequently being hit by cars</a>.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2025/12/image-6.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="1166" height="844" srcset="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w600/2025/12/image-6.png 600w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w1000/2025/12/image-6.png 1000w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2025/12/image-6.png 1166w" /><figcaption><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">Koala sightings </span><a href="https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?subview=map&amp;taxon_id=42981" rel="noreferrer"><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">reported on iNaturalist</span></a><span style="white-space:pre-wrap"> show koalas are venturing out from both the Whites Hill and Toohey Forest/Mount Gravatt bushland reserves</span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://news.griffith.edu.au/2019/09/19/an-ecological-island-in-suburbia-toohey-forest-crucial-to-brisbane-biodiversity/" rel="noreferrer">Various sources</a> suggest that the reappearance of koalas in Toohey Forest is primarily due to under-the-radar relocations by wildlife rescuers. One former state government employee told me that in the 90s and early 2000s, even the Queensland government itself routinely relocated lost koalas to the nearest, most convenient bushland reserve, regardless of whether officials knew the site was suitable koala habitat.</p><p>Koalas have been roaming from Whites Hill across Coorparoo, Holland Park, Camp Hill and Mt Gravatt East for many years now, but now they’re increasingly being seen not just in Tarragindi, immediately to the north of Toohey Forest, but in parts of Moorooka, Salisbury, Holland Park West, and even the edges of Annerley and Greenslopes.</p><p><strong>That's right – koalas have been repeatedly sighted just a 5-minute drive south of the Brisbane CBD.</strong></p><p>Ten or fifteen years ago, I would’ve considered it pretty unlikely that koalas could become a regular occurrence in Brisbane’s inner-south side, but it turns out Toohey Forest koalas are tenacious, intrepid little buggers. Under cover of darkness, they roam the suburbs much further than most people realise.</p><p>To repurpose an old aphorism – the koala isn’t crossing the road, the road is crossing the forest.</p><p>Just a few generations ago, much of Annerley, Fairfield and Greenslopes would’ve been solid koala habitat. The soil on which their eucalyptus woodlands once grew is still there under the roads, driveways, houses and swimming pools.</p><p>Over the past 18 months, individual koalas have been photographed (admittedly on only a couple of occasions) as far north as Barr Street Park (on the south/west side of the Pacific Motorway), and in the bushland behind Nicholson Street at the southern end of Greenslopes (which is on the north/east side of the motorway). They’ve also repeatedly made it to streets around Clifton Hill in southern Annerley.</p><p>Meanwhile Whites Hill koalas are now occasionally moving west across Cavendish Road, towards the eastern side of Greenslopes.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2025/12/image-7.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="1156" height="634" srcset="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w600/2025/12/image-7.png 600w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w1000/2025/12/image-7.png 1000w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2025/12/image-7.png 1156w" /><figcaption><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">These pins from 2024 and 2025 show how far north individual koalas (presumably from Toohey Forest) have roamed</span></figcaption></figure><p>Of course, modern Australian suburbia can be pretty hostile to koalas. The biggest threats are fast-moving cars and large dogs.</p><p>But while the city council’s urban planners and traffic engineers might insist on a clear distinction between bushland reserves and residential areas, koalas evidently aren’t as concerned about where the City Plan zoning maps <em>say </em>they should go.</p><p>As their numbers increase, they'll continue pushing out of Whites Hill and Toohey Forest, and eventually – if they aren't mowed down by cars – into neighbourhoods where the marsupials haven’t been seen for 100 years.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2026/02/image-5.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="2000" height="1709" srcset="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/02/image-5.png 600w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w1000/2026/02/image-5.png 1000w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w1600/2026/02/image-5.png 1600w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2026/02/image-5.png 2048w" /><figcaption><a href="https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/297549183" rel="noreferrer"><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">iNaturalist user Maxicole</span></a><span style="white-space:pre-wrap"> photographed this koala in Clifton Hill Peace Park, Annerley, in July 2025</span></figcaption></figure><p></p><h3 id="where-are-they-moving"><strong>Where are they moving?</strong></h3><p>Brisbane koalas favour areas that are well-watered – they tend to prefer creek corridors and gullies rather than ridges and hilltops (although having said that, I frequently observe koalas around the summit of Mt Gravatt). If eucalypts are growing in nutrient-poor soil, or their leaves don’t have enough moisture content, they won’t be a palatable source of food (there are <em>lots </em>of factors shaping which leaves koalas will and won't feed on, especially their specific gut biome – it's not the case that individuals will happily feed on every tree of a particular eucalyptus species). Importantly, the animals also use non-eucalyptus shelter trees with thicker canopies, whose shade offers more daytime protection from the sun than gum trees (this is why koalas are often spotted resting in trees that they can’t feed on).</p><p>While they’re much safer from dog attacks when they’re up a tree, and they certainly prefer habitats where trees are closer together, koalas will often travel a couple hundred metres across the ground between trees if they have to.</p><p>In this map, I’ve roughly sketched out the routes that I think koalas are increasingly moving along through Holland Park West and Tarragindi towards Greenslopes and Annerley. Kulpurum/Norman Creek and its tributaries is the most important corridor, but they’re also using other chains of parks, school-grounds and leafy backyards. </p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2025/12/image-9-1.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="1320" height="738" srcset="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w600/2025/12/image-9-1.png 600w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w1000/2025/12/image-9-1.png 1000w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2025/12/image-9-1.png 1320w" /><figcaption><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">Probable koala movement corridors towards Annerley and Greenslopes - the koalas seen from time to time in Glindemann Park (beside the green question mark) are probably from Whites Hill rather than Mt Gravatt Reserve - it's unclear whether they ever cross Logan Rd into Holland Park West in that vicinity, but a few local environmentalists I've spoken to are confident that they do</span></figcaption></figure><p>Schools in particular seem to be important stepping stones through suburbia, as they are large, often-leafy sites that are mostly empty of people (and dogs) at night (unfortunately, as the <a href="https://redlands2030.net/ormiston-college-koala-habitat-destruction/" rel="noreferrer">impending koala habitat destruction at Ormiston College</a> in the Redlands shows, schools are not as safe from development as bushland reserves).</p><p>Most of the koalas pushing through the suburbs are males looking for new territory, but breeding females and mums with young joeys have also been seen outside the existing bushland reserves.</p><p>Where there’s a high enough density of healthy koala food trees, with good soil and enough moisture in the landscape, a female koala can raise a joey in a forested area of as little as 1 to 2 hectares. If koalas can freely move between forest reserves to find new mates and maintain genetic diversity, urban populations could be sustainable long-term.</p><h3 id="where-can-they-breed"><strong>Where can they breed?</strong></h3><p>Looking at how they’re spreading year by year, it seems plausible to me that if humans can stop running them over with the massive battering rams most of us drive around in, koalas <em>could</em> establish a breeding population in the connected green spaces of Stephens Mountain Reserve, the Greenslopes DCP site, Roseglen Street Park and the Birdwood Rd corridor park over the coming decade (for convenience, I’ll refer to this site as the Greenslopes Forest, conceding that at just over 20 hectares, it’s pretty small for the label ‘forest’).</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2025/12/image-5-1-1.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="1240" height="964" srcset="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w600/2025/12/image-5-1-1.png 600w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w1000/2025/12/image-5-1-1.png 1000w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2025/12/image-5-1-1.png 1240w" /><figcaption><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">The Greenslopes Forest is a densely-vegetated, 20-hectare corridor of green space comprised of Stephens Mountain Reserve, the Greenslopes DCP site, Roseglen Street Park, and a future park alongside Birdwood Road that developers are handing over to the council in a couple of years</span></figcaption></figure><p>Greenslopes Forest already features a solid population of established eucalyptus trees, is well-watered by Norman Creek and its tributaries, and is theoretically large enough to serve as a year-round home for multiple breeding female koalas, particularly <em>if </em>the city council or motivated local residents planted even more gum trees in place of the weed trees that have overtaken some parts of it.</p><p>Norman Creek Catchment Coordinating Committee has undertaken significant habitat restoration work in the <a href="https://www.norman-creek-catchment.org.au/project/greenslopes-dcp/"><u>Greenslopes DCP</u></a> section of the forest over many years, with another major round of weed clearing and tree planting <a href="https://www.facebook.com/n4c.norman.creek/posts/pfbid02Ar5hRu2utqHfWa3gkxeZTA7TT9uTC6Y1gWqwEH4PmnVRNaus5inhrtv3ctjGRNnyl"><u>now underway</u></a>.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2026/02/Greenslopes-Forest.jpeg" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="1600" height="900" srcset="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/02/Greenslopes-Forest.jpeg 600w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w1000/2026/02/Greenslopes-Forest.jpeg 1000w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2026/02/Greenslopes-Forest.jpeg 1600w" /><figcaption><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">Greenslopes Forest has a few entrenched invasive weeds, but could still make great koala habitat</span></figcaption></figure><p>In 2024, a <a href="https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/197870188" rel="noreferrer">lone koala</a> was photographed in Greenslopes Forest, just south of Nicholson Street. It’s not clear exactly what route the animal travelled to get there, but considering the formidable barrier of the Pacific Motorway, it was likely along the Norman Creek corridor through Holland Park West.</p><p>Planting more koala food trees along this corridor – particularly in Joachim Street Park – will support koalas to move north along Norman Creek, and hopefully help draw them away from trying to cross the Pacific Motorway. Even more important would be the introduction of significantly lower speed limits on the main roads that intersect the koala’s movement corridors towards Greenslopes, including stretches of Gaza Road/Nursery Road, Sterculia Avenue, Logan Rd, Marshall Rd and Birdwood Rd.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2026/01/image-1.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="1126" height="800" srcset="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/01/image-1.png 600w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w1000/2026/01/image-1.png 1000w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2026/01/image-1.png 1126w" /><figcaption><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">Joachim Street Park in Holland Park West is a crucial stepping stone green space along the corridor towards Greenslopes Forest</span></figcaption></figure><p>If koalas do begin breeding successfully in Greenslopes Forest, it’s likely we would eventually also see some individuals roaming further north along Norman Creek through Ekibin Park and Hanlon Park. I can imagine lots of Greenslopes residents would love this. But my interest here is not simply in seeing a dozen or so lonely koalas stuck in Greenslopes Forest, wondering why every time they head further north they encounter more buildings than trees...</p><h3 id="reimagining-suburbia%E2%80%99s-relationship-to-the-nonhuman"><strong>Reimagining suburbia’s relationship to the nonhuman</strong></h3><p>It's important to emphasise that across Queensland, and particularly on Brisbane's outer-suburban fringe, eucalyptus woodland – prime koala habitat – is still being cleared at a phenomenal rate. Koalas are in decline (primarily due to habitat loss, and exacerbated by car strikes and dog attacks) and some claim the marsupials are <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-28/koalas-extinct-in-south-east-qld-in-not-too-distant-future/105296974" rel="noreferrer">on track for local extinction</a> in South-East Queensland unless we stop cutting down trees and start planting more (it's a very different story in Victoria and South Australia, where stronger environmental protections are supporting koala numbers to continue growing).</p><p>Crucially though, Brisbane City Council doesn't currently include <em>any </em>eucalyptus species in its <a href="https://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/environment-and-water/plants--trees-and-gardening/brisbane-trees" rel="noreferrer">list of approved species for new street tree plantings</a>. The only trees on the list which might be considered as secondary food sources for koalas are brush boxes (<em>Lophostemon confertus</em>) and broad-leaved paperbarks (<em>Melaleuca quinquinervia</em>) which the marsupials <a href="https://www.koalacrusaders.org.au/koala_trees" rel="noreferrer">sometimes use as a medicinal tree</a>. This means that even on roads with wide verges, minimal foot traffic and plenty of space for big eucalypts, <strong>the council is not planting <em>any </em>new trees that koalas could routinely feed on.</strong></p><p>At a time of so much ecological destruction and loss, the fact that koalas in one part of Brisbane seem to be breeding successfully and <em>expanding</em> their territory rather than dying out is a valuable counterpoint to the “why even bother?” defeatism that capitalism – and particularly the property industry – so often directs towards proposals for environmental restoration.</p><p>The return of koalas to Toohey Forest and surrounding suburbs is an invitation to reimagine our neighbourhoods – to ask what would have to change for koalas (and many other species) to be able to survive not only in loosely connected strings of parks and small bushland reserves, but in the actual backyards and streets of residential suburbs.</p><p>Many of the most obvious required changes would benefit a wide range of native species, but would arguably also improve quality of life for us humans. Lowering speed limits – ideally to 30km/h in neighbourhoods that koalas are moving through – is the most pressing necessary improvement. On many streets, bitumen roadways could also be narrowed to create wider footpaths. This would allow more room for larger street trees (including the various eucalyptus species that local koalas feed on).</p><p>Preserving existing trees in backyards is crucial, as is requiring developers to set aside a much larger proportion of redevelopment sites as green space with deep-planted trees.</p><p>Making suburbs leafier and less car-centric improves quality of life for human residents, while also inviting animals like koalas back into our communities.</p><p>Other helpful changes, such as reducing light pollution by turning off non-essential outdoor lighting, and keeping dogs indoors at night (or at least fenced in such a way as to reduce the likelihood of them attacking koalas that are moving through backyards) don’t ask very much of us.</p><p>In urban areas, good environmental conservation can't stop at protecting public parks and nature reserves – we need a new, more equitable balance of the space taken up by human dwellings, and the spaces in between that animals can exist in.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2026/01/image-3.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="1256" height="594" srcset="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/01/image-3.png 600w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w1000/2026/01/image-3.png 1000w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2026/01/image-3.png 1256w" /><figcaption><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">The Norman Creek wildlife corridor includes several key linkage sites like this stretch of public land alongside the motorway, which is controlled by the Department of Transport and Main Roads - DTMR should put a greater emphasis on enhancing the ecological value of these vegetated corridors</span></figcaption></figure><p>Many committed conservationists would understandably argue that the resources and effort required to make suburbia friendlier to a wider range of native animals would be better focussed on conserving and restoring habitat in rural areas. But this isn't a binary choice. In practice, I don't see any evidence that arguing for the protection and restoration of green spaces and wildlife corridors in Brisbane comes at the expense of funding or advocacy capacity to protect against land-clearing for coal mines or cattle grazing elsewhere in the state.</p><p>But more importantly, there's a lot of cultural, social and political value in creating urban neighbourhoods where people feel a close connection to the non-human and the 'natural'.</p><p>If a resident of Annerley can look out their window and see a koala up a tree at the bottom of their yard, that necessarily shapes their broader view of the world, and probably increases the chance that they'll also care about protecting other natural spaces further afield.</p><p>Suburban sprawl development typologies, with relatively low-density homes taking up huge areas of land, are ordinarily one of the most ecologically destructive forms of housing. But if we can find ways to ensure the spaces between houses – i.e. yards, median strips, roadways, footpaths, drainage easements – are well-vegetated and safe for wildlife to move through and even breed in, suburbia need not be an ecological wasteland.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-video-card kg-width-regular kg-card-hascaption"> <div class="kg-video-container"> <video src="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/media/2026/02/20250920_164440_1.mp4" poster="https://img.spacergif.org/v1/1920x1080/0a/spacer.png" width="1920" height="1080" preload="metadata" style="background:transparent url('https://www.jonathansri.com/content/media/2026/02/20250920_164440_1_thumb.jpg') 50% 50% / cover no-repeat"></video> <div class="kg-video-overlay"> <button class="kg-video-large-play-icon"> <svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewbox="0 0 24 24"> <path d="M23.14 10.608 2.253.164A1.559 1.559 0 0 0 0 1.557v20.887a1.558 1.558 0 0 0 2.253 1.392L23.14 13.393a1.557 1.557 0 0 0 0-2.785Z"></path> </svg> </button> </div> <div class="kg-video-player-container"> <div class="kg-video-player"> <button class="kg-video-play-icon"> <svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewbox="0 0 24 24"> <path d="M23.14 10.608 2.253.164A1.559 1.559 0 0 0 0 1.557v20.887a1.558 1.558 0 0 0 2.253 1.392L23.14 13.393a1.557 1.557 0 0 0 0-2.785Z"></path> </svg> </button> <button class="kg-video-pause-icon kg-video-hide"> <svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewbox="0 0 24 24"> <rect x="3" y="1" width="7" height="22" rx="1.5" ry="1.5"></rect> <rect x="14" y="1" width="7" height="22" rx="1.5" ry="1.5"></rect> </svg> </button> <span class="kg-video-current-time">0:00</span> <div class="kg-video-time"> /<span class="kg-video-duration">0:30</span> </div> <input type="range" class="kg-video-seek-slider" max="100" value="0" /> <button class="kg-video-playback-rate">1×</button> <button class="kg-video-unmute-icon"> <svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewbox="0 0 24 24"> <path d="M15.189 2.021a9.728 9.728 0 0 0-7.924 4.85.249.249 0 0 1-.221.133H5.25a3 3 0 0 0-3 3v2a3 3 0 0 0 3 3h1.794a.249.249 0 0 1 .221.133 9.73 9.73 0 0 0 7.924 4.85h.06a1 1 0 0 0 1-1V3.02a1 1 0 0 0-1.06-.998Z"></path> </svg> </button> <button class="kg-video-mute-icon kg-video-hide"> <svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewbox="0 0 24 24"> <path d="M16.177 4.3a.248.248 0 0 0 .073-.176v-1.1a1 1 0 0 0-1.061-1 9.728 9.728 0 0 0-7.924 4.85.249.249 0 0 1-.221.133H5.25a3 3 0 0 0-3 3v2a3 3 0 0 0 3 3h.114a.251.251 0 0 0 .177-.073ZM23.707 1.706A1 1 0 0 0 22.293.292l-22 22a1 1 0 0 0 0 1.414l.009.009a1 1 0 0 0 1.405-.009l6.63-6.631A.251.251 0 0 1 8.515 17a.245.245 0 0 1 .177.075 10.081 10.081 0 0 0 6.5 2.92 1 1 0 0 0 1.061-1V9.266a.247.247 0 0 1 .073-.176Z"></path> </svg> </button> <input type="range" class="kg-video-volume-slider" max="100" value="100" /> </div> </div> </div> <figcaption><p><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">This koala had crossed busy Gaza Road to reach this stretch of trees beside Holland Park State High School</span></p></figcaption> </figure><p>There's a lot that all levels of government – including Brisbane City Council – could be doing to create and preserve more habitat space for koalas and other native animals across our urban footprint. But for the average resident reading this, here are a few steps you can take to help the cause:</p><ul><li>plant koala habitat trees wherever you can find the space... the non-profit <a href="https://ppnn.org.au/" rel="noreferrer">Paten Park Native Nursery</a> at the Gap is an affordable source of a wide range of eucalyptus seedlings, or check out <a href="https://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/environment-and-water/plants--trees-and-gardening/free-native-plants-program" rel="noreferrer">Brisbane City Council's free native plants program</a> (you can get two plants per year)</li><li>volunteer with <a href="https://www.norman-creek-catchment.org.au/get-involved/" rel="noreferrer">Norman Creek Catchment Coordinating Committee</a> on local habitat restoration projects – if you sign up as a member for just $10/year, you're also entitled to ten free native seedlings from N4C's nursery in Greenslopes (you could ask for koala trees and plant them in suitable spots)</li><li>drive slower than the speed limit around parks and bushland reserves, particularly in the evenings and early mornings</li><li>write to local councillors (<a href="mailto:[email protected]" rel="noreferrer">Krista Adams</a>, Councillor for Holland Park Ward and <a href="mailto:[email protected]" rel="noreferrer">Fiona Cunningham</a>, Deputy Mayor and Councillor for Coorparoo Ward) asking them to:<br />- plant more koala food trees in Joachim Street Park<br />- add koala-friendly eucalyptus species to the council's street tree planting list, and<br />- support lowering speed limits on Boundary Rd (beside the Whites Hill reserve), Gaza Road, Sterculia Avenue, Marshall Rd and Birdwood Rd to facilitate safer movement of koalas and other native animals</li><li><a href="mailto: [email protected]" rel="noreferrer">email Joe Kelly</a>, State Member of Parliament for Greenslopes, to ask him to support the above-mentioned speed limit reductions, to advocate for more eucalyptus tree planting in Department of Transport-owned land alongside the Pacific Motorway, and to update the State Government's koala habitat area mapping to better reflect the movement of koalas and the presence of existing eucalyptus trees along the Norman Creek corridor</li></ul><p>I should end by reminding readers that there are heaps of other native species at far greater risk of extinction than koalas, and other ecosystems in our region which are even more degraded and depleted than eucalyptus woodlands, but which attract less government support and attention from conservation groups. That obviously doesn't mean we shouldn't care about koalas or eucalyptus forests – it's simply a reminder that our efforts mustn't become too narrow in focus.</p><p>Down in Adelaide, more concerted conservation work has led to koalas following creek and river corridors right into the city centre. So if we plant more trees, drop speed limits and protect green corridors, it's not farfetched to imagine that one day koalas could become regulars in Annerley and Greenslopes, and maybe even Dutton Park, Fairfield and Yeronga, not to mention <a href="https://www.jonathansri.com/koalasorstadiums/" rel="noreferrer">Barrambin/Victoria Park</a> in the inner-north side.</p><p>The struggle to protect and restore threatened species and ecosystems is global, but we can start right here on our own doorstep.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2026/01/Birds-on-white-horizontal-strip.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="2000" height="290" srcset="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/01/Birds-on-white-horizontal-strip.png 600w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w1000/2026/01/Birds-on-white-horizontal-strip.png 1000w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w1600/2026/01/Birds-on-white-horizontal-strip.png 1600w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w2400/2026/01/Birds-on-white-horizontal-strip.png 2400w" /></figure><p><em>Note: In this article, I haven't bothered including direct source links for widely-accepted facts about koala behaviour, but if you're looking for a deep dive into that stuff, I recommend the 2022 book <strong>Koala: A Life in Trees </strong>by Danielle Clode</em></p><hr /><p><em>Thanks for reading! If you're interested in this sort of stuff, you might like to subscribe to my newsletter to receive updates on future articles.</em></p><div class="kg-card kg-button-card kg-align-center"><a href="#/portal/signup" class="kg-btn kg-btn-accent">Sign up</a></div><figure class="kg-card kg-bookmark-card"><a class="kg-bookmark-container" href="https://www.jonathansri.com/urbanforest/"><div class="kg-bookmark-content"><div class="kg-bookmark-title">Brisbane should redefine itself as a forest city</div><div class="kg-bookmark-description">One of Brisbane’s greatest assets and differentiators from other cities is our abundance of wildlife, vegetation and intact urban waterways. If we need an identity to celebrate, maybe we should embrace being a ‘forest city’?</div><div class="kg-bookmark-metadata"><img class="kg-bookmark-icon" src="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/icon/Mayor24_Jonno-Birds-logo-2500px_72dpi-1-56.png" alt="" /><span class="kg-bookmark-author">Jonathan Sriranganathan</span><span class="kg-bookmark-publisher">Jonathan Sriranganathan</span></div></div><div class="kg-bookmark-thumbnail"><img src="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/thumbnail/Anna-Ibis.png" alt="" /></div></a></figure>

<p>Over the past 24 months, crucial sliding doors moments in Greens politics have left the party looking less and less politically relevant. One Nation is on the rise, capturing widespread disillusionment with the major parties, while federally the Greens are stagnating.</p><p>In <a href="https://www.deepcutnews.com/p/the-greens-must-pivot-to-meet-the" rel="noreferrer">his article for Deepcut News this week</a>, former MP for Griffith, Max Chandler-Mather, rightly argues that the Greens need to pivot towards a more robust critique of the political establishment that taps into widespread frustration with the two major parties.</p><p>He's been saying this for a while now, and he's not the only one. So why hasn't it happened?</p><p>Answering that requires an understanding of the party's recent history, and the pressure towards status quo politics embodied in their remaining lower house seat of Ryan, held by Elizabeth Watson-Brown...</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2026/02/image-3.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="2000" height="1081" srcset="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/02/image-3.png 600w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w1000/2026/02/image-3.png 1000w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w1600/2026/02/image-3.png 1600w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2026/02/image-3.png 2136w" /><figcaption><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">We saw lots of headlines like this after the Queensland state election</span></figcaption></figure><p>Looking back, the Greens losing the state seat of South Brisbane in the 2024 Queensland election (immediately after multiple seat losses in the ACT election) stands out as a significant turning point for the party. That's primarily because a lot of people drew woefully incorrect conclusions from the results.</p><p>Up until 2020, South Brisbane (which sits within the federal electorate of Griffith) had been Labor-held for 94 years out of the past 100. There were specific reasons why Labor regained this seat from the Greens in 2024, most notably that in the primary vote count, the LNP remained in third place despite their statewide surge, and their preferences mostly flowed to Labor.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2026/01/image-4.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="1468" height="404" srcset="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/01/image-4.png 600w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w1000/2026/01/image-4.png 1000w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2026/01/image-4.png 1468w" /><figcaption><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">Anyone who simplistically concludes that this 2024 election result in South Brisbane was because the Greens were 'too radical' or didn't collaborate enough with Labor, simply isn't attuned to what was really happening on the ground</span></figcaption></figure><p>I think <a href="https://www.jonathansri.com/2024qldelectionresults/"><u>my initial analysis</u></a> of why the Greens didn’t do better in that state election – especially <a href="http://jonathansri.com/youthcrimenarratives/#the-greens-tried-to-stay-out-of-it-altogether"><u>the party’s failure</u></a> to respond effectively to the LNP’s youth crime messaging – turned out be largely correct, but there were also several additional local factors specific to South Brisbane.</p><p>Australian Greens leadership – particularly politicians and senior staffers in other states – apparently didn’t make time to properly understand the South Brisbane loss. Instead, it seems to have been misinterpreted as evidence that the general approach taken by Max Chandler-Mather was electorally damaging (this is despite the fact that earlier in the same year, we achieved a record-high primary vote in Brisbane's council election when I ran for mayor).</p><p>Max had spent several years building party support for a broader social democracy campaign platform which appealed to those who feel abandoned by the political establishment, simultaneously neutralising a major barrier that swing voters commonly reported – that the party only cared about environmental issues. While I haven’t always agreed 100% with his approach (either on policy priorities or on <em>how</em> elected Greens reps should wield power), I think he deserves a large share of the credit for the Greens winning three more House of Representatives seats and a second Queensland senate seat in 2022.</p><p>Crucially, Max was also a strong advocate against the Greens placidly rolling over and rubber-stamping Labor bills. He seems to have convinced the Greens party room to support a more robust negotiating posture on some issues – particularly housing.</p><p>But after the 2024 state election loss of South Brisbane, Greens power-holders outside Queensland concluded that Max’s approach – both in terms of parliamentary strategy, and broader campaign messaging – wasn’t a winning electoral formula after all. For them, the South Brisbane loss essentially delegitimised the shift that Max and others had been advocating for.</p><p>So between late 2024 and early 2025, the federal party room shifted messaging and emphasis significantly, and hurriedly passed several problematic Labor bills that effectively propped up the political status quo. To a casual observer, the overall impression the Greens conveyed was "we <em>don't </em>want to make big, drastic changes."</p><p>Thus, in the <a href="https://www.jonathansri.com/establishmentvibes/"><u>2025 federal election campaign</u></a>, the Greens didn’t push as strongly on housing affordability. Having picked a big fight over it in the preceding three years, they failed to centre it in their election campaign, and didn't lock in the votes of larger housing-stressed constituencies. Instead, they spoke of ‘working closely’ and ‘sharing power’ with Labor, and ran on a minimally-controversial reformist platform, mostly using orthodox campaign tactics that weren’t <em>radically</em> different from the major parties’ approaches.</p><p>It didn’t work.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-bookmark-card"><a class="kg-bookmark-container" href="https://www.jonathansri.com/establishmentvibes/"><div class="kg-bookmark-content"><div class="kg-bookmark-title">Establishment vibes: Do ‘extreme Greens’ criticisms hit harder when we’re no longer ‘doing politics differently’?</div><div class="kg-bookmark-description">We can’t beat them if we play by their rules</div><div class="kg-bookmark-metadata"><img class="kg-bookmark-icon" src="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/icon/Mayor24_Jonno-Birds-logo-2500px_72dpi-1-60.png" alt="" /><span class="kg-bookmark-author">Jonathan Sriranganathan</span><span class="kg-bookmark-publisher">Jonathan Sriranganathan</span></div></div><div class="kg-bookmark-thumbnail"><img src="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/thumbnail/Greens-image-1-1.jpg" alt="" /></div></a></figure><p>In fact, by adopting national messaging that diverged so markedly from Max's angle over the preceding three years, the party undermined its Brisbane campaigns in particular. After the Greens rolled over and passed Labor's piss-weak housing bills, frustrated renters in key seats weren't offered a strong enough reason to prioritise the Greens ahead of Labor. Having argued vociferously against the treatment of housing as a for-profit commodity, the party now finds itself in the odd position where its <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/-/media/03_Senators_and_Members/32_Members/Register/48p/SZ/Watson-Brown_48P.pdf" rel="noreferrer">only remaining House of Representatives MP is apparently a property investor</a>.</p><p>But rather than being recognised as evidence that small-target, system insider-style politics isn’t a winning formula for the Greens, the party’s lacklustre federal result – and particularly the losses of Griffith, Brisbane and Melbourne – seems to have been misinterpreted as further proof that standing up strongly to the political establishment and the neoliberal consensus doesn’t win enough votes.</p><p>Since May 2025, the party hasn’t proposed anything new or spicy enough to attract widespread media or public attention, or effectively used its balance of power in the Senate to secure significant tangible wins (Osman Faruqi’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQmFewZvwLs">insightful commentary</a> on how the Greens handled Labor’s Environmental Protection Reform bill is worth listening to for an example of this). Meanwhile, the Greens sycophantically '<a href="https://greens.org.au/news/media-release/greens-welcome-royal-commission" rel="noreferrer">welcomed</a>' the social cohesion royal commission that the Zionist lobby has been pushing for, even though it's based on fundamentally flawed premises and revolves around an absurdly broad definition of antisemitism that essentially purports to treat criticism of Israel as de facto racist.</p><p>Reading through the <a href="https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2026/01/31/exclusive-larissa-waters-the-greens-pitch-labor" rel="noreferrer">Saturday Paper's recent interview with Larissa Waters</a>, I can't help but feel underwhelmed. The opening paragraph suggests that the Greens are "positioning themselves as the party of progressive reform and stability."</p><p>Not 'pushing for big changes' or 'shaking up unjust systems' – <em>reform </em>and <em><u>stability</u></em>. This seems a stark contrast from the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jan/29/zack-polanski-effect-charts-reveal-greens-advance" rel="noreferrer">UK Greens</a>, who are taking an unashamedly anti-establishment posture under new leader Zack Polanski, which voters are responding positively to.</p><p>In the Saturday Paper article, Larissa does talk of Australia needing to 'change direction,' and offers a modest critique of the political establishment...</p><blockquote>“That’s because they’re both status quo parties, and they’re both accepting political donations from the same big companies, often the big polluters, and they’re both not wanting to actually change the system, because the system is working quite nicely for them and the people that donate to them, namely the big corporations and the very wealthy."</blockquote><p>But she then dilutes this already-moderate message with comments about working with the government, scrutinising draft regulations and negotiating politely to achieve minor reforms – classic status quo politician talk.</p><p>Larissa has struck a similar tone in other recent interviews (e.g. <a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/4vWUeSb6J0j5ritdf5zYTG" rel="noreferrer">her 29 January podcast interview with Natarsha Belling</a>). Her talk of 'policy reform,' her complaints about the lack of respect in parliamentary debate, and her calm, measured delivery undoubtedly appeal to middle-class centrists who value civility and continuity, but not enough to peel them off from supporting Labor. And even though she rightly mentions pain points like housing costs and grocery bills, her word choice and overall approach don't go anywhere near far enough in reflecting the rage and desperation that so many people are feeling right now.</p><p>A statesmanslike, system-insider image does win over a<em> few </em>centrist voters, but it doesn't help build a mandate for the Greens to push hard for bolder action on issues like climate change and housing justice, and it evidently doesn't appeal to larger numbers of swing voters who are frustrated with the status quo.</p><p>The party was always going to take time to rebuild momentum after losing 3 out of 4 lower house MPs, including its party leader. But it’s now over eight months since the federal election, and <u>despite holding balance of power in the Senate</u>, the Greens have had relatively little cut-through or influence over the national political agenda.</p><p></p><h3 id="reversing-out-of-the-ryan-cul-de-sac">Reversing out of the Ryan cul de sac?</h3><p>One of the bigger but less obvious factors that I suspect is preventing the Greens from pivoting firmly towards a "we stand for system change" narrative is the demography of the party’s one remaining federal lower house seat – Ryan.</p><p>Elizabeth Watson-Brown's Ryan electorate is, on average, much more conservative than Brisbane, Griffith, Melbourne or any of the other key seats the Greens might hope to win in coming elections.</p><p>Take a look at this graph, which shows the proportion of rental households in key east-coast inner-city electorates, compared to the Liberal primary vote in the 2025 election.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2026/01/image-15.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="1318" height="1277" srcset="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/01/image-15.png 600w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w1000/2026/01/image-15.png 1000w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2026/01/image-15.png 1318w" /></figure><p>Electorates like Sydney and Melbourne are home to twice as many renters as Ryan. And the Liberal primary vote in those seats is under 20%, or in the case of Wills, as low as 12.9%.</p><p>Ryan is home to many more swinging Liberal voters and significantly fewer renters than any of the other seats where Greens support and campaigning capacity is strongest.</p><p>To win and retain Ryan, the Greens had to appeal to thousands of centrist Liberal voters who own their own homes. This demographic has never mattered as much in electorates like Melbourne or Wills, and won't be particularly important when Tanya Plibersek retires and the Greens go after Sydney more strongly.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2026/02/image-2.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="1514" height="840" srcset="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/02/image-2.png 600w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w1000/2026/02/image-2.png 1000w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2026/02/image-2.png 1514w" /><figcaption><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">2022 election results suggest that the Greens victory in Ryan came off the back of swinging 'moderate' Liberal voters</span></figcaption></figure><p>The demographic differences between Ryan and those other inner-city electorates, or indeed suburban electorates such as Moreton and Fraser (where the Greens saw promising positive swings in the 2025 election) become starker when you compare variables like net wealth, mortgage stress or cultural diversity.</p><p>And the divergences are even more pronounced when you look at voters' subjective sentiment about how they're going in life.</p><p>The <a href="https://www.australianunity.com.au/-/media/rebrandwellbeing/documents/auwi-report.pdf" rel="noreferrer"><em>Australian Unity Wellbeing Index</em></a> explores people's own perceptions of their standard of living, health, future security etc. in each federal electorate. Whereas Ryan voters rank very high in overall life satisfaction and in the report's 'Personal Wellbeing Index,' voters in Griffith, Brisbane, Melbourne, Wills, Fraser and indeed many of the Greens' strongest federal seats, rank far lower.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-gallery-card kg-width-wide"><div class="kg-gallery-container"><div class="kg-gallery-row"><div class="kg-gallery-image"><img src="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2026/01/image-6.png" width="686" height="1004" loading="lazy" alt="" srcset="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/01/image-6.png 600w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2026/01/image-6.png 686w" /></div><div class="kg-gallery-image"><img src="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2026/01/image-7.png" width="736" height="1076" loading="lazy" alt="" srcset="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/01/image-7.png 600w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2026/01/image-7.png 736w" /></div><div class="kg-gallery-image"><img src="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2026/01/image-8.png" width="748" height="1078" loading="lazy" alt="" srcset="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/01/image-8.png 600w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2026/01/image-8.png 748w" /></div></div><div class="kg-gallery-row"><div class="kg-gallery-image"><img src="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2026/01/image-9.png" width="722" height="1056" loading="lazy" alt="" srcset="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/01/image-9.png 600w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2026/01/image-9.png 722w" /></div><div class="kg-gallery-image"><img src="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2026/02/image.png" width="728" height="1040" loading="lazy" alt="" srcset="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/02/image.png 600w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2026/02/image.png 728w" /></div><div class="kg-gallery-image"><img src="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2026/01/image-10.png" width="734" height="1066" loading="lazy" alt="" srcset="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/01/image-10.png 600w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2026/01/image-10.png 734w" /></div></div></div></figure><p>Unlike all those other seats, culturally Ryan seems to have more in common with teal-held electorates like Kooyong, MacKellar, and Wentworth, which all also report very high personal wellbeing and life satisfaction.</p><p>This highlights a deeper tension the Greens aren't properly grappling with.</p><p>For electorates like Ryan, the underlying story the Greens lean towards to win people over revolves around stability and responsible governance. The majority of Ryan voters feel they have it pretty good, don't really see the need for deep, drastic change, and may not (yet) even accept the premise that the entire political system is irredeemably stacked in favour of big corporations.</p><p>This is perhaps partly why Greens strategists in Ryan argued strongly for a 'Keep Dutton out' message in the 2025 election campaign. Dutton had been framed as the <em>change </em>candidate – a Trump style disruptor. And most Ryan voters didn't want disruptive change.</p><p>Even where the Greens were proposing progressive reforms like free university, they were often pitched as a return to past policies from the good old days, rather than something entirely new.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2026/02/image-12.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="998" height="662" srcset="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/02/image-12.png 600w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2026/02/image-12.png 998w" /><figcaption><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">One of Elizabeth's more popular </span><a href="https://www.facebook.com/ElizabethWatsonBrownMP/posts/pfbid02oVT5WwzBLpa9Q4Es988MTj7E9Jbs3TXFKDqcWh3KikLNYq3eSqVPRi6YURSmdSVNl" rel="noreferrer"><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">Facebook posts</span></a><span style="white-space:pre-wrap"> in the lead-up to the 2025 election</span></figcaption></figure><p>I don’t want to oversell the contrast between Ryan and other metropolitan seats, and I'm not suggesting the Greens have to make a binary choice between retaining Ryan and winning other electorates.</p><p>But they <em>do </em>have to make a clear choice as to whether they're an anti-establishment party of deep change, or progressive reformists who might shift a few couches around but aren't going to replace the broken furniture.</p><p>If the party’s election campaign strategy and messaging revolve too heavily around defending the Ryan electorate, ruling out insurgent tactics or bold policy announcements that might turn off middle-class swing voters in Brisbane’s affluent western suburbs, it will be poorly positioned to regain inner-city seats like Melbourne or Griffith. And it certainly won’t be able to win over the outer-suburban migrant and working-class voters who are seeking alternatives to the major parties, and who represent the Greens’ best opportunity to grow beyond the party’s inner-city base.</p><p>I think on some level, leaders like Larissa are aware of this tension. But for now, their response is seemingly to place a bet each way. They're caught between appealing to well-off voters in electorates like Ryan, who mostly <em>don't</em> want big changes, while also wanting to connect with millions around the country who are struggling with rising rents and falling living standards, and who definitely <em>do </em>want significant change.</p><p>In practice, decisions about what balance to strike and what strategy to pursue will be heavily shaped by senior electorate office staffers, as well as the federal Greens politicians themselves. Whether consciously or unconsciously, many of these key power-holders will prefer whichever pathway maximises their own job security and makes their work easier. This will likely lead to a heavy decision-making bias towards whatever is deemed necessary to retain Ryan.</p><p>There are of course plenty of Greens politicians who to varying degrees self-consciously choose not to settle for a comfortable, small-target strategy. But the party’s overall image and political posture essentially remains one of centre-left incremental reformism.</p><p>Rather than trying to offer one package to upper-middle-class voters in electorates like Ryan, and a very different package to the rest of the country, the Greens will have to do the harder work of convincing Ryan voters to get on board with a program of radical transformation. Adopting a more conservative approach to sandbag Ryan is a dead-end strategy.</p><p>If the Greens want to rebuild momentum and offer disillusioned voters an inspiring alternative to One Nation, the party needs to style itself unambiguously as a party of change, rather than looking – to the average disengaged voter – as though it's uncritically supporting Labor and maintaining the status quo. </p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/2026/01/Birds-on-white-horizontal-strip-1.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="2000" height="290" srcset="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/01/Birds-on-white-horizontal-strip-1.png 600w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w1000/2026/01/Birds-on-white-horizontal-strip-1.png 1000w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w1600/2026/01/Birds-on-white-horizontal-strip-1.png 1600w, https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/size/w2400/2026/01/Birds-on-white-horizontal-strip-1.png 2400w" /></figure><p><em>For more articles like this, please consider subscribing to support my work...</em></p><div class="kg-card kg-button-card kg-align-center"><a href="#/portal/signup" class="kg-btn kg-btn-accent">Subscribe</a></div><p><em>For a deeper dive into an alternative strategic orientation that I think the Greens should consider adopting, have a read of this two-part article I wrote after the 2024 state election.</em></p><figure class="kg-card kg-bookmark-card"><a class="kg-bookmark-container" href="https://www.jonathansri.com/newgreens1/"><div class="kg-bookmark-content"><div class="kg-bookmark-title">Towards a new political orientation for the Greens</div><div class="kg-bookmark-description">The Australian Greens’ overall strategy and approach simply isn’t working as well as we need it to - so what changes should we consider?</div><div class="kg-bookmark-metadata"><img class="kg-bookmark-icon" src="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/icon/Mayor24_Jonno-Birds-logo-2500px_72dpi-1-59.png" alt="" /><span class="kg-bookmark-author">Jonathan Sriranganathan</span><span class="kg-bookmark-publisher">Jonathan Sriranganathan</span></div></div><div class="kg-bookmark-thumbnail"><img src="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/thumbnail/Cropped-sitting-profile-8.jpg" alt="" /></div></a></figure><figure class="kg-card kg-bookmark-card"><a class="kg-bookmark-container" href="https://www.jonathansri.com/newgreens2/"><div class="kg-bookmark-content"><div class="kg-bookmark-title">Towards a new political orientation for the Greens (part 2)</div><div class="kg-bookmark-description">Part 2 of a deep dive into how the Australian Greens might need to adapt to a changing political climate</div><div class="kg-bookmark-metadata"><img class="kg-bookmark-icon" src="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/icon/Mayor24_Jonno-Birds-logo-2500px_72dpi-1-57.png" alt="" /><span class="kg-bookmark-author">Jonathan Sriranganathan</span><span class="kg-bookmark-publisher">Jonathan Sriranganathan</span></div></div><div class="kg-bookmark-thumbnail"><img src="https://www.jonathansri.com/content/images/thumbnail/2016-doorknock-1-1.jpg" alt="" /></div></a></figure>

Heads up: Brief writing hiatus is probably on the cards...

Is being 'anti-stadium' but 'pro-Olympics' really the best strategy?

Challenging racialised crime panics has delivered multiple solid results for the Greens in the NT town of Mparntwe

I didn’t initially want to spend time writing about Greens co-founder Drew Hutton’s expulsion from the party, because that’s exactly what the far-right wants. The demagogues of neoliberalism have created a divide-and-conquer fear campaign to scapegoat and vilify trans folk, and I worry that the more we talk about this, the more it fuels toxic debates that give bigger platforms to queerphobia. But I’m equally mindful that we need to reflect on how and why it is that people like Mr Hutton end up spreading ideas which are harmful to trans people, and what his departure tells us about the evolution of the Greens. Although I’m still a Queensland Greens member, I’m definitely not a mindless cheerleader for the party, and I have plenty of my own criticisms of the Greens. I do try to always assume the best of people though, and my goal in writing this is to think a little deeper than simplistic us-vs-them binaries. For party members and supporters, and indeed activists whose politics are more radical than the party's, there are worthwhile deeper lessons in all of this. But carving out the space for those nuanced discussions without giving more oxygen to bigotry is tricky. Drew Hutton has been a prominent environmental campaigner in Queensland for several decades, who helped build a strong foundation for the Greens, particularly in West End. But recently he claimed (without offering any compelling evidence) that "the Greens in a number of states have been taken over by a cult – a transgender and queer cult – that has come to control key decision-making positions in the party..." At the time of writing, Drew continues to claim that he supports trans rights, but his actual views about what that means strike me as inconsistent and somewhat self-contradictory. He seems very fixated on patriarchal notions of binary sexes, and uninterested in engaging seriously with the scientific literature showing that, like gender identity, biological sex is also better understand as a spectrum rather than a strict male-female dichotomy. Drew's anti-Greens crusade feels significant and destabilising for a lot of older greenies, but it's perhaps not especially surprising or entirely at odds with the largely centrist style of politics he and many Greens campaigners of his generation embodied. First though, it’s worth briefly debunking a few of the broader claims made either by Mr Hutton or by others who've been vocally supportive of his position... ### Questionable Claim 1: _The Greens have become so intolerant of alternative viewpoints that they_ _kick members out simply for disagreeing with or publicly criticising the party_ As a Greens member who periodically expresses strong public criticism of the party, I’ve found this one particularly amusing. On the many occasions when I’ve publicly disagreed with Greens policies, or criticised the party over various decisions, this has certainly annoyed some people within the Queensland Greens. But no-one has ever referred me to the complaints committee on this basis, or tried to kick me out. The same has been true for many other party members. Unlike Drew, who hasn’t been very active in the party since 2010, I’ve sat through plenty of vigorous Greens policy debates in recent years – both in smaller committees and large State Council meetings – where a wide range of provocative views were aired without censure or censorship. Simply disagreeing with Greens orthodoxy, or criticising the party online, definitely isn’t enough to get your party membership cancelled. As I’ve discussed elsewhere, I do think the Greens would be well-advised to embrace a more heterodox/pluralist approach to political communication, and not train members and spokespeople that we must all sing from exactly the same song sheet all the time. I think the party hierarchy _is_ increasingly insisting on an unhelpfully high degree of message discipline, and is too scared of the political consequences of spokespeople publicly expressing conflicting opinions on key issues. But anyone who suggests that members are being kicked out simply because they want to debate or share alternative viewpoints is being hyperbolic and silly. Drew’s life membership was _not_ cancelled merely because he criticised or disagreed with party orthodoxy. He was expelled because a significant majority of current Greens members were concerned either that he was platforming and legitimising the transphobic views of others, and/or that he himself was promoting ideas that are harmful to trans people, while showing no prospect of shifting his position. Drew has suggested that nationwide, over the past 5 years or so, at least 40 people have been 'forced out' of the Greens because they were critical of the party's trans rights stance. He hasn't specified what proportion of those 40 had their membership revoked and what proportion freely left of their own accord after finding that most other members disagreed with their views. But that's an average of about 8 per year at most. Nationwide, current Greens membership is around 14 000. In that context, losing or expelling 8 people per year hardly seems like a 'coordinated purge' as Drew has described it. ### Questionable Claim 2: _The Greens’ support for trans rights explains why they’re not as popular as they used to be_ The Queensland Greens have been far _more_ electorally successful in the past decade than in previous decades. Reasonable people can debate why the party isn’t winning even _more_ votes (I certainly have my theories). But anyone making comments along the lines of “this is why the Greens aren’t as popular as they used to be” or “the Greens are politically irrelevant now” is ignoring the factual reality that the Queensland Greens have been much more popular and politically effective in recent years than in the early 2000s or late 90s. Time will tell whether the Greens' recent growth continues, but the party has been vocally pro-trans rights for years now, without suffering any apparent electoral penalty for this position. Drew's ongoing public attacks against the party will probably do it much more damage in the long-run than anything in the Greens' actual policy platform. ### Questionable Claim 3: _The decision to expel Drew was made without a fair, democratic process by a small factional group/fringe minority/faceless powerbrokers_ Complaints about Mr Hutton were originally handled by the Queensland Greens' _Constitution and Arbitration Committee –_ a small group whose members are chosen by the broader party membership. But the final decision confirming revocation of Drew’s life membership was made by a full meeting of the Queensland Greens State Council. The State Council is comprised of elected branch delegates from each of the party’s 31 branches across Queensland (each branch sends up to 4 delegates to State Council depending on the branch’s size), representing close to 3000 Queensland Greens members (this includes elected MPs/city councillors, who can express their views through their branch if they wish). Drew was given an opportunity to address the entire State Council – to freely present his views and justifications – and it seems that despite _also_ prosecuting his case ahead of time via other channels, he was unable to persuade delegates to decide in his favour. No complaints process is 100% perfect, but Drew does at least seem to have been given ample opportunity to say his piece. He obviously doesn’t _like_ the outcome, but suggesting the process wasn’t democratic simply because he personally feels the party didn’t strike the right balance between 'protecting free speech' and protecting minorities from harm is intellectually lazy at best. His repeated calls that Greens leader Larissa Waters ought to misuse her power to intervene in established party processes and overrule the position decided on by the majority of members is directly contrary to the principles of grassroots participatory democracy. To be honest though, I'm personally less concerned about whether the original specific Facebook posts that triggered the complaint against Drew were serious enough to merit such a strong response from the party, and more interested in his ongoing pattern of behaviour over the past few years. I haven't conducted any methodologically sound surveys to back this up, but I _suspect_ that a lot of members who decided to expel Drew weren't focussed exclusively on the initial complained-of Facebook posts, but on a more holistic appraisal of his views and values (as evidenced by his actions). Rightly or wrongly, members were likely also influenced by his recent public commentary about trans rights and by his decision to speak at transphobic rallies. __Drew later edited this__ __public Facebook post__ __to remove the last sentence, and apologised after some of his followers pointed out what a bad look it was. He has acknowledged that "The feminists are coming after you, queers. Look out!" was a stupid thing to say. But that he saw fit to post such words to begin with seems very revealing of how he now sees the world. It also suggests a dangerous naivety about the current global political landscape, where a bunch of right-wing fascists really are coming after queer folk__ ### **Questionable Claim 4:_The Greens have been ‘infiltrated’ by a large number of trans activists/a 'trans cult' who don’t care about the environment and are focussed exclusively on queer rights_** This is the point where Mr Hutton’s narrative tips over the edge into outright fanciful conspiracy theory. Instead of accepting that he's politically out of step with the majority of Queensland Greens members, he's concocted an alternate reality where dozens of people with a shared ‘trans extremist’ agenda have all joined and then hijacked the party. That he can make such claims with a straight face underscores how little meaningful involvement Drew has had with the Greens in recent years, and how little he understands the modern party. I don’t know which is more laughable and unlikely... that Drew’s imagined brigade of single-issue trans ideologues all _deliberately coordinated_ their efforts to infiltrate dozens of Greens branches from Toowoomba to Cairns just so they could brainwash existing members of a minor political party. Or that all this somehow happened by pure coincidence. Drew still hasn't offered any clear, compelling explanation for what this imaginary cult’s motivations might be. I'm not sure if he thinks that I'm also part of this trans cult, but I suppose expressing a view that's different to his must mean that I am. Personally I think _all_ political parties are a _little_ cult-y. But if a political organisation takes a strong position in support of trans rights, and decides to expel members who promote views which the broader membership considers harmful to trans people, that doesn't automatically make it a cult. The troubling bit is that once someone tips over into this kind of conspiracy thinking, fueled by group-think confirmation bias and social media echo chambers, it’s almost impossible to pull them out again through rational conversation. Anyone who attempts to highlight logical flaws or facts that disprove their conspiracy theory is either a naive, brainwashed sheep, or part of the conspiracy themselves. ## **Repeating dog whistles still fuels bigotry** Transphobic disinformation is spreading fast. For queerphobic conservatives, the cliched anti-trans talking points about women's sport, bathrooms and puberty blockers aren't _really_ about those specific issues. They're intended to convey the bigoted subtext that the very presence and existence of trans people is a threat to the safety of women and children – to create a general vibe of uneasiness in society about trans folk, and in fact anyone who doesn't fit neatly into binary patriarchal gender roles. The most generous interpretation of Drew's behaviour is that he's completely oblivious and naive about this context, and the coded meanings his words carry. But plenty of people have made an effort to educate him about this. If a bunch of marginalised people are telling you that something you're saying or doing is harmful to them, and you then keep doing it while complaining your free speech is being hindered, that says a lot about how committed you are to standing in solidarity with them. I find myself wishing that 2025 Drew Hutton would listen more closely to the advice of 2019 Drew Hutton Whatever Mr Hutton's _intentions_ are, the _impact_ of what he says is obvious. Queer community members observe one of the founders of the Greens – a celebrated high-profile member – publicly spouting lines that are widely understood as conveying the meaning that the existence of trans women in a space is inherently dangerous to other women. Someone with Drew's depth of political experience should be wise enough to get why that's a problem for a progressive political party. ## **The limits of green liberalism?** > "Ecology without class struggle is [just] gardening" - Chico _Mendes_ In recent years, conservative attacks in Queensland have shifted from “the Greens only care about the environment – they don’t care about anything else!” to “the Greens don’t care about the environment anymore!” Both attacks are incorrect and disingenuous, but the grain of truth they exploit is that in its early days, the Queensland party seems to have lacked a holistic internationalist critique of capitalist colonialism and the economic drivers of environmental destruction (not to mention patriarchal heteronormativity, ableism, imperialism etc). Back then, if you weren’t paying much attention, you could be forgiven for thinking that the Greens _were_ myopically focused on environmental issues. More importantly, it was possible to remain an active Greens member for years without being directly challenged to reconsider views which were sexist/racist/classist/ableist/queerphobic. Depending on their social circles, members who joined the Greens because they were concerned about native forest logging or nuclear proliferation might, over time, be exposed to radical critiques on a wider range of issues, but the party itself wasn’t usually leading those conversations. Crucially, the absence of a strong intersectional political outlook, and the centrist predilection for avoiding conflict, meant the legitimate concerns of marginalised individuals were often deprioritised in order to avoid discomfiting or hurting the feelings of more privileged members. While the Queensland Greens always had its share of hippie revolutionaries and working class unionists, its core active membership were mostly middle-class reformists who (naively) believed it was possible to protect the environment for future generations _without_ dismantling or transforming our broader unjust economic and social systems. _Or_ if they actually _did_ aspire to system change, they were worried they couldn’t admit that publicly for fear of scaring off voters. My impression is that Drew Hutton, a university lecturer and former school captain of Brisbane Boys Grammar, was a product of his comparatively privileged life experiences and social circles, and ultimately much more of a reformist than a revolutionary. Talking to older activists who were kicking around West End and Paddington in the party’s early years, there’s still some regret and even bitterness that neither anarchists nor state socialists could exert much influence over the direction of the Queensland Greens, which instead evolved as a kind of small-L liberal political project without a coherent political strategy or theory of change (this deficiency persists today). This political incoherence was most clearly illustrated in the 1995 Queensland state election, when the Greens did not directly encourage their voters to preference Labor ahead of the Liberal and National parties. The Greens' primary vote was small, but the message it sent to the electorate – that Labor was no better on the environment than the Liberals – had broader ramifications. The preferencing decision was a crucial factor behind Labor losing marginal seats like Mulgrave to the Nationals and Mount Ommaney to the Liberals. It contributed to Wayne Goss losing government after a by-election in Mundingburra the following February, and the return of the Liberal National coalition to power in Queensland. The conservatives’ state election gains in 1995 strengthened their power base, which in turn helped John Howard’s campaign win several federal seats around Queensland in 1996 (I’m certainly not suggesting the Queensland Greens’ state election preference decision was a _major_ factor contributing to Paul Keating’s loss, but the Lib-Nat Queensland resurgence surely made things easier for Howard). A Canberra Times news story from 31 May, 1993 - the Queensland Greens' decision not to direct preferences to Labor ahead of the conservatives in 1995 wasn't a last-minute brain fart, but a long-foreshadowed decision that ultimately backfired significantly For Drew, preferencing the Liberals and Nationals, which were overtly racist, sexist and homophobic parties, was apparently justifiable in order to send Labor a message about environmental conservation. But it also wasn't as big a leap politically for Drew Hutton’s Greens as it would be for most Queensland Greens members today. _**[Correction**(added on 16/8/25): This article (which I showed to Drew prior to publication) originally suggested that the Greens explicitly encouraged voters to preference Liberal and National candidates ahead of Labor. This was incorrect, and I apologise for the error. In fact, the Greens ran an 'open ticket' telling voters to allocate preferences however they wished. This _did_ help the conservatives and undermined Labor, but was not, in my view, as politically indefensible as directly indicating that the Lib-Nats were better than Labor._ _Interestingly, a lot of public reporting from the time – including statements Drew and other Greens supporters made to the media – does still give the impression that the Greens were supporting the Lib-Nats over Labor, which no doubt influenced voters. This is a reminder that if a minor party is going to adopt an ambiguous position about which major party it prefers, there's a genuine risk that this ambiguity will be weaponised against them.]_ That flavour of green politics – conservationist and anti-consumerist but not explicitly anti-capitalist, superficially opposed to racism and sexism but not robustly critical of colonial imperialism or heteropatriarchy, concerned about corporate influence over government but naive about the ways representative democratic systems inevitably centralise power and thus facilitate corruption – seems to have remained dominant in the Queensland Greens throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. Over the past five to ten years, the party membership has diversified _somewhat_ , both in terms of demographics and political orientations, and this diversification is revealing the contradictions of green liberalism across a range of policy spaces. Members generally now seem to agree that capitalism is inherently hostile to sustainable environmental management, and that a true green politics demands deeper systemic change (including meaningful resistance to other interconnected forms of injustice). If you don’t want property developers clearing koala habitat to build suburban sprawl dormitory suburbs, you have to be willing to challenge the treatment of housing as a for-profit commodity, which means critiquing the very existence of landlords. If you don’t want cops beating up climate protesters or Aboriginal people dying in police custody, maybe you have to re-examine the institution of policing itself. In many cases, longer-term Greens members are engaging seriously and respectfully with these challenging ideas (often advocated by younger generations and people from more marginalised backgrounds). Plenty of older greenies have remained active party organisers and campaigners well into their 70s and 80s, and their ongoing connection to social movements and younger Greens supporters facilitates valuable two-way education. It’s a mistake to characterise the political evolution of the Queensland Greens as being entirely due to new, more radical members joining. As the party’s campaigning reach has grown, existing middle-class, environmentally-focussed members are more commonly connecting with voters outside their personal bubbles and networks, and these experiences are transforming their political horizons too. Many longer-term supporters – myself included – are also becoming radicalised through realising that the reforms we previously campaigned for often aren’t effective enough in practice once implemented. However, there are also dozens of Greens members who don’t show up to meetings and campaign events, and are instead forming opinions about the world via Courier Mail opinion pieces and generationally-segregated Facebook echo chambers. Such people seem more susceptible not only to paranoid fear campaigns about trans folk, but to genocide-denying Israeli propaganda, Labor spin about the Greens being obstructive, and mischaracterisation of non-violent disruptive protest as violence, often while still identifying as Greens supporters. The party will have to develop a more strategic response to this conservative drift among sections of its membership if it’s to remain sufficiently cohesive and politically effective. But a key step is understanding the broader political currents we’re all swimming in. A trans rights rally outside Queensland Parliament House on 2 February, 2025 (image from Q News) ## **Transphobia is not a side-issue** For many liberals, people expressing transphobic ideas are seen as backwards, close-minded and problematic, but not necessarily dangerous. Someone behaving as Drew has might be grudgingly tolerated in the way that you put up with that conservative uncle who means well but periodically uses out-dated, cringey terminology. Anti-trans commentary is understood and treated by liberal Greens as a distraction from ‘the bigger issues’ that is best ignored so as not to give it more oxygen and derail advocacy on climate action or housing justice. We perhaps saw evidence of this orientation even in the way Greens leader Larissa Waters handled her _ABC_ interview following Drew’s attack on the party. She seemed eager to move on and talk about other stuff, rather than diving into the underlying politics of why the majority of members supported Drew’s exclusion, and why tolerating intolerance would not be upholding free speech, but is in fact antithetical to it. In contrast, those of us paying closer attention to broader political currents understand that fear-mongering about trans people is a core element of rising fascism around the globe, and needs to be challenged head-on. Neo-nazis saluting at an anti-trans rally in Melbourne in 2023 The kinds of disingenuous arguments many transphobes are making – such as that trans women are really just dudes wanting to sneak into the ladies bathroom so they can perve on or assault women – are not good faith policy debates grounded in facts and reason. They’re a fear-driven attempt to deny that trans people have a right to exist. Once you start tolerating debates about trans people’s very existence and humanity (in the name of ‘free speech’), or you take seriously baseless delusions that trans people are an inherent threat to the physical safety of women and children, you open the door to all kinds of authoritarian attacks on people’s basic human rights. Right-wing thought-leaders aren’t picking fights about trans rights just because it’s a quick way to derail conversations. A key reason for their apparent obsession is that the very existence of trans folk threatens and destabilises heteropatriarchal capitalism. Our entire unjust economic system – and indeed society more broadly – is built upon the fact that many kinds of domestic work/care work/reproductive work are not paid for or valued economically, and on the notion that women are inherently ‘more suited’ towards the kinds of gendered labour that capitalism is structurally incapable of valuing. So many forms of coercive domination in society depend on the maintenance of patriarchy for their continued operation. The system requires strictly-defined binary genders in order to maintain unjust power structures. But the very existence of trans people, non-binary people and gender-fluid people threatens this system. That’s why conservative political forces are launching an all-out attack on trans rights, hoping to scare people back into the closet; the increasing visibility and pride of radical queer communities directly undermines the established patriarchal order. Trans people also make for a convenient scapegoat and punching bag. At a time when so many people are feeling uneasy about the state of the world, constructing trans people as a socially destabilising 'enemy within' helps redirect anger that might otherwise be focussed on oligarchs and corporations. The hard-right has recognised trans pride as a key battleground in their struggle against deeper social transformation. Parties like the Greens won’t be able to side-step this debate, and it’s not going away in a hurry. ## “**It’s not my job to educate you” doesn’t get us very far** Challenging transphobia within a political movement doesn’t mean immediately banishing everyone who naively regurgitates or amplifies commentary that amounts to transphobic dog-whistling. We have to give people the opportunity to grow and broaden their perspectives. But expecting Greens members’ political views to transform organically, as if by osmosis, clearly also doesn’t work when so many channels and discourse spaces are saturated with right-wing propaganda and fear-mongering. When it comes to educating more privileged members of our community about racism, sexism, queerphobia, ableism etc., a lot of people from marginalised and oppressed communities understandably take a default stance of “I shouldn’t have to spend all my spare time and energy doing this voluntary work to bring you up to speed.” But whether we _should_ have to and whether we _need_ to are two different things. 'Political education' isn't just about providing people a handy guide on what terminology to avoid or how to say things the right way. It's about equipping one another intellectually to identify and critique propaganda, and to understand the larger forces that are shaping political debates. Ideally, allies will take on more of this work rather than leaving it to marginalised people alone. But we're all oppressed in different ways, and those experiencing oppression are generally still best placed to explain their experiences to more privileged comrades. In a context where conservative power-holders have far more resources and reach to spread propaganda and establishment dogma, we can’t afford to postpone or deprioritise political education for comrades who already see themselves as part of broader movements for progressive social change. In recent years, the Queensland Greens have been focused outwards – campaigning on left populist platforms that are specifically intended to appeal to a broader range of voters with messages about housing, healthcare, education etc. in addition to environmental policies. This hasn’t left much space or time for the party to educate its existing supporters about issues like trans rights, and inoculate its base against right-wing talking points. Where Greens spokespeople _have_ occasionally talked about rising transphobia, such as on their public social media channels (e.g. this post from Larissa Waters), they don’t usually go into much detail explaining what it means to be trans, or debunking common right-wing talking points. Facebook posts like this don't do any harm, but they're also a missed opportunity to go into greater depth and educate the wider public about the meaning and politics behind a slogan In public comms, Greens MPs generally act as though their audience already has sufficient baseline knowledge about what gender-affirming care is and why it’s needed, or the fact that trans women are statistically more likely to be the victims of sexual assault and violence (and that there’s no hard evidence whatsoever that trans women using women’s bathrooms introduces a higher safety risk for other bathroom users). Members like Drew Hutton simply haven’t been receiving any messaging from the Greens that would effectively counteract the torrent of right-wing anti-trans propaganda that social media algorithms are feeding them. As the party grows, and its support base diversifies, the Greens will have to become much more sophisticated and proactive about bringing supporters up to speed on party policies and values. Many of the party’s stances on controversial questions are the product of years of debate by volunteer members in local branches, state council meetings and policy committees. But even where hundreds of members have been meaningfully involved in such debates, that’s still only a small proportion of the thousands-strong membership base, and the almost 2 million Greens voters across Australia. Other party positions have been decided by MPs, electorate office staffers and closed campaign teams, generally with even less membership involvement and supporter education. It’s impossible (and unnecessary) for the average Greens member – or even an elected rep – to get across the details of every policy area that the party has taken a position on. But where an issue becomes a hot topic of debate, or conservative forces are starting a culture war about it, we’re _all_ going to have to put in the work to educate one another. This ideally needs to happen _before_ comrades get to the point where they’re so locked into a misinformed view – whether that’s about trans rights or covid vaccines or geoengineering to slow global warming (get ready for some big debates about this over coming years) – that no evidence you present is going to shift them from the position that their social media feeds and Youtube algorithms are constantly reinforcing for them. ## Fragile egos and fragile coalitions All this is kinda sad when you think about it. Watching people who were once central to a political movement part ways with it and get sucked in by right-wing disinformation is undeniably depressing. When I reflect on this recent saga, I can't help but wonder if things might have gone differently if Drew's initial controversial Facebook posts had been dealt with via personal conversations rather than the Greens' formal party complaints processes (maybe they were and that didn't help – I don't know). His feelings were evidently hurt by that experience, which made him more susceptible to sympathetic approaches from anti-trans crusaders. This in turn seems to have radicalised him as he shifted deeper into transphobic echo chambers. Correcting and educating people when they express or give platforms to views which border on bigotry can be tricky. How do you decide when someone is genuinely still open to respectful discussion, and when they've become so entrenched in their perspective that they're a lost cause? As my partner Anna has rightly reminded me, how we respond to someone who is repeating bigoted ideas (either naively or callously) largely comes down to how much power they wield in our communities. Most people (myself included) couldn't get an interview on ABC's _7:30 Report_ or opinion pieces published in _The Australian_ no matter how hard we tried, but Drew Hutton can. And he has made deliberate choices about what he does and doesn't use that national media platform to talk about. It makes sense to hold one of the founders of the Greens (who's also a well-educated politics lecturer) to a higher standard than your average working-class person who's being bombarded with MAGA propaganda in their news feeds. Part of me has a strong urge not to abandon movement elders to the online vortex of right-wing misinformation. As an abolitionist, I believe that people have the capacity to grow and change, and that excluding someone from a community because they're not yet up to speed on changing social currents harms all of us in the long-run. But once you've made numerous attempts to talk to such people respectfully, sharing research that counteracts the pseudo-science they've been amplifying, and you find that they're still intransigent and dogmatic, you don't really have a lot of options. One thing I do agree with Drew about is that the Queensland Greens have indeed changed since the early 2000s. The party is still heavily dominated by middle-class white Australians, and is yet to properly grapple with deeper tensions in terms of how it orients towards settler-colonialism, and the limitations of hierarchical representative 'democracy.' However it _is_ _gradually_ developing a more coherent and well-rounded political orientation that's increasingly willing to put the needs of oppressed peoples ahead of more powerful interests. Personally I'm not happy about _all_ the changes, particularly how readily a lot of members seem to defer to the judgement of politicians and senior staffers. But it's reassuring to discover that the grassroots membership still has enough clout to hold key figureheads accountable when they're causing harm. With new political groupings emerging to the left of the Greens, and increasing establishment pressure on the party to sell out in the pursuit of power, it's hard to predict what direction the organisation will evolve in over coming years. Drew's departure does feel symbolic though, perhaps marking a significant step in a longer, messy break-up with green liberalism. What comes next remains to be seen. * * * _Before publishing this article, I had a long phone conversation with Drew Hutton to make sure I felt confident about the opinions I've expressed here, rather than relying exclusively on his public statements and how he's been portrayed in the mainstream media. I offered to conduct a formal interview with him, but he declined. I also extended him the courtesy of sending him a draft of this article to review prior to publication (not something I would normally do) and offered him the opportunity to correct any claims he disagreed with. He didn't like the article (and obviously disagreed with a lot of it) but declined to identify any specific statements that he considered to be unfair or factually incorrect._ _A lot of work goes into these articles – not just the writing itself, but researching and thinking through the underlying issues. 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