Special report: As the inquest into the campaign begins, former leader Bob Brown blames New South Wales for the Greens’ failure to break through

Behind the 'successful' 2016 election: the tension at the heart of the Greens

The official line from the Greens is that the federal election was a success. And, in some ways, it was. Nationally, there was a 1.6 percentage point swing towards them in the lower house, where their primary vote went up from 8.6% to 10.2%.

In the four Melbourne seats they targeted – Wills, Melbourne Ports, Batman and Higgins – the Greens achieved swings of up to 10%. They argue that those seats, once safely held by either Labor or the Liberals, are now within reach come the next federal election.



But questions are being asked by insiders about whether the party’s relative success in Victoria has distracted from failures elsewhere, particularly in New South Wales, where the party focused on the north coast seat of Richmond and the inner-city metropolitan seats of Grayndler and Sydney. The Greens virtually finished where they started in Sydney and Grayndler, with swings below 0.5 percentage points.



New South Wales should be the strongest Greens state in Australia Former Greens leader Bob Brown

In the Senate, the Greens went backwards. When counting is complete the party may lose up to three of their previous 10 senators – they will definitely lose their second senator in South Australia, with two others still to be resolved. The swing against them in the upper house was 0.2 percentage points, leaving them with 8.4% of the vote.

Bob Brown, the party’s former leader, holds NSW responsible for the party’s modest national performance, telling Guardian Australia the state’s leadership needed to “give way to modern young people”.



Even in Victoria, some believe the party should have done better and picked up at least one extra seat, given the thousands of volunteers on the ground and the resources invested. Adam Bandt retained the seat of Melbourne for the third time but remains the party’s only lower-house MP. Overall, the Greens managed 13.1% of the primary vote in Victoria, a swing of 2.3% towards them, compared with 8.91% of the primary vote and a swing of less than 1% in NSW.



There are also questions about why the Greens have failed to replicate the success of their 2010 election result, when they finished with 11.7% of the primary vote in the lower house, representing a swing of four percentage points in their favour and 13.1% of the vote in the Senate.



The Greens are tightly run and internal tensions rarely spill out into the open. However, party insiders are questioning the impact of the different campaign approaches in the country’s two most populous states and whether the party can position itself as “mainstream” while still holding on to its traditional activist base.



Brown is in no doubt where the blame lies. He told Guardian Australia the NSW campaign was responsible for the party failing to achieve a more significant swing. And he wants the NSW Greens executive to be replaced.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Labor targeted Jim Casey, using a video unearthed during the campaign in which he declared at a Greens conference that he would ‘prefer to see Tony Abbott returned as prime minister’ than Bill Shorten elected. Photograph: Dan Himbrechts/AAP

“New South Wales should be the strongest Greens state in Australia,” Brown says. “The Greens were established there 10 years before the Victorian Greens and yet their vote almost went backwards in some electorates. In a modern society like Australia, you have to understand how the electorate thinks, especially the younger section of the electorate.

“You can’t have people who are still doing things the way we did them in the 70s and 80s still in control. They need to give way to modern young people, including young people in professions like business and law who are keen on changing society for the better.”

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There is a long and bitter history to Brown’s comments. When talk began in the late 1980s of merging left groups around the country to become a national unified Greens party, Brown, then the head of the Tasmanian Greens, was reluctant because of what he described as the “anarchic leftism” of the Sydney movement. A national Greens party was eventually formed in 1992 but NSW has always remained somewhat isolated.

These tensions have continued as the party has moved to position itself as an established, professional party capable of negotiating with government. Many in the party believe this is the only way to attract more of the Labor vote.

Guardian Australia spoke to several insiders who declined to be named but who echoed Brown’s sentiment that the NSW Greens were uncooperative and ran their own agenda as a protest party and continued to resist attempts at federalisation.

Unlike the Liberal and Labor parties, whose election campaigns are run centrally, each state and territory Greens organisation is responsible for its own campaign.

Crikey reported that the NSW Greens believed their share of federal resources was insufficient, asking its national council ahead of the 2016 election to re-examine “the current Australian Greens campaign budget to ensure it equitably reflects NSW priorities”.

Brown believes the campaigning methods of the Victorian Greens, which brought them closer to victory even in the Liberal-held seat of Higgins, should be embraced by the party nationally. But he said that would require the NSW Greens executive to “empower someone else and diminish their own”.



In particular, he said, the NSW Greens needed to take “a good, hard look at what went wrong” in Grayndler.

Grayndler is the safe Labor seat in Sydney’s inner west held by Anthony Albanese and the Greens believe they have a chance to win it once the frontbencher retires. Most analysts believe that wresting the seat from the popular and well-recognised Albanese will be a tough ask until then.

Brown argues that the Greens candidate, Jim Casey, should have at least picked up some of the Labor vote there, edging the party closer to its goal. With more seats to target and defend, Labor campaign resources are spread more thinly. The Greens inject their funds into the few seats they believe they have a chance of winning or where they think they can gain significant ground.

The party went all out in Grayndler in the early weeks , including a visit by leader Richard Di Natale on the first day of the campaign. There were billboards of Casey, a firefighter and firefighters union head, and an army of volunteers door-knocked to promote him as a progressive and pragmatic mainstream candidate.

Labor targeted Casey, using a video unearthed during the campaign in which he declared at a Greens conference that he would “prefer to see Tony Abbott returned as prime minister” than Bill Shorten elected and calling for “civil disobedience”.

The NSW Greens keep trying to bring the discussion back to Israel and Palestine Greens strategist

Albanese declared Casey an anti-capitalist Trotskyist. According to one Greens’ strategist, Casey did not do enough to distance himself from his socialist history and a more mainstream candidate might have caused Labor serious concern.

According to those campaigning for Labor, the Greens withdrew their resources from the electorate after this incident and dedicated them elsewhere. That’s something Casey denies, telling Guardian Australia that the party continued to campaign hard after the video was released.

“Certainly, once the preference deal between Labor and Liberal happened that did make things more difficult,” Casey said.

“At that point we weren’t just fighting Albanese, we were also fighting the Liberal party, ex-Liberal prime ministers visiting the electorate, half the current front bench and the Murdoch press. Given all that I think it’s positive we managed to hold on to our base vote.”

“I think the Greens have also underestimated the power of Albanese’s incumbency, he’s been a rising star for decades. I think he will be beat either when he retires or kills someone and knowing the guy, either thing is possible.”

The Daily Telegraph swung behind Labor leftwinger Anthony Albanese.

It was unfair for Brown to target NSW, Casey said, adding that the same questions being asked in that state would likely being asked by the party federally. While Casey is unsure if he will run again, the Greens needed to broaden their focus moving forward, he said.

“One of the things we tried in Grayndler was to begin to push a narrative about more than just human rights and also push a campaign of economic justice,” he said.

“I don’t think we did that consistently enough or well enough, but I do think the future for the Greens lies in nailing that. We have good policies on economic issues but we don’t lead with them, but we need to in order to push past 10%.”

A senior Labor insider told Guardian Australia that, in Tanya Plibersek’s electorate of Sydney, the Greens’ campaign focus on stopping the WestConnex toll road worked in Labor’s favour.

“If they had had a go at us over asylum seekers, Labor MPs would have been more afraid,” he said.

This was the approach taken by the Victorian Greens, particularly in Shorten’s electorate of Maribyrnong. The high-profile human rights lawyer Julian Burnside was among those who attended the campaign launch of the Greens candidate, Dr Olivia Ball, where asylum seeker policy was emphasised. However, the Greens vote went backwards slightly by 0.2% in that electorate. Di Natale also highlighted asylum seeker issues throughout the campaign.

The differing approaches of the Victorian and NSW campaigns became obvious after senior figures from the NSW Greens’ committee of management resigned early in the campaign, a fact the party tried to keep secret.

According to a long-serving Greens strategist, who declined to be named, some of those five who resigned had been involved in previous campaigns in Victoria and were trying to push a more cohesive, positive and national approach in NSW. But they were battling against supporters of the Greens NSW senator Lee Rhiannon, a leader of the diehard protest arm of the party.



“I think there is a feeling that in NSW the party has been focusing on things that, at the end of the day, will have a minimal impact on our vote, such as the focus on the Middle East for example,” he said.



“We should be worrying about the things where we might be able to achieve change, whether it be asylum seekers or climate change. I think Richard Di Natale’s view is that this [the Middle East] is not an issue we should prioritise and yet the NSW Greens keep trying to bring the discussion back to Israel and Palestine.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Richard Di Natale votes at St Josephs the Worker Primary School in Reservoir North in Melbourne. Photograph: Julian Smith/AAP

According to Brown: “The world view in NSW from the Greens has been far too negative. The feeling there is that we’re fighting off something rather than fighting our way into achieving.”

Another party insider told Guardian Australia: “The Sydney vote is clearly indicative that something went wrong, and by Sydney I mean greater Sydney, not just the seat of Sydney. Obviously there were strong Labor candidates in Sydney and Grayndler, and Melbourne is a more progressive city, but the NSW Greens are trying to put all the blame on those factors. It is absurd to think that’s the whole story, or even the majority of the story.”

The NSW camp rejects this assessment. Rhiannon told Guardian Australia that Brown joined her and NSW lower-house candidates at various events throughout the campaign. At no time did he raise any complaints, she said. She said the NSW Greens campaigns and protest movements were similar to ones Brown had himself once led.

“Candidates right across Greens NSW are involved in extra-parliamentary protests, campaigns and movements,” Rhiannon said. “It is the foundation of our party and we make no apology for that. I challenge the idea that these campaigns do not win votes.”

The stuntmen and women are the ones who are now showcased by the mainstream media Former leader Christine Milne

A Greens NSW spokeswoman told Guardian Australia the party was in the middle of a comprehensive review of the campaign.



“Greens NSW worked very closely with our interstate colleagues and with the federal campaign,” she said. “We adopted national messaging, we adopted the federal election timeline, we coordinated our media and advertising closely and we participated in national media and strategy discussions every day. Our support is also demonstrated by our contribution of $170,000 towards the Australian Greens budget of $900,000.”

Brown’s successor as leader, Christine Milne, who resigned in 2015, said the Greens did well given their exclusion from the leaders’ and policy debates on national TV, broadcast on social media or at the National Press Club. She said Di Natale campaigned strongly, a sentiment echoed by Brown, Casey and party insiders.



Milne blamed the media, in part, for being more interested in populist and personality politics than scrutinising policy. It meant the Greens did not get the coverage of minor party leaders such as Nick Xenophon and One Nation’s Pauline Hanson.

“Truth or accuracy are out the window and it’s all about impressions and performance and the number of clicks,” she told Guardian Australia. “Sensationalism attracts ratings. The stuntmen and women are the ones who are now showcased by the mainstream media and social media bloggers to increase the number of views. Entertainment and virility [stories going viral] are a challenge for a party like the Greens trying to drive change.”

But some inside the party say the Greens had more media coverage during this election campaign than in any previous one, even if much of it was Malcolm Turnbull and Shorten urging voters not to vote for the Greens because of the “chaotic” parliament they said would ensue.

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Di Natale, a self-described more “mainstream progressive” Greens leader, said the party would wait until all counting had finished before holding a post-mortem on the result. But he said he was pleased with the vote in the lower house.

He blamed the party’s reduced vote in the Senate on the unprecedented half-Senate election in Western Australia in 2014, held after 1,000 ballot papers were lost during an official recount in 2013. The Greens performed well in that election, elevating their 2013 Senate result, he said.

“The byelection was a very different election because we had the whole team campaigning in Western Australia so that result was so significantly higher than the Senate result in the general election and has inflated the Senate result from last time,” Di Natale told Guardian Australia.

“It could also be that with a double-dissolution election and lots of minor parties running, there was a big choice for voters. It’s possible that we were regarded by voters as major party so they were voting for us in the House of Representatives but for micro-parties in the Senate.”

Guardian Australia spoke to several Greens voters who said they felt betrayed by Di Natale’s deal with the Liberals to push through Senate voting reforms, highlighting the risk of isolating the party’s supporter base as it moves to become more mainstream. But Senate reforms have long been Greens party policy.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Adam Bandt and the Greens NSW senator Lee Rhiannon, a leader of the diehard protest arm of the party. Photograph: Daniel Munoz/AAP

But the veteran political reporter Jim Middleton, who is with Sky News and the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Advancing Journalism, said to get above 10% of the vote the Greens needed to attract voters who had not supported them in the past.

“They have to be in a position where they’re prepared to use their influence and numbers to deal with both sides,” he said. “They can’t just be the kind of party that will only deal with Labor.”

Over six years, whatever happened to the Greens’ vote elsewhere, our vote in Melbourne and surrounding seats has grown Adam Bandt

A Greens party analyst, Stephen Luntz, said in a double-dissolution election under the former Senate preference rules the Greens would probably have fared worse and lost at least four Senate seats. At a half-Senate election under the old rules, there would have been a high chance the micro-parties would have banded together with preference deals to push them out entirely.

“One Nation may have got up in every state,” Luntz said.

One party insider said disillusionment towards the Coalition government in this election might have prompted those contemplating voting Greens to back Labor in order to increase their chances of seeing a change of government.

“The other thing we struggle with is brand recognition,” he said. “We are still finding a lot of the ‘crazy Greens’ public perception. Unfortunately, that will take time to change. Richard Di Natale has only been leader for just over one year and it takes time to establish a leader.”

For his part, Adam Bandt disputes claims that the Victorian campaign should have performed better given the resources invested there.

“Just like in 2013, in Melbourne we faced a Labor/Liberal preference deal designed to unseat us and we beat the combined might of the two old parties,” he told Guardian Australia.

“It looks like more people voted for us than ever before. Over the last six years, whatever has happened to the Greens’ vote elsewhere, our vote in Melbourne and surrounding seats has grown. Our strong presence in Melbourne is having an effect in neighbouring electorates and MPs like [Labor’s] David Feeney are now only hanging on to their seats thanks to Liberal preferences.”

For now, Di Natale says the party is prepared to play the long game. But that allows a good cover when reporters and voters question whether the Greens should have done better. Like the major parties, the Greens employ analysts and psephologists tasked with strategising to maximise the party’s vote. And it is clear that internally, there is angst, with questions are being asked about the Greens’ failure to advance further in 2016.