The federal election was an unmitigated disaster for the Australian Greens. While Anthony Albanese’s Labor government secured a history-making victory and the Coalition now wallows in existential disarray, voters issued a stinging rebuke to Adam Bandt’s minor party.
This was predictable. I have previously said that 2025’s biggest losers will be the Greens Party, who have bet the house on adopting an extreme anti-Israel stance verging on rejecting a two-state solution. Not only did the Greens’ middle-class, university-educated and mostly environment-focused constituency have little truck with such antics, but voters came to associate Adam Bandt’s federal and state outfit with the corrosion of social cohesion and an explosion of antisemitism. I said that the Greens would go backwards in the House of Representatives.
That prediction now reads less like analysis and more like prophecy. Let’s be clear. The Greens’ precipitous slide is not about the mishandling of one foreign policy issue. Rather, it reflects a broader collapse of public trust in a party that increasingly prioritises performative activism over genuine progressive outcomes, and ideological purity over social cohesion.
Nowhere was this more starkly illustrated than in the party’s full-throated embrace of the so-called “Free Palestine” protest movement – an unholy alliance of radical student groups, professional far-left activists, and fringe figures from the Muslim community who often spill from pro-Palestinian rhetoric into blatant antisemitism.
In the wake of Hamas’ brutal October 7 terrorist attacks, the Greens could have chosen a path of moral nuance. They could have condemned terrorism unequivocally while advocating for the protection of civilian lives in Gaza and a peaceful resolution to the conflict. Instead, they defaulted to a crude binary in which Israel was demonised as an “apartheid state” guilty of a fantasy “genocide” and Hamas’ atrocities were downplayed or, at times, tacitly excused.
This position was not only morally repugnant but politically suicidal. Voters are not blind to nuance, but nor are they tolerant of extremism. The sight of Greens MPs openly talking about the “Octopus” Jewish lobby, attending hate-filled protests calling for the end of the world’s only Jewish state, Holocaust analogies tossed about like confetti, and chants glorifying violence were tolerated – or worse, endorsed – and rightly alarmed the voting public.
It is no coincidence that since October 7, 2023, polling showed a halt to the growth of support for the Greens among both progressive Jewish Australians and non-Jewish counterparts.
Social cohesion in Australia has always been fragile – hard-won, easily lost. The Greens, ostensibly in politics to build a more tolerant and inclusive polity, have become enablers of the very forces that fracture it. In lending political cover to radical protest groups that vandalised war memorials, invaded public spaces, the arts, and university campuses, and vilified Jewish Australians, the Greens actively undermined our civic compact.
This is not just about ideology. It’s about judgment. A serious party cannot afford to outsource its moral compass to keffiyeh-clad radicals or social media activists.
Nor can it ignore the real-world consequences of its rhetoric. In the past 18 months, incidents of antisemitic abuse and violence have surged across the country. Jewish schools have ramped up security. Synagogues have been targeted. I have personally received anonymous, racist phone calls.
The Greens must shoulder part of the blame. They must understand what mainstream votes do: attacking any minority group, Jews or not, is an assault on every single Australian.
Of course, the Greens’ defenders will claim they are merely “speaking truth to power” and advocating for Palestinian rights. But there is a difference between advocating for a people and bringing a conflict in the Middle East into our streets. There is a difference between opposing war and siding – implicitly or explicitly – with those who seek to eliminate an entire people.
The Greens crossed those lines and paid the price. They erred in thinking the views of their activist membership were those of mainstream progressive voters.
Don’t expect introspection from the Greens. The early signs are that they will double down. Bandt’s election night remarks were defiant and unrepentant, blaming the Liberals for the Greens’ losses, yet insisting the party had prevented a Dutton prime ministership.
Deposed MP Max Chandler-Mather channelled Soviet-era spin, claiming that “the political establishment is happy about this result for us tonight – not because they think we’re beat because they know what we’re capable of”.
Neither took any ownership of the result. Such rhetoric suggests the Greens have become an insular political cult – cliquey, intolerant of dissent, impervious to criticism, and detached from the values of mainstream progressives.
This reckoning offers the Greens a stark choice. Return to a principled environmental and social justice platform rooted in dialogue, pluralism and moral seriousness – starting with the Middle East – or continue down the path of protest politics and tread water electorally.
There is also a lesson for Labor here: repudiating Greens extremism is not only the right thing to do but the politically savvy choice. Antisemitism is electoral poison, not that this should have needed to be pointed out.
There was a time when the Greens helped push the national conversation forward on climate and integrity in politics. I agree with its policy aim of getting dental into Medicare, but not the fantastical means and timeframe. Yet in 2025, they were reduced to reckless grandstanding and delusional denial.
The electorate noticed. And it punished them.
