‘I had so much hope’: Greens staffers and younger members aren’t happy with the party

‘They don’t want us talking about the housing crisis, they don’t want us harping on about groceries, they don’t want us hating on landlords — because more than half of the party bigwigs are landlords.’

Cover: Greens leader Larissa Waters and messages from Greens staffers and the party’s younger ranks (Image: AAP/Mick Tsikas)

Patrick Marlborough Nov 7, 2025 || There was a noticeably diverse turnout, especially in terms of age, at a Socialist Alliance event in Perth a few months ago. But among the crowd, I recognised a number of young faces as volunteers for the Western Australian Greens. Former volunteers, it turned out.

“Where do you expect us to go?” one told me a few days later in a private Instagram message. “I feel like this is where I’m meant to be now. This is what I thought the Greens were, I guess. Or what I wish they were lol.”

The federal Greens are having an odd year. The identity crisis that caused them to trip on their Birkenstocks face-first into a humiliating election result has lingered. Among some staffers and disaffected younger members Crikey has spoken with, there is a sense of paralysis in the party after losing the likes of leader Adam Bandt and MP Max Chandler-Mather — and the doggedness and boldness that had defined them, respectively.

Under new leader Larissa Waters, some feel the party has switched into low gear, bending back towards its bread and butter (the environment, mainly) and quietly pulling away from the cost of living crisis and Gaza.

“This time last year, I had so much hope,” a now former staffer tells me. “I was brimming with excitement. It felt like we were doing it. It felt like it was finally happening … I felt it before the election. I don’t know. There was a definite rift between the young voices that make up the party’s left, and what I guess you’d call the party establishment, who don’t want to tread on anyone’s toes.”

That young left, which another staffer described as “the Bolshy bunch”, airs its discontent in group chats and reading groups, where they feel safe to bag a party leadership they alternatively dub “regressive”, “reactionary” and “fucking wimpy”.

“They don’t want us talking about the housing crisis, they don’t want us harping on about groceries, they don’t want us hating on landlords — because more than half of the party bigwigs are landlords,” another disaffected staffer tells me via X.

“Honestly, and I mean this with full offence, it feels like being a member of the ALP right now … which is not what I signed up for, haha!”

“We are fighting Labor for the middle,” a decades-long volunteer told me over beers. “We met them on their terms during the election, and of course we were eclipsed by them. You can not beat them there. They are burrowed in like big fat ticks!”

The party’s left wing — which felt like its future, perhaps its hope, not 10 months ago — was described as “purged” by a comms officer.

“Look, I am maybe made paranoid from exhaustion, but the sense I get in meetings and stuff is that they don’t want us rabble-rousers around anymore. They blame us for the election, they blame us for what’s happening now, which is funny when you think about it,” they said.

“I would think the left is licking its wounds from losing Max and Adam,” is a message shared with me by one staffer from another in a group chat. “But they haven’t been purged, just hibernating.”

What is clear from the polls is that the party is struggling to find its voice in the thousand-year Albonian Age. It is not unique in this predicament, of course. The Coalition is all but non-existent, and the LNP is as absent as Howard’s once omnipresent spectacles. Labor has mastered a form of centre-right incrementalism that plays perfectly to the average Australian voter.

But over the past few years, the Greens had done a decent job presenting themselves as a truly alternative option to Labor’s leaden status quo. Personalities like Chandler-Mather were offering visions of a progressive, affordable, forward-thinking Australia untouched by the two major parties, especially Albanese’s Labor. For his effort, Chandler-Mather was crucified in parliament and the press, and the Greens have, perhaps understandably, conceded that this mode of evocative daring is perhaps better suited for infographics than actual party policy.

The momentum that had built around the housing and cost of living crisis, and especially that which had built around Gaza — the Greens being the only major party to call Israel’s actions a genocide — has now dissipated, and a timid malaise has filled its place. What you get from talking to volunteers, staff, members, MPs and senators from different states is an idea of a party broken into micro-fiefdoms — too small to be considered factions, but rather micro-interpersonal vibe clusters, all of them vaguely at odds.

“We’re doing our thing, they’re doing their thing, and Larissa and friends are doing their thing,” a member says of their local cohort, a rival local cohort and the party leadership, respectively.

“Fuck ‘em,” they laugh over the phone, “someone’s gotta get the job done.”

As a friend from a prominent Brisbane wing tells me, “Everything is feeling very rinky-dink right now — and rinky-dink doesn’t poll well.”

“But I remain hopeful. I think the party is at a crossroads, and I think it — just by the nature of the young people joining up every day — is going to head in the right direction. We’re the only party that really cares about the things that matter, that are going to matter more in the near future. I think that future’s ours to win.”