2024-10-04
By Adam Bandt
Parliamentary Leader of the Australian Greens
The Greens movement has never been more important. We are now the third biggest party in the country.
This year, we achieved a new milestone, because now for the first time, the Greens hold a seat in every State and Territory Parliament in the Country.
For the first time ever, the Greens now hold a seat in the NT Parliament.
We increased the number of elected representatives in the Tasmanian Parliament, electing two more MPs.
We saw strong swings toward the Greens in the South Australian by-election of Dunstan.
In Queensland, we had some big wins in the Local Government elections, and we hope for a few more in the upcoming Queensland state election where we are polling well off the back of massive people-powered campaigns that resulted in an historic increase in support in the Federal Parliament.
We’re aiming to hold onto shared government in the ACT, with the next election just around the corner too.
In the West, we’re also optimistic about growing our numbers with a strong showing in the next state election.
We’ve welcomed a new Senator in Victoria, Steph Hodgins-May, who took the place of the legendary Janet Rice who resigned after serving for eleven years.
The Greens are now leading the policy agenda too.
We’re fighting hard to help people with the cost of living crisis, fighting for renters and people trying to buy their first home, we’re fighting for the climate and the environment and for peace in the world.
Cost of living
We’ve fought for cost of living relief across the economy. It started with identifying that it’s caused by big corporations ripping people off. Then we attempted to outlaw price gouging and profiteering through the Parliament and to make big corporations pay their fair share of tax, but Labor wouldn’t play ball.
This year saw the Greens hold an inquiry into the price gouging and profiteering of the big supermarkets. Memorably, the head of Woolworths was forced by Senator Nick McKim to declare the size of the corporation's profits, or face jail time.
Senator Barbara Pocock has turned the blowtorch on the outrageous behaviour of the big four accounting and consulting firms, when it was discovered they were using their role advising Treasury to get information on how to avoid corporate tax.
Housing
The Greens have had a busy year on housing. We’ve secured billions for public and community housing, pushed Labor to freeze rent increases and bring in new fines for dodgy landlords. We’ve campaigned hard on winding back negative gearing and CGT, while bringing in a publicly owned developer to build homes that could be rented and bought cheaply. Meanwhile, we’ve been calling out Labor’s failure to help people in the housing crisis, by demanding more be done than giving a few dollars a week to people on rent assistance.
Workers Rights
The Greens also secured a new workplace right. Now, people have the right to disconnect.
As a long-time campaign and demand of the Greens, this win allows workers to ignore contact from their employers outside of work hours, unless they are paid for it.
The Greens pushed Labor to finally get on board with paying parents super on paid parental leave.
Climate
In climate, we’ve focused our efforts on the main game, stopping new coal and gas projects.
It remains unfathomable that while the climate crisis continues to get worse, Labor keeps adding more and more coal and gas projects. To date, 23 new projects have been approved since they came to power.
Now, emissions are up since Labor took office.
We’ve fought with everything we have to delay, disrupt and deny these projects going ahead. But Labor and the Liberals keep teaming up to fast track them and give coal and gas corporations more special treatment.
Through our efforts, we have secured a stop to around half of the 116 new coal and gas projects in the pipeline, putting a hard cap on coal and gas. And, we’ve forced the Government to drop their law to fast track gas projects by bypassing environmental laws and First Nations consultation obligations.
Environment
The Greens also pushed Labor to scrap nature offsets from their proposed Nature Market Repair Bill and to establish new environmental protections from climate-wrecking gas fracking projects.
We forced the government to close loopholes that gave gas fracking corporations a licence to drill without any federal environmental water assessment, which puts another roadblock in the way of projects like the Beetaloo Basin.
We also worked to ensure the government refused further development in Toondah Harbour to protect the globally significant environment there.
And, we have been fighting to protect the forests, oceans, reef and rivers from over extraction for the profits of big corporations.
Peace in Palestine
The Greens have also been the only party in the Federal Parliament to oppose the invasion of Gaza. We’ve called out the Albanese government’s two-way arms trade with Israel and called loudly for an urgent ceasefire and arms trade embargo while the atrocities in Gaza continue. We’ve called for additional aid to go to Gaza and pushed back on the campaign to prevent Australia giving refugee visas to people fleeing the genocide.
Defence
The Greens have attempted to hold the government account on its defence spending too. Whether it’s 5-35 fighter parts used to drop bombs on Gaza, secret deals over AUKUS or the nuclear waste the project will leave behind, we’ve been holding them to account in the Senate.
Education and Students
The Greens have been fighting for students by calling for the scrapping of all student debt. This campaign encouraged Labor to lower the indexation of student debt, which would not have occurred without our pressure.
We’ve also called out the government’s caps on foreign students for the racist dog whistling they are.
And, we’ve been fighting for public schools to get the funding they need, while also arguing against the continued overfunding of those very wealthy private schools that clearly don’t need even more public funds while public school teachers dip into their own pockets to buy essentials for their students.
Disability
One of the worst things Labor’s done this year is to work with the Liberals and Pauline Hanson to cut billions of dollars from the NDIS budget. The Greens have been working to stop, limit and reduce the impacts of these cuts on people with disabilities this year.
First Nations
The Greens have also been working hard on First Nations justice. After the devastating results of the Voice campaign, the Greens have been attempting to hold the government accountable over their promise to establish a Treaty and Truth Commission in order to fully implement the Uluru Statement from the Heart.
Obviously, this is just a summary, there’s always so much more. Thanks to Party Room, all the staff (both MP and AGs), AG office bearers, and all the volunteers and members who work so hard all year to make our Party an ever-growing force for good in our country.
- Adam