2025-05-11
By the Green Issue Editors
Firstly, please excuse the delayed publication and limited number of articles in this issue, due to the players involved being heavily immersed in the Federal election campaign. An unexpected Labor landslide, with some good aspects and some bad. The good being keeping Peter Dutton well and truly out, with even himself out of parliament altogether. The bad being the ousting of three of our hard working lower house Greens, including Adam Bandt who has served the party in parliament since 2010, due to the red wave washing over the Greens’ marginal seats.
But in the Senate Greens had little trouble holding a seat in each of the six states, with Jordon Steele-John easily elected in WA. Even though Labor is likely to increase its numbers in the Senate, the Greens will have the balance of power, where the Coalition doesn’t support Labor’s legislation. Thus, there is continued scope for Greens to negotiate with Labor around some of its priority issues, such as more ambitious climate action and dental into Medicare.
However, a mere two months ago we all went through another election, the WA State election. Although Labor lost votes and seats from its absolutely dominant position in the previous state parliament, it still remained dominant. In this Green Issue we include an analysis of what happened in the state election.
It is of concern that the issue of climate change was not as prominent in the Federal as it was in previous elections. We include an article looking at where climate politics sits in Australia, and wonder if climate action can be enhanced following Labor’s emphatic win.
Senator Dorinda Cox is in the middle of her six-year term and she provides an update of her recent activities. Senator Jordon Steele-John was comfortably returned; he will provide his thoughts on that journey in June Green Issue.
With the change in the WA Upper House voting system from regions based to state-wide based (and hence one-vote-one-value), four Greens MLCs were elected. We include reports from Brad Pettitt, who held the Greens fort alone in the previous parliament, a returning Tim Clifford and newcomers to the Legislative Council – Sophie McNeill and Jess Beckerling.
Header photo: Adapting to climate change. Credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Tommaso.sansone91 Creative Commons CC0 1.0