Almost no one outside Brisbane saw the Greens coming in 2022. Those who did literally saw them coming, such was the scale of the party’s shoe leather campaigning and “social work” election strategy that won three seats in the heart of an otherwise conservative state.
Three years on, there is a temptation to look at those seats – Griffith, Ryan and Brisbane – and overlay the national debate, to turn them into a referendum on how the Greens have used their expanded place at the national table to agitate and irritate on issues beyond the environment, particularly on housing and Palestine.
The rightwing lobby group Advance has plastered the city with billboards saying the Greens “aren’t who they used to be”.
