Comment on Cul de sac politics: Have the Australian Greens hit a strategic dead-end?
Gorgritch_umie_killa@aussie.zone 3 days ago
What is J.Sriringanathan talking about?
First, he quite rightly praises Max Chandler-Mather for identifying a key winning communitarian candidate strategy summed up pithily as, ‘all politics is local’. Then he, probably rightly criticises Mather for pushing too hard, then failing, for a pyrrhic victory in a political fight on the job.
Then he draws a comparison with the UK Greens party who, while exciting, are at the arse end of a decade of austerity, a brexit sized blow to the economy, and an unfortunately underwhelming and certainly tone deaf Labour government. Sriringnathan is comparing a mildly over-ripe apple with straightened then smashed banana.
Lastly Sriringnathan, with a nod to it being a choice, advocates the answer to be a radical position of anti-establishment and deep change instead of progressive reformists, with the seeming assumption that Melbourne, Griffith, outer suburban migrant and working class voters all want insurgent tactics and bold policy changes. Sriringnathan doesn’t back that position up with any voter sentiment data.
This is an incongruous text, Sriringnathan ends up advocating the Greens double down on the politics he criticises Mather for during Mather’s term in Office, but neglects to mention the attractive and effective communitarian legitimacy Max Chandler-Mather built up in his electorate.
All because the UK, a country in a very different place politically, is on track for coalition governments due to many varied and enormous structural issues affecting peoples everyday lives. Australians have a few accute issues, housing, cost of living, I’m sure theres more, but the structure is there, its the will that isn’t. Labor already tried to fix the impact of investors in housing, they lost to Morrison and are gun shy ever since.
Labor are probably going to remain gun shy, and the Greens being anti-establishment, especially on housing, are probably going to fail due to the cultural hegemony in Australia’s housing culture.
This is Antonio Gramsci, where he postulates that “the working class and the other classes identified their own good with the good of the bourgeoisie and helped to maintain the status quo rather than revolting.”
Today was the first Tuesday of February 2026, thats Reserve Bank day in Australia, and we had a 0.25% rate increase. It took two minutes to find this mortgage calculator article and this one on the big 4’s reaction to the rates decision.
These are both helpful and well meaning articles, but in them they adopt the dogmatic acceptance of the Australian economic and housing system where all is suborned to cyclic inflation targeting. A practice introduced during the monetariansim phase in 1993, (take the date with a grain of wikipedia). 33 years of economic policy is not exactly evidence of its long term viability as the economic gauge to watch. Especially considering much of the Reserve Bank’s complaints over the years of the tools failure to have the effects they hoped. Adding to this, the ongoing and obvious failures of much of the monetarian structures worldwide, and there is nutrient rich soil for radical change yes, but are there green shoots?
Radical change can mean ‘move fast and break things’. The USA seems to be testing this philosophy on its whole economy right now, to “mixed” results, and its hard to see what their path forward after this phase. Or it can mean gradually at first, then all at once, this could allow for the propogation of new ideas to capture the increasing cultural malaise around Australia’s accute problems.
The tangled narrative that is the "investor-consumerist’ of housing (note, this hegemonic narrative is present in more of Australia than housing) is the philosophical approach that makes this problem so hard to figure out. On the one hand you have Australians willing to spend the money to accomodate a lifestyle they strive for, while they always consider the investment potential of any dwelling, hence the oft-repeated mantra ‘dont over-capitalise on you’re reno’.
The ‘investor-consumerist’ philosophy leads to De’beers style hoarding and constriction of supply in a successful effort to maintain or grow prices, at the same time as there is a gestalt drive to ‘upsize/sizemax’; move near the beach; away from the highway; and above the neighbours. These together have created a hardening wedge of less ownership with more consumption. In the case of houses, the more consunption comes through renting plus moving costs between rentals, plus the mortgages, which have turned into a sort of… long-term fixed place 30 year rental?
So, I don’t advocate a particular alternative economic system here, a wholesale economic revolution may be on the horizon, or maybe tinkering is all we need. But I know without presenting any economic arguments that capture the gestalt imagination of the Nation thereby changing the cultural hegemony of the investor-consumerist philosophy, the Greens calling for anti-establishment deep changes will fail to win over the interest rate targeting; home loan borrowing; investor-consumerist… Australian.
Where does Jono specifically criticize Max? I’ve only read his and Max’s piece once so may have missed it.
I think the data Jono was relying on to suggest that voters want deep change was the rise in support of One Nation. One Nation might be a grift but it’s currently the only popular party with an anti-establishment image, regardless of how contrived that image may be.
Its a short critiscism,
While I haven’t always agreed 100% with his approach (either on policy priorities or on how elected Greens reps should wield power)
He didn’t say it would have been a pyrrhic victory, reading back this morning i should have made the distinction that, thats my summation of that grand housing bill stand off between Labor and Greens in that term.
Totally agree that One Nation’s rise in popularity is what Sriringnathan is basing his thoughts on, and this is analogous, and likely directly linked through the new ‘international’ CPAC, to the rise in popularity of the UK’s Reform Party.
But, Sriringnathan has neglected to compare the Labour Party of the UK and the Labor party of Australia, they’re in very different spots. UK Labour and Keir Starmer are deep underwater on polling, whereas Aus Labor has had a minor swing against it, and Albanese’s approval ratings have been damaged only recently in regards the Bondi massacre. They’re not in the same position and there isn’t enough of a movement for deep change in Aus like there is in the UK.
Zagorath@quokk.au 1 day ago
Does he? I don’t really read it as that at all. I read it as him suggesting Chandler-Mather was let down by the Greens as a whole, because while he took a strong stance on an important issue, the Greens as a whole, particularly in other states (claims Jono), were much softer on that issue in particular.
I think the fact is that the Greens can never win with a small-target, modest reform approach. The right-wing media in this country will always ensure they are perceived as extremist, and any attempt to appear otherwise will simply fail to meaningfully attract the target audience while alienating people who do want to see more radical change. So to win power they need to take strong stances that make people excited to vote for them.
Gorgritch_umie_killa@aussie.zone 1 day ago
Well the quote below is a mild, but surely by no mistake, direct critiscism of Max Chandler-Mather
Sriringnathan doesn’t elaborate on how he differs from Chandler-Mather on ‘policy priorities’ and ‘wielding power’, so it would be up to him to elaborate. I said to u/manicmaniacalmania, i did slide into my own assessment with the pyrrhic victory opinion without a good enough distinction between the points there.
Meh, i wrote it late at night, the interesting stuff in that comment I think is the application of Gramsci to the idea Sriringnathan presents. Which is why I think taking strong stands, and creating excitement is maybe a good single election tactic, but not good strategy.
Say all the craziest dreams come true and Greens win an overwhelming majority in their own right, both houses, can’t move in the halls of Parliament without trippin over another Greens Party member, etc. The limiting nature of the Australian cultural hegemony, which I’ve labelled an investor-consumerist ideology, could mean they’d flame out. Have massive push back from the community, their own base even, who’re often very comfortable and I’m not sure well aligned to some of the harder socialist party lines, i think of this group as a kind of champagne socialist, the kind Sriringnathan as well refers to in his piece.
If they were to try enacting some more radical policies, even if they’ve told the electorate thats their plan, they could loselargw parts of their base, while also failing in those segments Sriringnathan refers to. Melbourne, Griffith, and outer suburban migrant and working class voters. All because what they’re doing isn’t within the contwxtual expectations of how life is lived in Australia.
A US Diversion (As an example)
Look at the unpopularity of the US regime, a lot of their own voters say ‘they’ve gone too far’; or, ‘they didn’t believe them when they said they’d do the thing’; or, ‘thats not what I voted for’ when their program was well publicised. A lot of what they’ve done is lifted from that well publicised Heritage Project. But fascism or corrupt monarchism is outside the cultural frame for the dominant social order in the US. So even though they have the coercive force of the state, and the oligarchs reach and funds, they haven’t significantly shifted the cultural hegemony. Think of the reaction to the breaking of Constitutional Amendments. Especially interesting is the gun rights threats of the POTUS. The puritanical-ubercapital focused cultural hegemony in the US hasn’t really been altered, even with the cultural influences of the likes Thiel and his CEO-Monarchism harem of chums.
So to bring it back to the Greens, bold stances are at best a short term election injection, or, at worst a distraction to be lampooned in cartoons from our own Beer Battered Mussolini, probably both at the same time. So I think it puts the cart before the horse.
Greens should be working on shifting cultural ideas. Do what Chandler-Mather is good at, being great communitarians, but also lampoon the right wingers, change the face of the ‘scolding woke climate change commie’ that is in these people’s minds everytime they think of the Greens.
Look at crocodile dundee, a massive environmentalist and indigenous rights side to that character, while also having this outback weather beaten edge. That character appealed to a different idea of what it means to own ‘land’ and why. I can’t remember the following movies, but in the first there was a clear willingness to hold the value of the land.
Of course entertainment is only one lense where the cultural breaks can be varied, but i thought it was interesting because I can’t imagine a large land owner cone outback jack character being presented in that way today.
These are pretty speculative and undeveloped thoughts I’ve got though, long story short I think Sriringnathan is advocating fighting a battle, amidst a wider cultural hegemonic war.