While the 3 May federal election was generally quite disappointing for the Greens, several outer-suburban areas of Australia's major cities saw significant swings towards the Greens. These positive swings appear to correlate with neighbourhoods that have higher degrees of cultural diversity, but there could be other explanatory factors at play too.
In Remah Naji's southern Brisbane electorate of Moreton, more affluent neighbourhoods appear to have swung against the Greens, while we saw dramatic swings towards the Greens in the southernmost polling booths such as Kuraby (+23% swing), Runcorn Heights (+10.2%), Eight Mile Plains (+15.3%) and Woodridge prepoll (+9.6%).
In Huong Truong's western Melbourne electorate of Fraser, the Greens experienced negative swings in multiple booths closer to the city around Yarraville. But the party secured huge swings further west in neighbourhoods where 60% to 70% of households speak languages other than English at home, such as Sunshine (+18.3%), Sunshine East (+9.4%), and St Albans (+9.4%).
Across many outer-suburban polling booths, the Liberal vote still fell significantly, but the net swing was to the Greens, not Labor. So what's going on here?
Was this about Palestine? Or a more general pushback against the scapegoating of immigrants? Or support for the Greens' stronger position on housing and cost of living issues? Or just the fact that the Greens had bigger field campaigns and ground games in these areas than we did previously?
Join candidates Huong and Remah for a discussion with former Brisbane mayoral candidate Jonathan Sriranganathan to reflect on their campaigns and what they learned about campaigning for the Greens in the outer suburbs.
We'll unpack the importance of deeper community organising and relationship-building, the different issues and concerns that motivated voters in their electorates, and the lessons that we hope the Australian Greens might reflect on after this election.
We'll be taking questions live via the Zoom chat. Please register and we'll email you the Zoom link.
A full recording of the session will be published online afterwards for everyone who can't join live.
This session is being recorded on the lands of the Yagera and Yugarapul peoples, and on Wurundjeri Country of the Kulin Nations. Aboriginal sovereignty was never ceded. We offer respects to elders past and present, and we acknowledge that campaigning for election within the context of a settler-colonial nation-state carries with it a heavy responsibility to stand in solidarity with First Nations struggles for justice and liberation.