DANIEL:
All right, let's get into it.

ADAM:

Just hang on a sec, I'm just turning you up. You’re a little bit softer.

DANIEL:

Sure.

Adam Bandt is the leader of the Greens If things go his way this weekend, his party could hold the balance of power in a minority Labor government.

But given the prime minister’s famed hostility towards the Greens – and given the Labor Party’s continual approvals of new coal and gas projects – questions remain about whether they’ll really have any power at all.

ADAM:

The reality is that there have been negotiations during the course of the Parliament. Not only between the Ministers and our spokespeople, but also between myself and the Prime Minister as well.

DANIEL:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Daniel James. This is 7am.

Today, Greens Leader Adam Bandt, on working with Albanese – and what the Greens have to show for their record win last time around.

It’s Tuesday, April 28.

DANIEL:

Adam Bandt, thanks for being here. I want to start with your electorate. Bunurong elder Uncle Mark Brown was heckled on Friday at the dawn service at the Shrine of Remembrance. What does that tell you about the current political environment we're in?

ADAM:

Look, I think we've seen the rise of the far-right and we've been warned about that for some time and white supremacists and the far-right, sadly, have had a history of organising in Victoria in particular. We saw it during lockdown, we saw them marching and gathering in the Grampians. We have been warned about this and now it is, sadly, got to the point where they're feeling emboldened enough to go and start speaking out in public and promoting themselves. And, I mean, they're neo-Nazis. And one of the really concerning things is that Trump has opened the doors for a potential legitimation of this kind of politics and we’ve now got Peter Dutton weighing in as well by attacking Welcomes to Country. At the same time, like in the same week, is this, within a few days of this happening. And so, I am worried, I am concerned about it, and I think one of the things that we need to do, during the election campaign in particular but beyond, is call it out for what it is. Call it out for a creeping introduction of Trump-style far-right politics into Australia but also, white supremacism and neo-Nazism on the rise and take all efforts that we can to stamp it out.

DANIEL:

Adam, I want to talk to you about your record in this term. What goals did you set for yourself at the start of this parliamentary term and what did you achieve?

ADAM:

So the last election our campaign was to get Morrison out and push Labor to go further and faster on things that matter. And as a result of us being there, we've got an extra three and a half billion dollars for public and community housing, money going out the door now that was never on the table before. Some greater protections for the environment through, especially for water, for the Murray. And we got the right to disconnect. We managed to get a hard cap on pollution put into the climate legislation, which means pollution can't rise. And that stopped about half of the coal and gas projects in the pipeline. We've also, and I think more broadly, politically, we've put renters and first homebuyers on the agenda. Going back to the last election in 2022, Anthony Albanese ran a really small target campaign and they came up with these really piecemeal offerings around housing. And we pushed and we said, look, this is not going to fix the problem. There are some structural problems with housing in Australia. Go back to the 1980s, three times the average income was the price of an average home and now it's eight. Fueled by negative gearing, capital gains tax concessions introduced by John Howard. And so the question is, how do we unwind it? We got the government to the point of modelling some changes on that and seeking advice from Treasury. So as well as some really practical things – they're going to make a difference to people from the practical things like building more homes and helping public housing tenants get things like air conditioning and solar panels – up through to shifting the political agenda. We've had an impact.

DANIEL:

You talked about the modelling that the government is doing and that would be around negative gearing. They've ruled that out for this election. Do you regret not being able to manage to secure more?

ADAM:

They also said they weren't going to change stage three tax cuts. They made that a solemn promise and we pushed and pushed and said, look, it's massively unfair, spending billions of dollars to give tax cuts to politicians and billionaires. And we got the government to change it and we gave them credit for that. So I actually think, notwithstanding everything that's said during the election campaign, I actually feel that if we keep pushing and pushing, we could get somewhere. Would we have liked to have been able to get more on reform on negative gearing capital gains tax? Yes, yes, absolutely. But what we're doing, this election is putting forward what we think is a fairly reasonable and fair way of unwinding, of defusing, John Howard's time bomb. So we're proposing, leave the current arrangements in place if you've got one investment property in addition to your family home, but rule it out for the future, so that from here on in... Like if you want to go and buy multiple properties, then no one is going to stop you, but don't expect a handout from the government to support you doing it, especially when the effect of it is that you're pushing up prices out of reach of first home buyers and renters.

DANIEL:

You had a record number of seats in this Parliament and yet, on a number of fronts, you weren't able to influence policy as you would have liked. One example is late last year, Anthony Albanese pulled the pin on the Nature Positive Bill after the Environment Minister, Tanya Plibersek, got very close to a deal with the Greens. So what did you learn about negotiating with the Labor Party and how would you go about it differently next time?

ADAM:

I think what we've learned from that is that we need more pressure in Parliament so that Labor does not think that they can get away with doing a deal with the Liberals to weaken our environment laws. And we know, just mathematically, of course, the numbers are there if they choose to do it. We have to put them in the position where they don't want to do it, and where they understand that they can potentially lose seats if they weaken our environment laws instead of strengthen them. The Australian Conservation Foundation said as a result of that, we end the term with weaker environmental protections than we started. Like, that's a pretty astounding place to be. The second thing I would say is that this is what you get when you have majority parliaments. They feel like they can get away with anything and with the experts saying there's every chance of a minority parliament, the experience of 2010 is that that's when you can get them to pay attention.

DANIEL:

Anthony Albanese is famously no fan of the Greens. His antipathy towards your party is well noted. Do you think that's a liability when it comes to getting things done in the Parliament?

ADAM:

We've got a situation now where less than a third of the country votes for the government, a bit more than a third votes for opposition, and about a third votes for someone else, including the Greens. I think the next parliament is going to be judged on whether it tackles some of these big issues, the underlying issues of the housing, cost of living, inequality, climate crisis… like, there’s big forces at work here. And if they don't, and bearing in mind, of course, they’re going to have to negotiate with us in the senate anyway because there’s no majority in the senate. If they're not willing to do that, I think they're going to be pretty harshly judged.

DANIEL:

So how would you characterise your relationship with the Prime Minister?

ADAM:

Look, it's professional and we talk and we have the ability to discuss the legislation that's befor the Parliament and how we can manage to get it through. So, the reality is that there have been negotiations during the course of the Parliament, including not only between the Ministers and our spokespeople, but also between myself and the Prime Minister as well. It has actually happened and it has resulted in good outcomes for people.

DANIEL:

Coming up after the break – Adam Bandt’s plans for the next parliament.

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DANIEL:

You have the goal of the balance of power in a minority Labor government. How many seats do you think you can win?

ADAM:

Well we've got four that we’re… the seat in Melbourne plus three in Brisbane, that we're working hard to get re-elected in and taking nothing for granted in any of those seats. And then there's another five around the country. Wills and McNamara in Melbourne, Richmond in New South Wales, Sturt in South Australia and Perth over in WA. They're all seats where we are within reach of winning those seats. So that I guess, would be… we'll see how many of those go Green on election night.

DANIEL:

How many of those seats would you need to win to consider the strategy a success?

ADAM:

Look, I obviously would like to increase the hold and increase. We are. We're facing this time not only the well-resourced attacks from Advance, but also Liberal and Labor. This is the first election that the Greens are going in where we've got Liberal, Labor and Advance all deciding that they want to come and take seats off us because they've seen that we actually believe in something different and they don't want that in Parliament. So we're not underestimating the task that we've got ahead of us, but yes, we would like to hold our existing representation and increase it.

DANIEL:

So if you do increase your representation, what will be your top priorities for the next term?

ADAM:

So we’ve put forward what I think would be called a really clear social democratic platform. The basic principle underlying our policy platform that we've released is not this bandaid approach from the others, not tinkering around the edges, but saying, in a wealthy country like Australia, everyone should be able to afford the basics. We should all be able to have housing, health care, education, they should be guaranteed in a wealthy country like ours. So I think it's a platform that Whitlam would be proud of. We've identified a number of areas that we think we could get action on really quickly. One is winding back and reining in those tax handouts to wealthy property investors that are denying renters a chance to buy their first home, building more housing and capping how much rents can go up by, like they do in the ACT. So that's critical. Second, another area would be, getting dental into Medicare. Last time, we got it in for kids. This time, we want to get in for everyone. Free universal childcare, starting to treat childcare like we treat primary school, where it should be free to go and available to everyone. Ending native forest logging and stopping the government from opening new coal and gas mines. So they're the areas, like of course, we'll pursue all of our areas across our platform, but they're areas we reckon we could get action on within a few weeks or months.

DANIEL:

The Greens yourselves, you've been the focus of a campaign by the lobby group Advance, which came to the fore during the Voice referendum debate. How much impact are they having on the political climate and the Greens' chances of winning additional seats this election?

ADAM:

Look, Advance is this shadowy organisation funded by coal billionaires and others who can see that their days of being able to continue to back new fossil fuel projects, accrue billions of dollars and get away with whatever they want are potentially coming to an end. They know that there's a realistic prospect of a minority government after this election. I think the attacks are very thin and I think people can see what's behind them. There’s also, I think, a growing awareness of what Advance and groups like it represent, that there is this in fact well-resourced network of groups of which Advance is part, but they operate in other countries as well, and their goal is pretty clear. It’s to defend the interests of their billionaire backers and their fossil fuel interests. They know they can't say that outright, so they find other ways of trying to do it and my sense is that people are seeing through it.

DANIEL:

If the government is returned with a majority on Saturday, will you see that as a rebuke of the Greens?

ADAM:

I think we'll have to see what happens, I guess, with the Greens and our presence in parliament. And of course, we're going to continue to have a big presence in the Senate. I think that this move towards having more third voices in Parliament is unstoppable. As you look at the polls that are out at the moment, like, regardless of what happens about people's vote share, one of the constants that is coming through is… Now one came out over the weekend that said only 17% of people think that this election campaign has given them hope for the future, and two thirds of people think that neither of the major parties are tackling the big issues. And I think that, that underlying sense that you've got to tackle the big issues, is going to persist. And I think one of the lessons from Trump is that where governments do not use their power to make people's lives better by making big changes to things like housing, to things cost of living, then along come the hard right, or sometimes even the far-right, and they use that disconnection and that dislocation and they try and ferment it and try to use it to get themselves into power. And I think whatever the composition of the next parliament, it’s got to tackle those issues, otherwise that disaffection is going to grow and that would be a really dangerous place for Australia to be.

DANIEL:

Adam, thanks so much for giving your time in such a busy part of the election cycle. Thank you.

ADAM:

I really appreciate it. Thanks.

DANIEL:

We’ve invited the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Opposition leader Peter Dutton on the show to lay out their visions for the country. We still hope to bring you interviews with both of them.

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DANIEL:

Also in the news today…

The Albanese government has released its election costings, with treasurer Jim Chalmers saying “responsible economic management” has been a feature of their government.

The treasurer says Labor has improved the budget position by more than 1 billion dollars compared to the pre-election outlook, claiming the savings will offset the cost of their election campaign commitments.

It comes after S&P Global Ratings warned Australia’s AAA credit rating may be at risk if election campaign pledges result in larger structural deficits, debt and interest costs.

And,

A coronial inquest is underway into the mass stabbing attack at a shopping centre in Bondi Junction one year ago.

The five-week inquest at the NSW State Coroners court will investigate the deaths of the six victims and the attacker, who was shot dead by police at the scene, as well as the emergency response and adequacy of mental health services.

I’m Daniel James, this is 7am. Thanks for listening.