‘Awful, Miserable’ Workplace: Departing Greens MP Claims He’s Pleased to Leave Parliament

High-profile Greens MP Max Chandler-Mather lost his Brisbane seat of Griffith to Labor, but says he has no regrets about leaving a toxic work environment.

Greens member for Griffith Max Chandler-Mather at a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, July 1, 2024. AAP Image/Mick Tsikas

While Greens leader Adam Bandt’s seat of Melbourne is still too close to call, two of the party’s MPs already know they’re not returning to Parliament: Stephen Bates and housing spokesperson Max Chandler-Mather.

But Chandler-Mather says he’s far from upset to be leaving Parliament, which he describes as a “sick place.”

“I'll be honest, one of the things I’m quite happy about at the moment is I don’t have to spend more time in the House of Representatives, because basically every time I stood up, I got screamed and yelled at,” he told the ABC.

“In terms of a workplace, it was bloody awful, and frankly, a lot of the time, miserable.”

It was the people he represented and those who felt let down by Parliament that motivated Chandler-Mather to keep going.

“We were getting attacked because we said we should spend a bit more on public housing and give something to renters. I feel proud of that work … and I think if I had my time again, I would do it all again,” he said.

“[But] despite all of that and fighting hard work, we fell short, and I feel like I’ve let people down because I always feel like, at the end of the day, the MP has to take responsibility for that, and I suppose I do.”

He blamed the Greens’ loss of lower house seats, including his own, on the decline in votes for the Liberal Party, which resulted in Liberal preferences flowing to Labor.

Despite this, Chandler-Green sees the outcome as “the second most successful election in Australian Greens history” because of the gains made in the Senate.

“We'll end up with two to three lower house MPs and the largest Senate vote in our history,” he said.

“The only way the government is going to pass legislation through the Senate now is either with the Greens or the Coalition.”

Count Continues

The Australian Greens have failed to win seats they thought they could take from Labor.

This result contrasts with the performance of Climate-200-backed Teal candidates, who won seats from the Coalition.

In the seat of Ryan, Liberal candidate Maggie Forrest is leading the Greens’ Elizabeth Watson-Brown on first preferences. But with preference flows from Labor, who are running just 800 votes behind the Greens in the current count, Watson-Brown is expected to hold the seat.

In the seat of Melbourne, the reverse applies. Bandt leads on first preferences with 40.3 percent to Labor’s 31.5 percent, but the Green MP needs 33 percent of preferences from other parties to retain his seat.

The Australian Electoral Commission’s official preference count currently shows flows of under 26 percent, which means Labor still leads the projected two-candidate preferred count and holds a chance of victory.