Juvenile. Brash. Grandstanding. Triggering. The minister for annoying the media.
These are just some of the terms thrown around to describe the Greens housing spokesperson Max Chandler-Mather, amid a consensus that he is, well, kind of annoying.
It’s clear he irks the prime minister, to whom he is often compared. Headlines describe him as “getting under Anthony Albanese’s skin” or “troubling Albanese to the Max”, while Albo has been reported as “losing his cool” during their regular question time clashes.
He rankles sections of the media, who often describe him as an “upstart”. His speech at last month’s CFMEU protests saw one correspondent label him an “attack puppy”, as opposed to the more respectable “attack dog”.
He even annoys some who agree with him, with his bolshie style coming off as obnoxious.
When I ask him why people find him so annoying, Chandler-Mather, who quit the Labor Party when he was 21, has a ready answer.
“I think some Labor MPs find me annoying because I’m articulating a set of politics that they claim to represent, but don’t actually in the way that they vote,” he says, arguing the Greens are now the ones representing the values of Gough Whitlam. “That must be a confronting experience.”
When asked why others seem to find him annoying, the Griffith MP takes a little longer to consider.
“I’ve been called emotional before, and various things like that,” he says, changing tack. “My experience of coming down to Parliament is that it is one of the more alienating, disconnected, callous places I’ve ever worked in. It imposes this logic on people that despite the fact that we’re in a building where technically we have the power to lift millions of people out of poverty and housing stress, everyone has to pretend that isn’t actually possible.”
The 32-year-old says he often sounds “angry and upset” when he calls this out.
“For whatever reason, that seems to breach some of the unspoken rules set by sections of the press gallery and the major parties who seem to have forgotten why they’re there in the first place,” he surmises. “I don’t know, maybe that is a bit annoying.”
Chandler-Mather is aiming for a Greens government within a few decades. There’s no doubt grandiose claims such as this are part of what makes him so grating to the establishment. But the former union organiser, who spearheaded the 2022 door-knocking campaign that saw the Greens win three Queensland seats, believes the party is on a trajectory to supplant Labor, which he says has become increasingly hollowed out.
He is adamant that Greens policies — “taxing billionaires and big corporations, freezing and capping rent increases, bringing dental into Medicare” — are broadly popular, and that a “well-organised progressive movement” can win over disenfranchised voters, beating out the far-right. The Greens currently do best among renters and those struggling financially — something he clearly hopes to capitalise on.
“Our view has been that our only barrier to reaching those people who feel alienated with politics is our capacity to organise at a mass scale and reach them,” Chandler-Mather says, pointing to the Queensland result no-one saw coming. “We’ve always felt confident that where we can do that, we’ll win.”
Our interview is taking place not long after former Labor leader Bill Shorten announced his retirement, amid reflections that his bold 2019 platform was “ahead of the times”. But Labor remains unwilling to go near those policies, many of which are supported by the Greens, even with polls showing majority support for abolishing negative gearing (Chandler-Mather was not invited on Monday’s Q+A, which that polling was done for).
“I’ve always viewed Labor’s analysis of their loss in 2019 as wrong,” says Chandler-Mather, noting there was widespread support for such policies when he door-knocked in Griffith that year. “The idea that people weren’t voting for Labor because they were too progressive, I always thought that was a self-serving narrative for the sort of Labor bigwigs who wanted a justification for going as small-target as possible for the next election.”
Chandler-Mather acknowledges it would take several election cycles and a lot of volunteers to achieve his long-term goal of Greens rule. But the next Parliament is likely to be hung, with the latest Accent-Redbridge MRP analysis showing no clear path to a Labor majority. Given the current level of animosity between the parties (and towards Chandler-Mather specifically), what are the chances Labor will be open to working with the Greens?
“I think there’s a scenario where they’ll have to,” he says. “Whether or not they do is going to come down to Labor coming to terms with the fact that less than a third of the country votes for them. And in any functioning democracy, they’re going to have to reckon with the fact that they have to work with other political parties, including, you know, one of the fastest growing political parties in the country in the Greens.”
The thorn in Labor’s side rejects claims he has been too bolshie this term, arguing the Greens have proven themselves capable of negotiating on housing, ultimately securing an extra $3 billion in direct funding for waving through Labor’s Future Fund. “We didn’t get everything we wanted, but we got real money on the table for public and community housing,” he says. “Proof is in the pudding.”
Chandler-Mather isn’t concerned about backlash over his CFMEU rally appearance, which one ABC critic compared to Tony Abbott speaking in front of misogynistic anti-carbon tax signs (another compared Adam Bandt to Donald Trump). He reiterates that he was there alongside a broad cross-section of society who opposed the overriding of natural justice as well as corruption and misogyny, but could “walk and chew gum at the same time”.
I put to Chandler-Mather that he risks alienating those who don’t have time to read into the nuance. “It’s sort of factored into our political project that we’re going to face an increasingly hostile media,” he says, arguing it’s part and parcel of challenging the status quo. “We need to build a political movement that’s capable of confronting and overcoming that.”
But what of the charge that the prodigious door-knocker is simply too annoying, putting many offside with his dogged and impatient approach?
“They might get annoyed at me, but I only represent a much broader movement,” he says of those who find him a pain. “If they found a way to get rid of me, I would just be replaced by people far more annoying than me, in their perspective. There’s millions of people across the country who feel the same way that I do and would be saying the exact same things in Parliament … It’s clear to me that they still don’t fully understand what’s coming, that they think that somehow I’m an outlier. They should go door-knocking.”
It’s fair to say Chandler-Mather has been an aggravating presence for Labor this term. But not nearly as vexing as they’re going to find minority government, should they fail to assuage that growing frustration in the Australian electorate.
