The Chaser Report - The grassroots are Greener on the other side | MP Max Chandler-Mather

Episode Date: April 6, 2023

Charles Firth moves to greener pastures and talks to MP for Griffith, Max Chandler-Mather. Join Max as he answers all of Charles's tough questions like why Dutton's stance on the referendum is cooked, and why the rental market is cooked, and why the climate cooked and cooking. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report. I'm Charles Firth. And with me today is a very special guest, Max Chandler-Mather, who is the Greens spokesman on housing, and one of the three, I think, is it Greens who got elected in Queensland federally at the last election. Hello, Max. Hey, Charles. Thanks for having to have. me we're recording this on Thursday morning and peter dutton last night came out and um opposed

the invoice to uh parliament uh for indigenous people uh what's going on well you're a queenslander he's a queenslander i'm sort of holding you personally responsible for him existing uh no fair enough it is yeah it's uh some i'm sort of surprised to be honest i mean i'm not surprised in a way that Peter Dutton's behaving in the way he is. But it's sort of remarkable how irrelevant the Liberal Party are making themselves at the moment. And I sort of thought after the Aston By-election that they would realize that the Liberal Party

is currently disintegrating as a political party and like losing its reason to exist. And sort of chasing irrelevancy down this deep black hole and following the path of Tony Abbott, I suppose I thought maybe there might be a few heads in the Liberal Party would know that that's such as a completely self-destructive thing to do. But, yeah, here we are. I mean, Peter Dutton has decided to render the Liberal Party even more irrelevant

than it is at the moment. And it is sort of remarkable how they have basically nothing to offer anyone anymore. But just to, in fairness to them, Max, it's not that they oppose. you know, a recognition of Indigenous people in the Constitution, not that they oppose, it's just, it doesn't, it's just that it shouldn't have any impact on anything. As long as it just doesn't do anything for anyone in any way, they're completely supportive of it. That's right. And it's funny how, like, their argument for a long time has been, well, it's not, you know, we need to have practical outcomes on the ground for First Nations people.

And now they've turned around here, that's it, and said, well, we're concerned that actually the voice proposal is too consequential and it might actually have an impact so now we have to oppose it. So it's all of a sudden dawned on them that it might actually have so positive impact on people's lives. So that's what's flipped them into opposition. Do you think he hates himself at some level? Do you think Peter's that and like part of the problem is he sort of, because one of the reasons he's opposed it is because it's too, it'll be too Canberra. Like it'll make the indigenous voice really a Canber bubble. He has worked. worked in Canberra for 22 years.

Like, do you think maybe he just needs to sort of, like, just become a little bit more accepting of himself and go, look, I am from Canberra, you know, it's fine. I can identify like that. It's all right if other people get to be part of Canberra as well. It doesn't just have to be for white men from Queensland. Like, you know what I mean? Yeah, I mean, I haven't spent now six, just over six months down in Canberra, I can understand the sense of self-loving having to be down there.

But he's clearly trying to pursue the strategy that Howard pursued to kill off the Republican referendum, which was frame a yes vote as this sort of support, some sort of elitist project. And I think it, I mean, it certainly will be incumbent upon all of us campaigning for a voice to make clear that actually this is about breaking the elite control that politicians have over policy in particular for first nations people like the whole point of it like he's attempting to reverse what the point of this is which is uh to get first nations people otherwise locked out of politics to have a voice down in camber for the first time ever um so i think you know it's um like a lot of um conservative attacks on these sort of positive progressive

proposals they attempt to try and argue the opposite of what it actually is going to do um the irony bit. What he wants is the status quo, which is precisely camera getting to decide everything for first nation's people. It's brilliant. I mean, I did like Noel Pearson's comment this morning, because Dutton's main problem with it is, oh, look, it'll be full of, this voice will be full of professors, right? Like, indigenous professors. And Noel Pison just goes, hang on, so you don't want indigenous people to get an education? Is that where we're at? Like, that's sort of centuries old.

Well, no, no, exactly. And also, you know, again, the other point being that, yes, of course, bizarre that he would suggest that somehow First Nations people with an education somehow shouldn't be listened to. But also, the whole point of, again, of the voice is that precisely for the first time, people who otherwise don't get a platform in the media, which is often First Nations people from remote communities or even inner city areas that might not have an education, like the whole point of the voice is also to give them.

a say. And right now, often the media will only listen to people with the university education, which is good, but this is about broadening that out. And again, Dutton is sort of, he's attempting to argue the opposite of what actually is the case. Because if he succeeds in blocking this, not only will set reconciliation back decades, but it will also lead precisely the outcome he's concerned about, which is the same voices being heard in the media up until this point. But, Max, it will lead to, we'll be controlled by people in the remote communities bubble, like all the elites in the remote communities bubble. That's right.

Yeah, exactly. It's just, it's remarkable, isn't it? Like, and for a guy who, for a guy, as he said, he's been a politician for water, but like two decades now, who certainly the one thing about Dutton, he can't complain about, it's not as if he doesn't get a voice. I think he's concerned, maybe his biggest concern is he'll become more politically irrelevant. you know he's concerned about his voice yeah mind you it would be very hard for him to become even more irrelevant just watch him he might as well give it a shot yeah exactly anyway

now this is not why we got you on the podcast the reason why we got you on the podcast is because you've been droning on about housing for the last six months and wanting to actually solve the housing crisis and and look you know you know Look, I'll put my cards on the table here. You know, I have no interest in any, you know, of your radical left-wing policies getting up because, you know, there's a lot of, I mean, who will lord the lands if there are no landlords? But before we sort of get into sort of the Greens, you know, quote-unquote solutions to housing, can we just get a sense of where you can. come from mex because you like you've got quite an interesting story like you're not like to me greens are cardig like black skivy wearing latte sipping

victorians who complain about how great sydney is all the time what what are the what's three queensland green what how did you do like what's going on up there yeah it's as a project i mean it start like the the group of people that involved, I've often described as a bunch of the people that are organising it the most, a bunch of young renters really in Queensland who up until that point felt a bit like political refugees and that the political system just didn't represent them at all. And we kicked it off when I managed Jono's council campaign up in the Gab Awards, Renangathan.

And we won out of nowhere in 2016. And we happened upon this strategy that is very radical, which is organizing a lot of of people to go and knock on people's doors and ask what their issues are and then talk about policies that might improve their lives and do that at scale, which, yeah, which we were told would never work, you know, but it turns out that it does. Did you focus group that strategy before you went and did it? Yeah, that's it. We paid a corporate firm millions of dollars to say, what do you think is going to happen if we

just go and talk to people and listen to them and do and just do that for like talk to like say 30,000 people in a single election. What do you reckon will happen? And they said, well, yeah, you'd be better up giving all the money to us actually and running a few ads. But yeah, I mean, it's evolved over time. And by the time the Griffith campaign rolled around, we had the capacity to train, we ended up training over 1,000 volunteers in essentially, and I've talked about this before, having what are functionally often very long and complex conversations that sometimes ended up people acting as basically social workers. You know, like you would knock on someone's door in public housing and they'd start talking about the fact they hadn't had access to health care

or they're on a public dental wait list for 24 months. And our job was, A, to listen to that and hear now but also make it the political case that the reason they are in that situation because of the power big corporations and billionaires wielded over our political system and offer them some hope that actually here here's a political movement that has a solution to that which is breaking that power making them pay their fair share and tax and funding things like dental into medicare or building public housing or uh you know making fossil fuel corporations pay their fair share and tax. And it was remarkable. One thing we learned very quickly in Queensland was this view that Queensland somehow is this conservative state that everyone, yeah, you know, the deep north

is just completely wrong. Like actually, the vast majority of people when it comes down to, I just fed up with politics and feel disconnected from it and don't feel like any party has any solutions for them and so largely switch off. And that's how you get the situation where lots of people just end up voting for, say, the LNP, not because they support the LMP's platform, but because they think, well, screw it. I don't really care about this one way or another because I don't think it's going to improve my life. And it's no coincidence that in Griffith, for instance, the Liberals vote collapsed by 10%,

and we were going to people's door and talking about probably the most progressive platform the Greens have ever run in a federal election. And more liberal voters and Labor voters switch their votes to us, because actually this idea that Australia is a really conservative place is wrong. Actually, it's just that people have felt disillusioned and depressed about the state of politics. And so don't have any feel like they have any way to go. And we gave them a place to go. So you're often a whole lot of hope. I hope you've completely crushed their hopes subsequent to the election. Have you stopped returning their phone calls? Yeah, that's it. Well, that was the other good thing about our

movement was, and I think it's quite proud of it, is we're very honest about, which is a radical notion in politics, about how long this, that this is a long project. You know, the line, the final pitch we had at the door during the election and we continue is like, look, positive, substantial positive change is not going to happen overnight, but the reality is nothing changes, if nothing changes. And our view is that if we start to elect representatives to actually believe and fight for what you believe in, then that's the first step to positive change. And our goal is to build the sort of political movement

we're building here across the country. And that isn't going to change in a few years, but it's going to take a lot of years, but it's got to start somewhere, and it's going to involve you as well. And that meant recruiting people at the door to come and join our campaign, get involved in our political project.

And that builds a much more resilient political movement as well, like not a flash in the pan. This is one where we attempt to provide that sort of broader political education about how we build power in politics for ordinary people and the fact that it has to involve them, they have to get involved, but also it's going to take time, which means that we're not going there and promising the world and saying if you get one Greens MP,

then Utopia will arrive the next day. It's actually, if you get one's Greens MP, this is another brick in the wall to build a political project that changes politics. So, because it does feel. slightly different to the Greens of 10 or 15 years ago like you know like back then the Labor Party would approve 116 gas mines say for example just you know hypothetically and and then it felt like like it might not be true but it felt like at the time the Greens would say no we want zero gas mines and then you'd end up with 116 gas mines and now the difference this time around

is like, the Labor Party wants $1,000, well, they probably want a minimum of $116, let's be honest to you. And the Greens want zero, and then we end up with about half that. We end up with about, you know, which is sort of like, I mean, there is an argument to say you're just stringing out our slow death. Like, there is an argument to say we'll just burn a bit more slowly in a fiery pit of hell. But at the same time, you also go, oh, actually, there's a sort of, there might actually be a bit more effectiveness in sort of like stopping half of them now because that's better than

nothing at all like there is like and that it that feels like a shift i don't know whether you sort of you were probably about 12 back in in 2009 or 2008 yeah i was definitely still in high school probably not good for listeners to hear that depending on how old they are but do you think that expediency i mean here's the take that he used the word that willingness to sort of actually place yourself in and make a few grubby decisions, you know, is actually, is part of the political confidence that you get from having a movement behind you. Yeah, I think it also comes from a, like, a mature reading of where our, how much political power we have at the moment as well. Like, we're not, we approach this not with, you know, not with rose-colored glass.

asses, hopefully with quite a dispassionate view of where the balance of forces are in Australian politics at the moment. By that, I mean, on the one side, you have these fossil fuel corporations who wield an enormous amount of power. And it was clear to us negotiating with Labor that companies like Woodside and Santos and BHP, etc., exerted an enormous amount of influence, both the major parties, but let's not forget that they ended up donating more to the Labour Party this federal election and the liberals. And we recognise that for us to ultimately win that, I suppose in a way, fight over the direction of Australian politics and the economy and climate change,

then we need to build a movement that's capable of challenging their power. And we're not fully there yet. Like the reality is that for us to, in that safeguard negotiation, the harsh reality was that there weren't marches of a million people on the ground. we didn't have the capacity to run sort of a Griffith style knock on 90,000 doors in every key electorate in the country. And so part of this compromise that was reached with Labor was also about a compromise between two political projects and a realistic summation of how much power we had at that point. And I think that comes from a, like a lot of people, I think, getting involved in the Greens of the moment, like we want to win. And winning doesn't mean winning seats.

means not getting evicted because he can't afford the rent, like winning means not burning and a fiery pit of hell. And when you start to take that seriously, you start to take seriously. I love it. You've set the bar pretty low for success. We guarantee, we promise that you won't die in a fight. Well, that's where his family is at the moment, Charles. And hopefully we pick it up off that basic law. And that means that you have a political movement that says, well, we've reached this compromise with Labor, say, on the safeguard mechanism, where, as you said, we've stopped hopefully half of those 116 coal and gas mines. And now we pick ourselves up and we work out, well, how do we stop the other half?

And to stop the other half does mean building a much bigger political movement and working out how expand that capacity we've built in a few seats across the country. So that's what we're working on right now. Yeah. Well, actually, it's true because I was talking to a Labor person who said, well, if the Greens want to stop all of them, they have to get a majority of seats. And so I was like, oh, okay, well, that sounds like it. A bit of challenge.

Yeah. Anyway, so look, you mentioned housing, so I'm going to use that as the segue into what we're actually here to talk about, which is, so I'll just put you, like, so a majority or, well, in fact, Everyone who's involved in the chaser or just sort of like peripherally involved in the chaser who's under 40, which has got a lot of people, right, have been hit with massive rent increases in the last six months. Not just like, you know, $130 a week, but like there was one, I mean, for the whole house was like $480. I mean, it was quite a large house, $480 increase. Like, it just sort of, and we're actually running a competition already.

If you go to our subreddit, which is Chaser, if you have a particularly big rental increase, please let us know because we're trying to find the person with the biggest, the person who's been most fucked in the last six months. Oof, bleak competition. No, exactly. But what I want to, the first question I want to ask is, why do you think Anthony Albanese and the Labor Party

are so unurgent about this. Like, I don't know anyone who's not in genuine pain and actually has had to move or is considering move or even has to move in with their parents, even though they're now in their 30s. Like, why is it not like the only thing that people are talking about? That is a great question and one that I thought about often. The highest rent increase I'd heard, by the way,

was $200 a week. So you're, was it 400? Yeah, 480. I'll get the details. That is completely. That takes the cake and we get emails every week and calls every week. So that's blown all of those out of the water. See, but that's because we live in Sydney.

Like you Queenslanders don't even know what rent is. If only that were the case. Look, it's a genuinely good question. I think two, there's three things going on. One, I think the political class on both sides, including the Labor Party, have so disconnected from the ground at the moment. They completely misunderstand and they have underestimated the scale of the housing crisis at the moment. And they, as you've described, don't get actually that this crisis is not just affecting low-income residents. But when we go door knocking, we're chatting to people like teachers, nurses, professionals who they themselves are,

contemplating, moving out because they can't afford the rent increase or their kids in particular. They're really worried about how their kids are going to afford a home. And so I think there's that disconnection going on. Secondly, I think the political economy in Australia is such that for a long time housing has been dominated by, and politics has been dominated by homeowners and in particular dominated by property developers in the banks. And they have a direct financial interest in the housing system working the way it currently does. And if you look at the people who dominate government and policy formation, it is ex-bankers and property developers.

Like the head of Labor's new national supply and affordability council, this new expert body they want to set up. The head of that is the ex-CEO of Murvac, like a property developer. That is not true. That is not true. We actually have been trying to say to Labor that you shouldn't point. So I think there's that as well. And I think finally, like, if you look at Parliament...

So it's like 10-year-plivis-6, the minister against the environment. Yes. And the Housing Affordability Committee is against housing affordability. Is that the... That's how we would describe it. Like, it's no surprise to me that that Supply and Affordableity Council would never think that rent controls or rank counsel would be a good idea. And somehow I don't think it's out of the goodnesses of their heart.

The Chaser Report. News a few days after it happens. I don't mean to, I mean, I think this doesn't explain at all, but it helps. Like, Parliament is dominated by homeowners and property investors. Okay, so this is my theory, which is actually that they're just too busy managing all the rent increases on their investment properties to have noticed that that's having it fed. Like, literally, because imagine having to count all that extra money that's coming in each week from all your rent increases. They would knock out your Sunday. That's true.

And then you can't go and talk to people and see that they're thinking of becoming homeless and stuff. Well, I mean, I have been tempted to ask Anthony Albanese in Parliament how much he's put his rents up and his investment properties. And whether or not a freezing rent increases would affect him. But I thought that's not a constructive. I dare you. I dare you. I dare you. Not a constructive thing to ask. But I think the other thing going on as well,

It's like, obviously, we have been pushing Labor to introduce a national freeze on rent increases for the next two years, just because otherwise we think the crisis is going to boil over into a national disaster, if it hasn't already. And I think the other thing that happens, and we've talked about this in winning Griffin, is that the instinct of the Labor Party is to constrain what's considered possible in politics. If they come out and admit that we need to have a proper debate about how we introduce rent controls and rent caps, that lets the genie out of the bottle for them like they have to for instance all of a sudden actually have to consider

substantial real change to the way this housing system works in Australia and that raises people's expectations about what politics can achieve but often we find that the role the Labour Party play in politics is to continually constrain and crush what people think is possible in politics

you know they always say oh well we'd love to do that but we can't for this X, Y and Z reason or actually that's just not something that we can consider right now And what we're attempting to do is make clear that countries around the world use rent taps and rent controls very successfully. And if we don't do it, there's about to be a huge wave of human misery. And I think that right now, Labour are attempting to put the genie back in the model. And I don't think they're going to be capable because they have misunderstood that when one third of the country can't guarantee that they'll stay in their bloody home for the next six months.

then the one third of the country that rents, that that is a political volcano that eventually is going to explode one way or another. And the problem is that, like, I think Australia is the only place in the world where property is just a complete commodity with no sort of idea that it should be treated as a sort of human right and necessity, right?

And there's a few really crucial things that go into because it's not just about rental caps and making sure that you can't just arbitrarily bump up the rates. It's also things like, I mean, in Barcelona, about 10 years ago, they had this huge protest movement because what they tried to do just after the GFC was they tried to put down the minimum rental period that you could get for a residential property

from five years to three years, right? And the entire, the whole city of Barcelona just basically took to the streets. I mean, this is absurd. You can't, you can't expect someone to rent a house and not think that they have the right to live in it for the next five years. Like, what, three years? That's not nearly enough. Like, you want to be able to put posters. This is your house.

This is your home, right? And here, in Australia, it's like, oh, well, we'll give you six months and then, but we can chuck you out if we decide that, you know, like, you know, I don't know, if we change our mind or the wind changes or something like that. And so there's a whole lot of fundamental things about tenants' rights that are so bad here that I have a little bit of a proposal for you, Max, which is this. I reckon there's a sort of, there is a national role, because I know a lot of that stuff is state, and that's why the Labor Party always says, I know, well, that's a state problem, right? But there is a national role in housing, which is all the fucking tax. tax breaks that all these fucking fuckwits get, right? They are all national decision.

They're all federal tax breaks, right? So what if, like, it would be entirely possible for the government to turn around tomorrow and go, you know what, if you want your fucking negative gearing and you're not enough, you know, your discount on capital gains tax and all the stuff that pumps up the price of poverty, then you actually have to adhere to a national set of standards, which includes things. like minimum five-year leases for tenants in a one-way thing, the tenant can leave whenever they want, but the tenant gets minimum five years in the thing. No ability to just arbitrarily chuck somebody out. Doesn't matter even if you sell the property. That tenant is still

there because it's their fucking home. And you don't get anything. You don't give a single cent from us if you're not treating it like it's an actual basic human necessity, which is the reason, the justification for why you get all those tax breaks in the first place? Yeah, very interesting proposal. And the first thing to say is, you're right, Australia actually is relatively unique in how much housing is geared towards profit for banks and property investors and property developers. So you get this, in Australia, 60% of the lending that banks do is to property, housing. Like 60%.

Compared to that to the US, it's about 20 to 30%. Like, there's banks are more, make more money out of housing in Australia than they do in the United States. Like, it is insane. And just on the role that the feds could play, like, yeah, we need to get rid of capital gains, tax, concessions and negative curing. Like, it costs just over $20 billion a year that we could just be, like, imagine if we just spend that money. We could be spending that on subs. We could be spending that on submarines to defend ourselves from China, man. Or exactly.

Or a giant golden statue of Joe Biden, you know, like, um. but like cut out the middleman like maybe we really you know if you really want to worship the united states um but um or on public housing right and like imagine if instead of providing uh tax concessions to property investors we were just spending that money on building public housing like we would solve the housing crisis in five years but on rents right um so the federal government last year said we've been in the middle of an energy crisis like we're in a big trouble here. Like the energy price is about to go through the roof. But usually this is a responsibility of the states. But what they said is we're going to play a national leadership

role. We're going to bring all the states together and we can say this is untenable. We need to agree to capping energy prices in some way. And our point is you can do the same for rents. Now, the federal government post-World War II did play that role. They froze rents nationally. So by that, I mean, freezing rent increases. And the federal government could tomorrow go to the states and say, let's all get together. We need national rent freezes on rent freeze rent increases. And here is this, this is the set of standards, as you said, like no ground, ending no grounds evictions, letting people stay in their property, limiting rent increases. And in exchange, what we're going to do is distribute money to each of the states and set up this grant fund

and say, if a state signs up to this deal, then we can distribute $2 billion to help implement the system, build more public housing, help fund your state. And they do this. And they do this. that for health and education for energy for industrial relations and why is it as you said that all of a sudden housing apparently that's too hard and i think that's partly because that partly because they've decided that um rangers are going to put up with the fact that unlike in barcelona where they protested rangers are going to put up with the fact that they can be continued to be treated like second-class citizens and the point we want to make and what we're trying to demonstrate to the government is that's yeah because they're two

bit. As you say, it's a third of the population. I actually have another theory about why they don't want to do it, which is, you know how Albo always goes on about, oh my God, I grew up in government housing, right? He doesn't want anyone else to get that sob story. Because if you started increasing all the social housing, everyone else would be able to tell the story about, oh my God, I grew up in government housing. You wouldn't have a unique story to tell. You need something for the campaign trial, Max. That's true. Look, I hope that's not the case, but you do raise a good point, which is when Albanese was growing up in public housing, the federal government spent billions of dollars every year building public housing. Like, if, get this, if per population, the federal government and state governments were building the same number of public housing units as they were in the 20th century, over the next five years, the government would build 150,000 public housing homes.

and it's shocking to me that he talks about how he got this opportunity growing up in public housing and it does genuinely make me angry that he's turned around and said oh well we know that there's a shortage of 640,000 public and affordable homes but we're not going to give those people the same opportunity that I got and how many future prime ministers how many future doctors how many future scientists or leaders in this country are we missing out on because they are being are abandoned to permanent housing poverty and insecurity. I really think that's a bad argument, Max.

I feel like, you know, the world could have more Anthony Albanesey's only with public housing. I don't think that's going to really no one's going to go to the barricades for there. That's a good, you have poked a substantial hole in my argument. Now, so look, this brings me to the final thing because we really should,

our episodes are supposed to be like 20 minutes. This has been like 40 minutes. really have to go but max i want to bring you to just a pitch for the greens for you which is so as we talked a bit about barcelona that whole movement what's it what was it called barcelona encomu or whatever 15 you know ada calais and 15m right okay yeah whatever it's good anyway they grew into national they actually ended up taking over the whole of spain for a while right and but that and it was a rent-a-strosse like it was literally it all it grew out of frustration around housing, right?

Housing affordability, right? And also climate change. Like that was the other thing that they were really worried about, right? The Greens nowadays are basically the party of housing affordability, renters rights, all that sort of stuff, very mainstream, very big, a third of the population, totally sort of with you on that. And climate change, which happens to sort of be like 85% of the Australian population, want more action on climate change

than the Libs or Labor are giving, right? Okay, so hear me out here. What that movement did in Spain is that they said, well, actually, it was very shrewd of them. They went, well, we're actually centrists. We're the centrists. The socialists are off to one side,

the nationalists off to the other side. We sit in the middle of politics because we're just talking about renders, rights, and climate change, absolute mainstream Australian politics I put to you the Greens

are not a fucking fringe dwelling lefty party of socialists who just want to hug trees and want votes from koalas anymore they're actually

the party of the centre and it's actually the Labour Party and the Liberal Party who are at the fringes of Australian politics I think there's a lot of truth to that you know

and actually I think it was Bernie Sanders at that one point It was like, who are the radicals are the people that think we can go on just setting the world on fire and not do anything about it. You know, the radicals are the ones who think that a majority of the population don't deserve housing security. And in many ways, like, and this speak, I actually think that pitch of a lot of truth in that and our instinct is that the vast majority of this country believe in what the Greens stand for. but what they don't believe is that or have any hope or belief that it can actually change. And so disconnect.

And to give you an example, like, no one thought that we could win Griffith. But the moment we proved to people that we could knock on their door, that when the floods hit, we actually could get on the ground and help clean up and, like, we're hauling out muddy furniture whenever anyone needed help. All of a sudden, a whole new layer of people voted for us for the first time ever. Like the two-party preferred in Griffith for us from 60-40 in a seat that no one thought we could win. And my firm belief is if we had the only thing holding us back from building a political movement that does represent what, as you said, is the majority, the center of the Australian population or only barrier is our capacity to organise in the ground in more seats like Griffith. And that's why you get this sense that I sound slightly mad or overly energetic.

because it genuinely think we're in a race against time here and what it's going to take actually is just being able to reach those people and say, you know what, you don't need to feel hopeless anymore that is a political movement that represents what you believe in and it has a chance of being. And do you think the grains have sort of allowed themselves to be boxed in by the sort of Murdoch industrial complex

into believing themselves to be on the fringe as well? Do you think there's a sort of little bit of lack of self-belief that's boxed them in there for so long? Yeah, I think that can happen. I think, and what we've found is the best antidote to that, as is going to sound provincial or small, but genuinely the best antidote to that is door-knocking. Is door-knocking?

I knew you were going to say door-nocking. Yeah, no, no, get this. We will change the world, one door-knocker at a time. Charles, you should come door knocking with me one time. I think Gandhi said that. Was it Gandhi or? Yeah. Well, look, and they did pretty well.

No, but genuine, you should come door knocking with one time because there's a phenomenon that happens every time someone door knocks for the first time and we found in Queensland is they start off really nervous and then they come back with like eyes glowing up and thinking, you know, and just why is it? And thinking, oh my God, we can win. Because everyone has the experience of knocking on a door and chatting to someone. who's never voted for their greens and their lives and then all of a sudden being like,

oh, you know what? I thought the Greens are a bunch of crazy cooks, but you guys are just talking about getting dental into Medicare and doing something on climate change. That sounds pretty normal. And, oh, maybe I could think about voting for you. And the confidence it builds in people and the sense of hope it gives

when they realize, oh, shit, we could do this, is just so special. And it's certainly what gives me hope. Like when I come back, back from Canberra, I try to go door knocking once in that week afterwards because it grounds you again and makes, it reminds you that what the Murdoch's paper say and what the media say people think is not actually true. And to find out what people actually think, here's a radical notion, go and ask them what they think, um, rather than rely on what, um, what, uh, you know,

the panel on inside says everyone, everyone thinks. Okay. Well, um, yeah, lovely to have you on. I hope we can bring you back in a few months and catch up and find it. And I hope by then you will have solved climate change and housing affordability. Yeah, give us two weeks. Yeah, great. That's how the news cycle works. Okay, well

Max Chandler made, thank you so much. Thanks, Charles. Thanks for having me. Our gear is from Road. We are part of the Iconic Class Network. Get you next week.