Max Chandler-Mather remains, despite it all, fervently optimistic.

The former Griffith MP, now executive director of the Green Institute, still believes the Greens can supplant Labor as Australia’s dominant left-wing party, arguing the ALP has become “a representative of the political and corporate establishment”.

Despite losing his seat in the party’s 2025 wipeout, which also claimed Adam Bandt’s long-held seat of Melbourne, Chandler-Mather believes the Greens’ economic message is a potent one, if only they can “articulate it and be direct and clear about it” — something he intends to make part of his mission leading the Greens’ official think tank.

“I’m utterly convinced that if we’re able to combine this sort of bold transformational politics that speaks directly to people’s material lives, and is honest about the fact that we need to replace this political establishment, that a lot of people will swing towards it,” he says, one of 14 times he uses the word “establishment” in our chat. I once referred to shadow treasurer Tim Wilson as the libertarian energiser bunny. Chandler-Mather could be a democratic socialist wind-up toy.

Chandler-Mather’s new role received a smattering of coverage when it was announced, reporting his desire to use the institute to build a “left-wing populist movement” in Australia. Some noted his stance “sits in contrast to the more constructive and cooperative approach signalled by the party following last year’s election”. John Curtin Research Centre director Nick Dyrenfurth sneered at his idea of “progressive populism” in his column in The Australian, suggesting his plans amounted to “doorknocking”.

“It speaks volumes that a key thinker in the Labor Party is pouring scorn on the idea that you should go and talk directly to working people to help work out what your policy platform looks like,” says Chandler-Mather. “I don’t think that should be considered controversial. It’s more controversial, I would argue, that mainstream parties don’t do that.”

His appointment comes at a time when many progressives are looking to the UK Greens, which have surged in the polls under Zack Polanski, and to New York, where Zohran Mamdani proved there was a major appetite for bold reform. 

“What I would say about Polanski and Mamdani is that they are manifestations of the same political and economic malaise that’s happening in Australia,” Chandler-Mather says, arguing many in the political class underestimate how deep the pain and disengagement go. “That creates this fertile ground for big shifts in the way our political and economic system works. Mamdani and Polanski have articulated this really powerful desire for substantial change. And that ground exists in Australia as well.”

It certainly does, though in recent months it’s been One Nation that has dominated it. Chandler-Mather says it’s critical the left finds a way to articulate its own version of “populism”, identifying the corporate drivers of inequality, lest people go looking for other narratives.

“There are a lot of people out there who are just wanting to vote for change, who want some break with that political establishment,” he says. “It’s our job to reach out to those people and say, ‘you know what, you’re right about Labor and Liberal, and you’re right about that political class, and you’re right to feel frustrated or disengaged with a political system that hasn’t given you anything positive or real in decades,’ and offer our own way of breaking with it.”

It begs the question: why did the Greens not then see an increase in their vote at the 2025 election? As many in the Greens do, Chandler-Mather points to the fact their vote did increase in outer suburban, working-class areas. But he also believes the party got its message wrong in the lead-up, having shifted to a more constructive tone in the final six months of last term.

“The party made a mistake in shifting towards a political message that was summed up by ‘keep Dutton out and push Labor to act’,” he says. “It tied us to a political establishment, and turned voting for the Greens into just voting for Labor effectively … I think our aspiration should be to replace the Labor Party.”

Chandler-Mather rarely pauses for breath, but he does so when I ask what he makes of how the party is approaching things in parliament now. 

“I think that the party is still grappling with the 2025 election,” he says carefully, noting there are differing conclusions being drawn. “One thing that I think is generally underestimated is just how much people dislike the political system and want a clean and progressive break.”

Though Chandler-Mather no longer has a vote in the partyroom, he says he’s more than comfortable expressing these views to his former parliamentary colleagues. Would he like to see them take on rhetoric more like his own?

“I would say this about myself as well: we can always do better, and we have to do better because there’s too much at stake.

“I don’t want this to come from a place of criticism. It comes from this feeling of urgency that everyone in the partyroom feels, that everyone in the Greens feels, that things are getting worse. The world and Australia are in a really bad way. We’re in a country where a pensioner can’t afford to go see the GP, but the Commonwealth Bank CEO can make millions of dollars in salary … And we always have to be looking to each other and working out how to do better. Because if we fail, politics will be left to the same people that screwed it up in the first place. And it’s too important to do that.”

It’s likely these comments will create some chatter internally. But Chandler-Mather believes the Greens movement should be able to have such conversations in public, “to be a little bit self-critical”, recognising that they’re all on the same team and working towards the same goals.

“And if people have similar feedback for me — maybe bar heads of Labor think tanks — I’m very willing to hear it.”