Greens federal housing spokesperson and Griffith MP Max Chandler-Mather spoke with Stuart Munckton and Federico Fuentes about the opportunities for transformative politics today.

What impact do you think the housing campaign had on people’s response to what you have said on Palestine?

When I got up in parliament and said what is happening [in Gaza] right now is a genocide, a layer of people said: “Max, I don’t agree with everything that you say, but I agreed with you on the renter stuff. I respectfully disagree [on Palestine], but at least you’re saying what you think.”

Part of that respectful response was a result of them knowing we are in their corner.

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[Greens federal leader] Adam Bandt has a story from Melbourne during the [2017] marriage equality debate. He went to a lot of the public housing towers, where a lot of people are more socially conservative, for a variety of reasons. For example, there are more people of the Muslim faith who might not religiously agree with gay marriage.

Adam’s line was: “We’re always going to be in your corner and we’re always going to fight for you. I’m just asking you to back another marginalised group here as well.”

That really resonates.

Griffith has a lot of LNP [Liberal National Party] voters, but I have received almost no push back on our Palestine position — calling for a ceasefire and an end to the occupation and illegal blockade, and calling out Israel’s mass war crimes and genocide.

Partly, that is because we have this relationship with the community and we have shown we are willing to fight in their corner.

We have a political movement and platform that........

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