June 5, 2025 • 24 mins
The dramatic shakeout from the general election continued this week, this time from the left wing of Australian politics, with WA Greens senator Dorinda Cox defecting to Labor.
It was a coup for a triumphant Prime Minister.
But will the PM live to regret his new recruit? What does Senator Cox’s defection mean for the much-depleted Greens party? And how does it fit with the PM’s recent approval of the extension of a giant fossil fuel project off the West Australian coast?
Chief political correspondent Paul Sakkal, and chief political commentator James Massola join host Jacqueline Maley.
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S1 (00:00):
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is inside politics. I'm Jacqueline Maley. It's Friday 6th
of June. The dramatic shakeout from the general election continued
this week, this time from the left wing of Australian politics,
with WA Greens Senator Dorinda Cox defecting to labor. It
(00:21):
was a coup for a triumphant prime minister. But will
the Prime Minister live to regret his new recruit? What
does Senator Cox's defection mean for the much depleted Greens party,
and how does it fit? With the PM's recent approval
of the extension of a giant fossil fuel project off
the West Australian coast? Here to discuss all this, we
have our chief political correspondent, Paul Satchell, and our chief
(00:42):
political commentator, James Massola. Welcome, gentlemen.
S2 (00:46):
Good day. Jacki. Hello.
S1 (00:47):
Paul. This week, the WA senator Dorinda Cox defected from
the Greens to Labor quite dramatically.
S3 (00:53):
Today, I am resigning from the Australian Greens to join
the Labor Party. I have reached the conclusion, after deep
and careful reflection that my values and priorities are more
aligned with labor.
S1 (01:04):
And it was a major coup for Anthony Albanese, even though,
as we know, he doesn't need the numbers. How did
this all come about?
S4 (01:11):
It was dramatic. I was sitting in a newsroom where,
on a plasma screen to my right hand side, there
was an ABC news 24 with no volume. And I
think about five minutes into the press conference at about
5:30 p.m. or something like that, I looked over and
I thought, is that Dorinda Cox standing behind the Prime Minister?
What the hell is going on there?
S2 (01:28):
Yeah, the grin on the PM's face, the Cheshire cat
grin when he stepped out of the comcar. And then
she gets out the other side, it's like, oh dear me.
S5 (01:39):
Monday it was the Prime Minister who couldn't hide his smile.
Fronting the media alongside Dorinda Cox to drop a bombshell
almost no one saw coming.
S4 (01:49):
It also stunned Greens MPs. Larissa Waters, the new Greens leader,
was given given 90 minutes notice about the same time
given to David Littleproud by Jacinta Price just a couple
of weeks earlier. And Albanese, as James said, had a
big grin on his face. He replaces that Fatima Payman
position on the Labor Party, likely to be the third
(02:11):
position on the WA Senate ticket. That really stung him
last term when Fatima Payman made that defection. He's got
quite a lot of hostility towards the Greens, and I
think he saw this as a kind of cherry on
top of a fantastic election result, which led to the
Greens leader losing his seat.
S1 (02:25):
Yeah, he's really in Clover right now, the Prime minister. James,
Senator Cox does come with some baggage. You broke a
major story about her last year. Can you just remind
listeners of that story?
S2 (02:35):
Yeah. Look, the short version, essentially, Senator Cox lost about
20 staff across three years. A senator's full complement of
office staff is five. So she lost, you know, four
full complements in three years. Um, five of those staff
made formal complaints. Now, um, Poulos, which has been since
(03:00):
superseded by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Commission. They looked into
the complaints. It's not correct to say that they investigated
because they didn't have an investigative function, and they concluded
their inquiries and sort of didn't really make any standout recommendations.
That has led to claims that this hasn't been properly
(03:21):
dealt with. And that has led to really difficult questions
for the Prime Minister about, well, hang on a sec.
Did you check out these complaints before bringing Senator Cox
over to the Labour Party? Um, because there are questions
that remain on foot and indeed since since the defection
on Monday. Jacqui, already there are people coming out and
claiming that actually this needs to be dealt with. And
(03:42):
actually this this wasn't resolved as the Prime Minister is
now claiming and he he sort of owns this problem.
S1 (03:48):
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So there was bullying allegations but sort
of an inconclusive result from them basically.
S2 (03:53):
Yeah. That's right. And Senator Cox said, look, you know,
there's significant context missing. But I do apologize to anyone
I've upset. This happened because I'm, you know, during the
voice campaign, it was highly stressful. I changed portfolios to
help lead that. I needed different staff. There was a
number of sort of factors she attributed it to.
S1 (04:11):
Okay, what did the Greens say about the defection of
Dorinda Cox?
S4 (04:15):
Paul Lewis Ward has put out a statement a couple
of hours after the move, or maybe a little bit
earlier than that. She was she wasn't aggressive, but it
was a clear disowning of their former senator. She made
the point. Larissa Ward has made the point that just
a week ago, Dorinda Cox had been speaking negatively about
(04:36):
the Labor's controversial approval of a big gas project, continuation
of a gas project in Perth and North West Shelf,
and suggested that Dorinda Cox had betrayed the values that
she claimed to hold just a week earlier. Sarah Hanson-Young,
another senior Greens MP on Thursday morning in the corridors
of Parliament, suggested that Cox should have done the honourable
(05:00):
thing by giving the spot back to the Greens, because
it's their position, and Cox would never have been elected
as an independent and never told voters that she was
a Labour Party person, which was probably the strongest comment
yet from Greens leader.
S2 (05:13):
Except for that email. Uh. Um. Larissa Waters said to
party members, uh, which was a bit more forthright, and
said this was essentially a betrayal of Greens voters who backed, uh, well,
who'd voted for the Greens in 2022, not Dorinda Cox, essentially.
S1 (05:30):
I mean, a defection at any time is embarrassing, but
to have one directly after a general election when the
Greens have obviously done not very well and Labour has
done very well. And I mean, you know, it's particularly embarrassing.
And Sarah Hanson-Young has probably a point, doesn't she, that
people would have voted thinking that they were getting a
Greens senator. Turns out they're getting a Labour senator.
S2 (05:51):
Yeah, absolutely. And again, like it's worth pointing out when
Fatima Payman moved to the crossbench, um, Anthony Albanese didn't
hesitate to say, you know, I think she got maybe
a couple of thousand below the line personal votes. Fatima
Payman and tens of thousands of votes for the Labor Party. Yeah.
Which carried her over the line. So Anthony Albanese essentially
(06:12):
said the same thing at the time. This is a
labor seat, not a Fatima payment seat. She should do
the honourable thing. Funnily enough, Jack, he hasn't said that
about Dorinda Cox. Um, he's been quite happy to accept
her on the Labour benches.
S4 (06:22):
I think he called Paiman, or I think he said
that she ratted on the last day of Parliament in question.
S6 (06:27):
Time, including Fatima Payman, who was elected as a labor
senator but ratted on the Labor Party to sit on
the crossbench, to sit on the crossbench.
S2 (06:38):
And that word, of course, has the connotations going back to,
you know, Billy Hughes in was it 1915, 1916 when
he ratted? You know, that really means something in labor,
you know, dripping with bathos. You know.
S1 (06:50):
It's a it's a very loaded term. Albanese's, obviously in
a very powerful position at the moment. He couldn't be
more powerful, really. He has a huge parliamentary majority. He's
just knocked off the leaders of both the Liberal Party
and the Greens, and he's looking to push his advantage.
But this, this rivalry with the Greens in particular is
really personal for him, isn't it, Paul? And it goes
back a long way.
S4 (07:10):
It does go back a long way. He's fought the
Greens in his inner Sydney seat of Grayndler at a
local level, at a council level, at an activist level
for many, many years. He has personal distaste for, particularly
the more left wing members of the New South Wales Greens.
Those members of the New South Wales Greens were in
the grouping within the federal Parliamentary Greens that Dorinda Cox
(07:34):
really butted heads with over a period of time. Dorinda
Cox and maybe James can explain this further. But even
though the defection was quite stunning when it was on
our television screens, the growing kind of animosity inside that
party and her her shift away from the centre of
the party had been building for months and months and
really years. She was pitted against Lidia Thorpe for a
(07:57):
period during the voice campaign, when Lidia Thorpe was allied
with the more radical Black Sovereignty Movement, and Dorinda Cox
was seen as the more moderate indigenous voice. Being a
moderate in the Greens is a bit of a troublesome
place to be at the moment, and she frequently had
personal and policy disputes with more left wing members of
(08:17):
the Greens in the party room ballot. A few weeks ago,
now in Melbourne, when she ran for the deputy position
without really informing many of her colleagues beforehand, she only
won three of 12 votes against Mehreen Faruqi, who is
a member of that more left wing group, and in
the Greens. Dorinda Cox then wanted to run for a
secondary position, the deputy whip, and also lost that conclusively
(08:37):
to the Queensland senator, Senator Penny Uhlmann. Pain and Dorinda
Cox's view was that Uhlmann pain should never have been
allowed to run for that position because she already had
the party room chair spot and she thought you couldn't
run for two. And her view was that Mehreen Faruqi
and Larissa Waters and the other senior people in the
Greens had effectively conspired to stop Dorinda Cox having any
elected position because of their view that she is kind
(09:00):
of out of step on values, that she is under
investigation for bullying. There has also been consternation at a
grassroots level that Dorinda Cox is a former police officer,
which is a controversial position to hold in the Greens,
which is quite anti-authority and anti-police. There's a whole bunch
of different factors that led to this.
S2 (09:15):
Yeah, so the other thing that's at play here, of course, Jacques,
is that Dorinda Cox is firm friends with Marcus Stewart,
a leading indigenous advocate, a former founding co-chair of the
First Nations assembly in Victoria and husband of Jana Stewart,
who's a Victorian labor senator. Those three are tight, and
there's nothing wrong with having political friendships across the aisle. But,
(09:37):
you know, my understanding is that Jana and Marcus were
talking to Dorinda about her position in the Greens for
some time. I think other people in the Labor Party
were doing that as well. We know that the PM
got involved at a point in the process. It wasn't,
you know, the day before the move happened either, like
(09:59):
this was, I think, in the planning for a while.
And I think if you take a step back in
the last Parliament, you know, we really saw a Greens
party that rewarded or sought to bolster voices that were
maybe extreme is not the word, but, you know, really
at the sort of bleeding edge or the leading edge
(10:20):
of debate, you know, we saw that on Palestine. We
saw that in the decision to deregister parts of the
CFMEU union.
S4 (10:28):
Um, and the Greens linking up with the CFMEU to support.
S2 (10:31):
Yeah. Like it was almost like they got into this
cycle of rewarding, you know, outrageous commentary. Um, and that's
not to Linda Cox, to be fair. She, she is
a moderate green. I think she sort of got to
a point where she was homeless.
S1 (10:44):
Yeah. Okay. But even as she was sort of having
these problems within her party, the Greens, she was highly
critical of labor even as recently as last week for
approving the North West Shelf Gas Project extension to 2070. Now,
this is a huge fossil fuel project, which has been
controversial and is very controversial with both Aboriginal activists and environmentalists.
(11:05):
She said last week that it was a raw and
chilling reminder that First Nations people lack protections for their
cultural heritage rights. That's quite a turnaround. I just want
to segue slightly to this North West shelf gas project. Paul,
can you tell us a little bit about it, why
it's controversial and why Albanese has rather cynically waited till
right after the election to approve this extension?
S4 (11:27):
Well, her comments on that project, I think if you
if you caught a left wing Labour MP at a
more honest moment, they would probably use similar language to
describe that decision. She's just more in a position where
she's able to do so publicly. Now, I'm not suggesting
that's a widespread view in the Labour Party. An energy
reporter colleague described it to me as a bit of
(11:49):
a vibe shift in the in the climate mitigation debate
where gas and the prominence of gas in the energy
transition and the acceptance of gas as an energy fuel
has grown within both, you know, moderate and right wing
labour circles. Also, clearly in the cabinet, the decision to
put Murray Watt, the Queensland former IR minister, into environment,
(12:14):
and take it out of the hands of Tanya Plibersek,
who has a more green view of the world than
Murray Watt, who's from a resources state who's seen as
highly pragmatic despite being from the left and who's close
to the prime minister.
S2 (12:26):
Yeah, he's one of Elbow's primary, Mr. Fixit.
S4 (12:28):
He's a fixer and and the Prime Minister wants to
keep WA onside. Obviously a fossil fuel state. The decision
to delay it till after the election was, according to
many in the environmental movement, as you say, jacki, a
cynical one designed to stave off criticism among environmentalists pre-election.
But it does display that the that labor is more
(12:50):
comfortable now talking about gas potentially given its new authority
in the parliament after the election, win. More willing to
take on that debate and take on the critics?
S1 (12:59):
Yeah. And interestingly, they don't worry that they're going to
bleed votes to the left on this issue anymore. Albanese
did have some very sharp comments for the Greens following
this defection. He was sort of pushing his advantage. What
did he say about the Greens, Paul?
S4 (13:14):
He said that Dorinda Cox's defection was proof that the
Greens had, quote, lost its way. He didn't expand on
that at length, but it's clear what he means. He
has been a key voice leading this narrative that the
Greens are, you know, not what they used to be
under Bob Brown. They had lost their focus on the environment.
(13:36):
They were, as James said, at the leading edge of
kind of radicalism on any number of topics, to focus
on the Gaza issue, according to some and bolshie at
at all points. I think there's I think there's some
truth in it, but I do feel like it's become
a bit of a self-perpetuating thing.
S2 (13:53):
No, I think it's true. I mean, I've been here since,
you know, working in this building since I was 8
or 9. And I definitely think the greens spend a
lot more time focused on non-climate change issues. Now. That's fine. Um,
but they aren't the party they were in 2008, 2009, 2010.
S4 (14:11):
Um, the climate climate was a bigger had more salience
then as the kind of Rudd government was confronting it.
I get your point. But I also would say Bob
Brown famously protested, uh, George Bush's speech on the floor
of Parliament. Um, the Greens were extremely outspoken on the
Iraq war and made it a key tenet of their
(14:31):
their politics back then. Being a pacifist anti-war party is
a is one of their core tenets that was determined
in the 70s and 80s when they formed. Yeah. And
they're they're not and they're not out of line with
other left wing movements across Europe on the Gaza issue.
S2 (14:47):
No, no, I agree with that. But I'm saying the
number of issues that they now make a key focus
has grown significantly. And Jack, you were here at Canberra.
S1 (14:57):
Yeah.
S2 (14:58):
I mean, at that time.
S1 (14:59):
It obviously hasn't worked for them if we're going to
go on the last election results. But I've thought it's
interesting over the years and particularly the last few years
when we've seen a huge focus on housing and cost
of living from that point of view, and also intergenerational inequality.
I actually thought they were quite salient issues for the
Greens to latch onto, and they really led in some cases,
they were kind of at the vanguard of like the
(15:21):
housing affordability issue. Right? But it hasn't paid political dividends
for them. It hasn't paid electoral dividends for them. So
I am interested in your take on this because, you know,
Anthony Albanese has a point. If we look at their
electoral results, they have lost their way. They've lost seats
in the lower house, they lost their leader. You know,
their primary vote is a little bit down. But crucially,
(15:43):
they don't have members in parliament in the same numbers
that they used to. So what do they need to
do to rebuild?
S4 (15:49):
Well, just quickly, on your point on housing, I housing,
I'd say that they're their best moments in the past
few years was that kind of first 18 months of
the Albanese government, when the core focus of the Greens
was Max Chandler-mather talking about housing? They achieved huge cut through.
S1 (16:02):
And they pushed the government. They pushed the government on
it like they really they created a lot of noise
around the issue and they pushed the government on it.
S4 (16:08):
The smartest move by labor was deciding that they were
not going to out green the Greens on social justice issues.
They were going to turn the housing issue around on
Max Chandler-mather and Adam Bandt by showing to the public,
and they repeatedly hammered home this message. I remember a
press conference in the prime ministerial courtyard once that the
Greens were blocking progressive housing policies, and they made the
(16:28):
Greens look obstructionist, so they didn't try and beat them on.
You know, we are more woke than you. We are
more radical than you on X or Y issue. They
made them look like they were actually blocking progressive reform,
which Greens Greens voters don't like.
S1 (16:40):
That's exactly what Kevin Kevin Rudd did with the CPRS.
I believe with the carbon Pollution Reduction scheme that they
voted against, and there's a strong argument if they'd voted
for it, we wouldn't have had the climate wars to
the extent we have in the last decade.
S2 (16:52):
Jack, unpack that one just quickly. If they had voted
for the CPRS, the five Greens who voted with the liberals,
and remember two liberals crossed the floor to vote with
labor on that vote. If they had voted for that,
my theory, we'd still have a carbon pricing scheme. Kevin
Rudd wouldn't have lost the leadership. Tony Abbott wouldn't have,
you know, basically drawn with a Rudd government in the
(17:15):
2010 election. You know, maybe Rudd serves two terms. Hands
over to Gillard. Maybe Gillard serves two terms. We'd be just,
you know, entering maybe the second term of the Wyatt Roy,
you know, Liberal government which was elected in 2018 or
something like it would have changed everything. Don't get me
started on that one.
S1 (17:33):
It's a parallel universe. It's like a science fiction novel.
Now that we're going.
S4 (17:36):
Into, what would you be doing in that world, James?
S2 (17:38):
Well, I'd still be in Canberra reporting and enjoying my life.
S1 (17:42):
You'd be. You'd be the one stable element.
S2 (17:44):
Um, yeah. Just want to pick up something if I
can just jump in quickly. Jack. Just on the housing thing.
I agree with Paul. I agree with you. I think
it was a really successful first 18 months or so
focusing on that issue. Labour basically had promised $30 billion
to various housing messages, and they got nowhere in terms
of electoral dividend for doing that and it over time.
(18:07):
I mean, what Rudd didn't do was turn the tables
on the greens in 2010 over that CPRS vote. He
didn't close that deal in the minds of the Australian people.
Their vote went up at the 2013 election. Albanese did.
He was furious with Chandler-mather and the Greens for blocking
the construction of public housing, amongst other things, and he
successfully closed that deal in the minds of the Australian
(18:29):
people and said look at these.
S4 (18:31):
I think he was more furious that they were taking
political wins off him. Not not about the actual policy.
S1 (18:36):
Yeah, well, and as we've just discussed, it's really personal
for Anthony Albanese against the Greens. Right. But he was
able to basically paint them as um, you know, the
party that thinks the perfect is the enemy of the
good kind of thing.
S2 (18:48):
Um, Yeah, exactly.
S1 (18:49):
Just Tony Abbott. Tony Abbott. Tony. Right. Let's not confuse
those two. Um. Right.
S2 (18:54):
I really often mistake people make.
S1 (18:57):
Actually, I would I would really love a podcast with
those two. The two Tonys I would listen to.
S2 (19:03):
I would subscribe to that podcast.
S1 (19:04):
Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, Tony. Right. Our Tony wrote a lovely
piece this week about the noble tradition of the Senate turncoat,
because even just in recent times, we've had Lidia Thorpe
defect from the Greens to the crossbench, Fatima Payman defect
from Labour to crossbench. Jacqui Lambie just kind of dumped
Clive Palmer and went out on her own. But how
likely are such people, defectors, to be re-elected after they've
(19:26):
left a kind of major party or a group to
go and defect to another party or be on their own?
S2 (19:31):
Uh, it's almost always. And if you've got Cory Bernardi,
jacks can't believe you forgot. Cory. Um, it's almost always
a spectacular failure. Um, the one exception in recent history,
at least, is Jacqui Lambie, who did lose her spot
in the Senate for a while, like a year, year
and a half. But that was a citizenship thing. But
she's sort of become brand Tasmania now, like she's a
colossus in her home state. But look at the rest
(19:54):
of these guys. They've disappeared without a trace. I think
Dio Wang, Glenn Lazarus, um, I mean, pick your, you know,
crossbench senator or former major party senator Gerard Rennick, who
was going to, you know, stir up the place, change
the world, start a movement. Nah, it just doesn't happen.
S1 (20:11):
So there's a lot of colour and movement, but it
doesn't always kind of lead to re-election. I want to really,
really quickly talk about the US Defence Secretary, Pete Hegseth
comments at the. I think it was the Shangri-La dialogue
in Singapore. He told Australia that we need to up
our defence spending. Richard Marles seemed to kind of be
open to that conversation. What happened?
S4 (20:30):
Paul Richard Marles struck a. So just going back, it
was the Shangri-La conference, as you say, in Singapore last week.
Pete Hegseth gave quite a sabre rattling speech, some would say,
suggesting that conflict is potentially just around the corner between
Taiwan and China, which a lot of experts also worry about,
and has again made the call that allies in the
(20:52):
region and in Europe need to massively up their defence
spending because effectively US, the US does too much work
and people rely on them too much. Again, another point
which which quite a lot of experts in the space
agree with. The awkwardness for the government came when Richard Marles,
our defence minister, was standing alongside Pete Hegseth. Or perhaps
it was the press conference just after their meeting, and
struck quite a positive tone about his conversation with with Hegseth.
(21:16):
A former Fox News host has a bunch of different
allegations against him, which he denies about treatment of former partners,
a controversial figure even in the Republican Party. One of
the more out there Trump picks. Really. Um, so Marles
positive tone, which he struck about wanting to engage with
Hegseth and saying he had a right to ask for
more defence spending and Australia was really up for the conversation.
(21:38):
That was controversial, particularly in the left, because it was
viewed as potentially more positive than it needed to be,
rather than sticking to the Albanese line, which he delivered
a few days later, that very firmly, Australia will set
its own settings. We will not be dictated to. We're
a sovereign nation. A more bolshie line that mimics Mark
(21:59):
Carney in Canada and how he dealt with Trump's hairy
chested approach. So there was a there was a differential there,
and it was explained to me as by a senior
person at the government yesterday, is just a kind of
indication of the very different personal styles of Albanese and Miles.
Miles is more into decorum, more of a nice guy, Albanese,
more of a hard head.
S1 (22:19):
Anthony Albanese is going to suffer this kind of friendly
fire from the Trump administration for his entire term. And
if he gets another term, maybe even then, he seems
to have sort of settled on a strategy or a
line of defense. Is that going to hold up, do
you think, Paul?
S4 (22:33):
Yeah, it's it's rhetoric that potentially has its limits as
you deal with this administration, which is going to be
in for the same period of time as the Albanese government.
Trump and his people are not going anywhere. It made
sense during the in the campaign, for example, to be
bolshie and stand up to the US. But the rub
is now hitting the road. And I think this week's
been an interesting week because it's the first, I think,
(22:54):
since the election where the atmospherics have just become back
to normal governance and the Australia's place in the world
is uncertain, and we're dealing with difficult allies and there's
huge pressure to muscle up on defence. So all of
these issues are unresolved and we skated over them a
bit during the campaign. But now they're they're hard.
S2 (23:11):
One thing I'd add, though, I think the the question
of where to spend more money on defence, uh, how
to manage that, you know, in the context of a
budget that is in deficit for the next decade or
forecast to be, I should say, that's tricky. The politics
of this is not that tricky. And I think Albanese
knows that people like I think the majority of Australians
are a bit, you know, turned off by Donald Trump
(23:33):
and think, I don't want that sort of crazy here.
And I think there's a dividend for Albanese standing up
for us or not even standing up, but just saying
we'll act in our own interest.
S1 (23:43):
I think that it's a very it's a very live
question whether or not Australians would want to join any
kind of war effort over Taiwan. Rightly or wrongly, which
is what Pete Hegseth kind of, you know, the prospect
that he raised, would we join such a military effort?
Would there be public approval of that? I'm not sure, chaps.
These are big questions, but we've run out of time.
Thank you very much for being here. I really appreciate it.
S4 (24:05):
See you later.
S2 (24:05):
Thanks very much, Jackie.
S1 (24:10):
Today's episode was produced by Tammy Mills with technical assistance
from Debbie Harrington. Tom McKendrick is our head of audio.
To listen to our episodes as soon as they drop,
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(24:30):
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I'm Jacqueline Maley. Thank you for listening.
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is inside politics. I'm Jacqueline Maley. It's Friday 6th
of June. The dramatic shakeout from the general election continued
this week, this time from the left wing of Australian politics,
with WA Greens Senator Dorinda Cox defecting to labor. It
(00:21):
was a coup for a triumphant prime minister. But will
the Prime Minister live to regret his new recruit? What
does Senator Cox's defection mean for the much depleted Greens party,
and how does it fit? With the PM's recent approval
of the extension of a giant fossil fuel project off
the West Australian coast? Here to discuss all this, we
have our chief political correspondent, Paul Satchell, and our chief
(00:42):
political commentator, James Massola. Welcome, gentlemen.
S2 (00:46):
Good day. Jacki. Hello.
S1 (00:47):
Paul. This week, the WA senator Dorinda Cox defected from
the Greens to Labor quite dramatically.
S3 (00:53):
Today, I am resigning from the Australian Greens to join
the Labor Party. I have reached the conclusion, after deep
and careful reflection that my values and priorities are more
aligned with labor.
S1 (01:04):
And it was a major coup for Anthony Albanese, even though,
as we know, he doesn't need the numbers. How did
this all come about?
S4 (01:11):
It was dramatic. I was sitting in a newsroom where,
on a plasma screen to my right hand side, there
was an ABC news 24 with no volume. And I
think about five minutes into the press conference at about
5:30 p.m. or something like that, I looked over and
I thought, is that Dorinda Cox standing behind the Prime Minister?
What the hell is going on there?
S2 (01:28):
Yeah, the grin on the PM's face, the Cheshire cat
grin when he stepped out of the comcar. And then
she gets out the other side, it's like, oh dear me.
S5 (01:39):
Monday it was the Prime Minister who couldn't hide his smile.
Fronting the media alongside Dorinda Cox to drop a bombshell
almost no one saw coming.
S4 (01:49):
It also stunned Greens MPs. Larissa Waters, the new Greens leader,
was given given 90 minutes notice about the same time
given to David Littleproud by Jacinta Price just a couple
of weeks earlier. And Albanese, as James said, had a
big grin on his face. He replaces that Fatima Payman
position on the Labor Party, likely to be the third
(02:11):
position on the WA Senate ticket. That really stung him
last term when Fatima Payman made that defection. He's got
quite a lot of hostility towards the Greens, and I
think he saw this as a kind of cherry on
top of a fantastic election result, which led to the
Greens leader losing his seat.
S1 (02:25):
Yeah, he's really in Clover right now, the Prime minister. James,
Senator Cox does come with some baggage. You broke a
major story about her last year. Can you just remind
listeners of that story?
S2 (02:35):
Yeah. Look, the short version, essentially, Senator Cox lost about
20 staff across three years. A senator's full complement of
office staff is five. So she lost, you know, four
full complements in three years. Um, five of those staff
made formal complaints. Now, um, Poulos, which has been since
(03:00):
superseded by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Commission. They looked into
the complaints. It's not correct to say that they investigated
because they didn't have an investigative function, and they concluded
their inquiries and sort of didn't really make any standout recommendations.
That has led to claims that this hasn't been properly
(03:21):
dealt with. And that has led to really difficult questions
for the Prime Minister about, well, hang on a sec.
Did you check out these complaints before bringing Senator Cox
over to the Labour Party? Um, because there are questions
that remain on foot and indeed since since the defection
on Monday. Jacqui, already there are people coming out and
claiming that actually this needs to be dealt with. And
(03:42):
actually this this wasn't resolved as the Prime Minister is
now claiming and he he sort of owns this problem.
S1 (03:48):
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So there was bullying allegations but sort
of an inconclusive result from them basically.
S2 (03:53):
Yeah. That's right. And Senator Cox said, look, you know,
there's significant context missing. But I do apologize to anyone
I've upset. This happened because I'm, you know, during the
voice campaign, it was highly stressful. I changed portfolios to
help lead that. I needed different staff. There was a
number of sort of factors she attributed it to.
S1 (04:11):
Okay, what did the Greens say about the defection of
Dorinda Cox?
S4 (04:15):
Paul Lewis Ward has put out a statement a couple
of hours after the move, or maybe a little bit
earlier than that. She was she wasn't aggressive, but it
was a clear disowning of their former senator. She made
the point. Larissa Ward has made the point that just
a week ago, Dorinda Cox had been speaking negatively about
(04:36):
the Labor's controversial approval of a big gas project, continuation
of a gas project in Perth and North West Shelf,
and suggested that Dorinda Cox had betrayed the values that
she claimed to hold just a week earlier. Sarah Hanson-Young,
another senior Greens MP on Thursday morning in the corridors
of Parliament, suggested that Cox should have done the honourable
(05:00):
thing by giving the spot back to the Greens, because
it's their position, and Cox would never have been elected
as an independent and never told voters that she was
a Labour Party person, which was probably the strongest comment
yet from Greens leader.
S2 (05:13):
Except for that email. Uh. Um. Larissa Waters said to
party members, uh, which was a bit more forthright, and
said this was essentially a betrayal of Greens voters who backed, uh, well,
who'd voted for the Greens in 2022, not Dorinda Cox, essentially.
S1 (05:30):
I mean, a defection at any time is embarrassing, but
to have one directly after a general election when the
Greens have obviously done not very well and Labour has
done very well. And I mean, you know, it's particularly embarrassing.
And Sarah Hanson-Young has probably a point, doesn't she, that
people would have voted thinking that they were getting a
Greens senator. Turns out they're getting a Labour senator.
S2 (05:51):
Yeah, absolutely. And again, like it's worth pointing out when
Fatima Payman moved to the crossbench, um, Anthony Albanese didn't
hesitate to say, you know, I think she got maybe
a couple of thousand below the line personal votes. Fatima
Payman and tens of thousands of votes for the Labor Party. Yeah.
Which carried her over the line. So Anthony Albanese essentially
(06:12):
said the same thing at the time. This is a
labor seat, not a Fatima payment seat. She should do
the honourable thing. Funnily enough, Jack, he hasn't said that
about Dorinda Cox. Um, he's been quite happy to accept
her on the Labour benches.
S4 (06:22):
I think he called Paiman, or I think he said
that she ratted on the last day of Parliament in question.
S6 (06:27):
Time, including Fatima Payman, who was elected as a labor
senator but ratted on the Labor Party to sit on
the crossbench, to sit on the crossbench.
S2 (06:38):
And that word, of course, has the connotations going back to,
you know, Billy Hughes in was it 1915, 1916 when
he ratted? You know, that really means something in labor,
you know, dripping with bathos. You know.
S1 (06:50):
It's a it's a very loaded term. Albanese's, obviously in
a very powerful position at the moment. He couldn't be
more powerful, really. He has a huge parliamentary majority. He's
just knocked off the leaders of both the Liberal Party
and the Greens, and he's looking to push his advantage.
But this, this rivalry with the Greens in particular is
really personal for him, isn't it, Paul? And it goes
back a long way.
S4 (07:10):
It does go back a long way. He's fought the
Greens in his inner Sydney seat of Grayndler at a
local level, at a council level, at an activist level
for many, many years. He has personal distaste for, particularly
the more left wing members of the New South Wales Greens.
Those members of the New South Wales Greens were in
the grouping within the federal Parliamentary Greens that Dorinda Cox
(07:34):
really butted heads with over a period of time. Dorinda
Cox and maybe James can explain this further. But even
though the defection was quite stunning when it was on
our television screens, the growing kind of animosity inside that
party and her her shift away from the centre of
the party had been building for months and months and
really years. She was pitted against Lidia Thorpe for a
(07:57):
period during the voice campaign, when Lidia Thorpe was allied
with the more radical Black Sovereignty Movement, and Dorinda Cox
was seen as the more moderate indigenous voice. Being a
moderate in the Greens is a bit of a troublesome
place to be at the moment, and she frequently had
personal and policy disputes with more left wing members of
(08:17):
the Greens in the party room ballot. A few weeks ago,
now in Melbourne, when she ran for the deputy position
without really informing many of her colleagues beforehand, she only
won three of 12 votes against Mehreen Faruqi, who is
a member of that more left wing group, and in
the Greens. Dorinda Cox then wanted to run for a
secondary position, the deputy whip, and also lost that conclusively
(08:37):
to the Queensland senator, Senator Penny Uhlmann. Pain and Dorinda
Cox's view was that Uhlmann pain should never have been
allowed to run for that position because she already had
the party room chair spot and she thought you couldn't
run for two. And her view was that Mehreen Faruqi
and Larissa Waters and the other senior people in the
Greens had effectively conspired to stop Dorinda Cox having any
elected position because of their view that she is kind
(09:00):
of out of step on values, that she is under
investigation for bullying. There has also been consternation at a
grassroots level that Dorinda Cox is a former police officer,
which is a controversial position to hold in the Greens,
which is quite anti-authority and anti-police. There's a whole bunch
of different factors that led to this.
S2 (09:15):
Yeah, so the other thing that's at play here, of course, Jacques,
is that Dorinda Cox is firm friends with Marcus Stewart,
a leading indigenous advocate, a former founding co-chair of the
First Nations assembly in Victoria and husband of Jana Stewart,
who's a Victorian labor senator. Those three are tight, and
there's nothing wrong with having political friendships across the aisle. But,
(09:37):
you know, my understanding is that Jana and Marcus were
talking to Dorinda about her position in the Greens for
some time. I think other people in the Labor Party
were doing that as well. We know that the PM
got involved at a point in the process. It wasn't,
you know, the day before the move happened either, like
(09:59):
this was, I think, in the planning for a while.
And I think if you take a step back in
the last Parliament, you know, we really saw a Greens
party that rewarded or sought to bolster voices that were
maybe extreme is not the word, but, you know, really
at the sort of bleeding edge or the leading edge
(10:20):
of debate, you know, we saw that on Palestine. We
saw that in the decision to deregister parts of the
CFMEU union.
S4 (10:28):
Um, and the Greens linking up with the CFMEU to support.
S2 (10:31):
Yeah. Like it was almost like they got into this
cycle of rewarding, you know, outrageous commentary. Um, and that's
not to Linda Cox, to be fair. She, she is
a moderate green. I think she sort of got to
a point where she was homeless.
S1 (10:44):
Yeah. Okay. But even as she was sort of having
these problems within her party, the Greens, she was highly
critical of labor even as recently as last week for
approving the North West Shelf Gas Project extension to 2070. Now,
this is a huge fossil fuel project, which has been
controversial and is very controversial with both Aboriginal activists and environmentalists.
(11:05):
She said last week that it was a raw and
chilling reminder that First Nations people lack protections for their
cultural heritage rights. That's quite a turnaround. I just want
to segue slightly to this North West shelf gas project. Paul,
can you tell us a little bit about it, why
it's controversial and why Albanese has rather cynically waited till
right after the election to approve this extension?
S4 (11:27):
Well, her comments on that project, I think if you
if you caught a left wing Labour MP at a
more honest moment, they would probably use similar language to
describe that decision. She's just more in a position where
she's able to do so publicly. Now, I'm not suggesting
that's a widespread view in the Labour Party. An energy
reporter colleague described it to me as a bit of
(11:49):
a vibe shift in the in the climate mitigation debate
where gas and the prominence of gas in the energy
transition and the acceptance of gas as an energy fuel
has grown within both, you know, moderate and right wing
labour circles. Also, clearly in the cabinet, the decision to
put Murray Watt, the Queensland former IR minister, into environment,
(12:14):
and take it out of the hands of Tanya Plibersek,
who has a more green view of the world than
Murray Watt, who's from a resources state who's seen as
highly pragmatic despite being from the left and who's close
to the prime minister.
S2 (12:26):
Yeah, he's one of Elbow's primary, Mr. Fixit.
S4 (12:28):
He's a fixer and and the Prime Minister wants to
keep WA onside. Obviously a fossil fuel state. The decision
to delay it till after the election was, according to
many in the environmental movement, as you say, jacki, a
cynical one designed to stave off criticism among environmentalists pre-election.
But it does display that the that labor is more
(12:50):
comfortable now talking about gas potentially given its new authority
in the parliament after the election, win. More willing to
take on that debate and take on the critics?
S1 (12:59):
Yeah. And interestingly, they don't worry that they're going to
bleed votes to the left on this issue anymore. Albanese
did have some very sharp comments for the Greens following
this defection. He was sort of pushing his advantage. What
did he say about the Greens, Paul?
S4 (13:14):
He said that Dorinda Cox's defection was proof that the
Greens had, quote, lost its way. He didn't expand on
that at length, but it's clear what he means. He
has been a key voice leading this narrative that the
Greens are, you know, not what they used to be
under Bob Brown. They had lost their focus on the environment.
(13:36):
They were, as James said, at the leading edge of
kind of radicalism on any number of topics, to focus
on the Gaza issue, according to some and bolshie at
at all points. I think there's I think there's some
truth in it, but I do feel like it's become
a bit of a self-perpetuating thing.
S2 (13:53):
No, I think it's true. I mean, I've been here since,
you know, working in this building since I was 8
or 9. And I definitely think the greens spend a
lot more time focused on non-climate change issues. Now. That's fine. Um,
but they aren't the party they were in 2008, 2009, 2010.
S4 (14:11):
Um, the climate climate was a bigger had more salience
then as the kind of Rudd government was confronting it.
I get your point. But I also would say Bob
Brown famously protested, uh, George Bush's speech on the floor
of Parliament. Um, the Greens were extremely outspoken on the
Iraq war and made it a key tenet of their
(14:31):
their politics back then. Being a pacifist anti-war party is
a is one of their core tenets that was determined
in the 70s and 80s when they formed. Yeah. And
they're they're not and they're not out of line with
other left wing movements across Europe on the Gaza issue.
S2 (14:47):
No, no, I agree with that. But I'm saying the
number of issues that they now make a key focus
has grown significantly. And Jack, you were here at Canberra.
S1 (14:57):
Yeah.
S2 (14:58):
I mean, at that time.
S1 (14:59):
It obviously hasn't worked for them if we're going to
go on the last election results. But I've thought it's
interesting over the years and particularly the last few years
when we've seen a huge focus on housing and cost
of living from that point of view, and also intergenerational inequality.
I actually thought they were quite salient issues for the
Greens to latch onto, and they really led in some cases,
they were kind of at the vanguard of like the
(15:21):
housing affordability issue. Right? But it hasn't paid political dividends
for them. It hasn't paid electoral dividends for them. So
I am interested in your take on this because, you know,
Anthony Albanese has a point. If we look at their
electoral results, they have lost their way. They've lost seats
in the lower house, they lost their leader. You know,
their primary vote is a little bit down. But crucially,
(15:43):
they don't have members in parliament in the same numbers
that they used to. So what do they need to
do to rebuild?
S4 (15:49):
Well, just quickly, on your point on housing, I housing,
I'd say that they're their best moments in the past
few years was that kind of first 18 months of
the Albanese government, when the core focus of the Greens
was Max Chandler-mather talking about housing? They achieved huge cut through.
S1 (16:02):
And they pushed the government. They pushed the government on
it like they really they created a lot of noise
around the issue and they pushed the government on it.
S4 (16:08):
The smartest move by labor was deciding that they were
not going to out green the Greens on social justice issues.
They were going to turn the housing issue around on
Max Chandler-mather and Adam Bandt by showing to the public,
and they repeatedly hammered home this message. I remember a
press conference in the prime ministerial courtyard once that the
Greens were blocking progressive housing policies, and they made the
(16:28):
Greens look obstructionist, so they didn't try and beat them on.
You know, we are more woke than you. We are
more radical than you on X or Y issue. They
made them look like they were actually blocking progressive reform,
which Greens Greens voters don't like.
S1 (16:40):
That's exactly what Kevin Kevin Rudd did with the CPRS.
I believe with the carbon Pollution Reduction scheme that they
voted against, and there's a strong argument if they'd voted
for it, we wouldn't have had the climate wars to
the extent we have in the last decade.
S2 (16:52):
Jack, unpack that one just quickly. If they had voted
for the CPRS, the five Greens who voted with the liberals,
and remember two liberals crossed the floor to vote with
labor on that vote. If they had voted for that,
my theory, we'd still have a carbon pricing scheme. Kevin
Rudd wouldn't have lost the leadership. Tony Abbott wouldn't have,
you know, basically drawn with a Rudd government in the
(17:15):
2010 election. You know, maybe Rudd serves two terms. Hands
over to Gillard. Maybe Gillard serves two terms. We'd be just,
you know, entering maybe the second term of the Wyatt Roy,
you know, Liberal government which was elected in 2018 or
something like it would have changed everything. Don't get me
started on that one.
S1 (17:33):
It's a parallel universe. It's like a science fiction novel.
Now that we're going.
S4 (17:36):
Into, what would you be doing in that world, James?
S2 (17:38):
Well, I'd still be in Canberra reporting and enjoying my life.
S1 (17:42):
You'd be. You'd be the one stable element.
S2 (17:44):
Um, yeah. Just want to pick up something if I
can just jump in quickly. Jack. Just on the housing thing.
I agree with Paul. I agree with you. I think
it was a really successful first 18 months or so
focusing on that issue. Labour basically had promised $30 billion
to various housing messages, and they got nowhere in terms
of electoral dividend for doing that and it over time.
(18:07):
I mean, what Rudd didn't do was turn the tables
on the greens in 2010 over that CPRS vote. He
didn't close that deal in the minds of the Australian people.
Their vote went up at the 2013 election. Albanese did.
He was furious with Chandler-mather and the Greens for blocking
the construction of public housing, amongst other things, and he
successfully closed that deal in the minds of the Australian
(18:29):
people and said look at these.
S4 (18:31):
I think he was more furious that they were taking
political wins off him. Not not about the actual policy.
S1 (18:36):
Yeah, well, and as we've just discussed, it's really personal
for Anthony Albanese against the Greens. Right. But he was
able to basically paint them as um, you know, the
party that thinks the perfect is the enemy of the
good kind of thing.
S2 (18:48):
Um, Yeah, exactly.
S1 (18:49):
Just Tony Abbott. Tony Abbott. Tony. Right. Let's not confuse
those two. Um. Right.
S2 (18:54):
I really often mistake people make.
S1 (18:57):
Actually, I would I would really love a podcast with
those two. The two Tonys I would listen to.
S2 (19:03):
I would subscribe to that podcast.
S1 (19:04):
Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, Tony. Right. Our Tony wrote a lovely
piece this week about the noble tradition of the Senate turncoat,
because even just in recent times, we've had Lidia Thorpe
defect from the Greens to the crossbench, Fatima Payman defect
from Labour to crossbench. Jacqui Lambie just kind of dumped
Clive Palmer and went out on her own. But how
likely are such people, defectors, to be re-elected after they've
(19:26):
left a kind of major party or a group to
go and defect to another party or be on their own?
S2 (19:31):
Uh, it's almost always. And if you've got Cory Bernardi,
jacks can't believe you forgot. Cory. Um, it's almost always
a spectacular failure. Um, the one exception in recent history,
at least, is Jacqui Lambie, who did lose her spot
in the Senate for a while, like a year, year
and a half. But that was a citizenship thing. But
she's sort of become brand Tasmania now, like she's a
colossus in her home state. But look at the rest
(19:54):
of these guys. They've disappeared without a trace. I think
Dio Wang, Glenn Lazarus, um, I mean, pick your, you know,
crossbench senator or former major party senator Gerard Rennick, who
was going to, you know, stir up the place, change
the world, start a movement. Nah, it just doesn't happen.
S1 (20:11):
So there's a lot of colour and movement, but it
doesn't always kind of lead to re-election. I want to really,
really quickly talk about the US Defence Secretary, Pete Hegseth
comments at the. I think it was the Shangri-La dialogue
in Singapore. He told Australia that we need to up
our defence spending. Richard Marles seemed to kind of be
open to that conversation. What happened?
S4 (20:30):
Paul Richard Marles struck a. So just going back, it
was the Shangri-La conference, as you say, in Singapore last week.
Pete Hegseth gave quite a sabre rattling speech, some would say,
suggesting that conflict is potentially just around the corner between
Taiwan and China, which a lot of experts also worry about,
and has again made the call that allies in the
(20:52):
region and in Europe need to massively up their defence
spending because effectively US, the US does too much work
and people rely on them too much. Again, another point
which which quite a lot of experts in the space
agree with. The awkwardness for the government came when Richard Marles,
our defence minister, was standing alongside Pete Hegseth. Or perhaps
it was the press conference just after their meeting, and
struck quite a positive tone about his conversation with with Hegseth.
(21:16):
A former Fox News host has a bunch of different
allegations against him, which he denies about treatment of former partners,
a controversial figure even in the Republican Party. One of
the more out there Trump picks. Really. Um, so Marles
positive tone, which he struck about wanting to engage with
Hegseth and saying he had a right to ask for
more defence spending and Australia was really up for the conversation.
(21:38):
That was controversial, particularly in the left, because it was
viewed as potentially more positive than it needed to be,
rather than sticking to the Albanese line, which he delivered
a few days later, that very firmly, Australia will set
its own settings. We will not be dictated to. We're
a sovereign nation. A more bolshie line that mimics Mark
(21:59):
Carney in Canada and how he dealt with Trump's hairy
chested approach. So there was a there was a differential there,
and it was explained to me as by a senior
person at the government yesterday, is just a kind of
indication of the very different personal styles of Albanese and Miles.
Miles is more into decorum, more of a nice guy, Albanese,
more of a hard head.
S1 (22:19):
Anthony Albanese is going to suffer this kind of friendly
fire from the Trump administration for his entire term. And
if he gets another term, maybe even then, he seems
to have sort of settled on a strategy or a
line of defense. Is that going to hold up, do
you think, Paul?
S4 (22:33):
Yeah, it's it's rhetoric that potentially has its limits as
you deal with this administration, which is going to be
in for the same period of time as the Albanese government.
Trump and his people are not going anywhere. It made
sense during the in the campaign, for example, to be
bolshie and stand up to the US. But the rub
is now hitting the road. And I think this week's
been an interesting week because it's the first, I think,
(22:54):
since the election where the atmospherics have just become back
to normal governance and the Australia's place in the world
is uncertain, and we're dealing with difficult allies and there's
huge pressure to muscle up on defence. So all of
these issues are unresolved and we skated over them a
bit during the campaign. But now they're they're hard.
S2 (23:11):
One thing I'd add, though, I think the the question
of where to spend more money on defence, uh, how
to manage that, you know, in the context of a
budget that is in deficit for the next decade or
forecast to be, I should say, that's tricky. The politics
of this is not that tricky. And I think Albanese
knows that people like I think the majority of Australians
are a bit, you know, turned off by Donald Trump
(23:33):
and think, I don't want that sort of crazy here.
And I think there's a dividend for Albanese standing up
for us or not even standing up, but just saying
we'll act in our own interest.
S1 (23:43):
I think that it's a very it's a very live
question whether or not Australians would want to join any
kind of war effort over Taiwan. Rightly or wrongly, which
is what Pete Hegseth kind of, you know, the prospect
that he raised, would we join such a military effort?
Would there be public approval of that? I'm not sure, chaps.
These are big questions, but we've run out of time.
Thank you very much for being here. I really appreciate it.
S4 (24:05):
See you later.
S2 (24:05):
Thanks very much, Jackie.
S1 (24:10):
Today's episode was produced by Tammy Mills with technical assistance
from Debbie Harrington. Tom McKendrick is our head of audio.
To listen to our episodes as soon as they drop,
follow Inside Politics on Apple, Spotify or anywhere else you
listen to your podcasts. To stay up to date with
all of our politics coverage and exclusives, visit The Age
(24:30):
and The Sydney Morning Herald websites to support our journalism.
Subscribe to us by visiting The Age or The S.m.h.. Subscribe.
I'm Jacqueline Maley. Thank you for listening.
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