Greens policies: extreme or widely supported?

April 28, 2025

Michael Keating writes, “the Greens are too extreme for many voters”. It is reasonable for him to highlight this as it does seem to be a common sentiment. But how true is it?

First, assuming that there are some voters who think that the policies of the Greens, or at least some of them, are too extreme, I’d like to see rigorous research that clarifies which policies such voters are referring to and how many believe that each one is too extreme. My prejudice, which I’d be happy to see disproven by evidence, is that most people who say such things have little detailed knowledge of Greens policies and might well support many of them if they did have such knowledge.

Second, I have looked at six or more election scorecards in the last week or two, admittedly all from organisations that would be considered “progressive” or “left leaning” – a general characteristic of many P&I readers, I suspect. The scorecards all come to the same conclusion which can be summarised as: on a score out of 10, the Coalition scores 0-2, Labor 3-5 and the Greens 9-10. Looks more like strongly supported policy than extremism to me.