'People have had enough': Claims the Greens being 'divisive' played a key role in minor party going backwards in lower house
A former Labor state minister has said the Greens going backwards in the House of Representatives is proof Australians have had enough of the minor party.
The Greens are yet to win a seat in the lower house following Saturday's election amid the party's national primary vote declining by 0.50 per cent.
The party lost the seats of Brisbane and Griffith it claimed in 2022, with Sky News Australia's election analyst Tom Connell declaring leader Adam Bandt will be defeated in Melbourne.
Labor is currently leading in Melbourne with 52.7 per cent of the two-candidate preferred vote according to the AEC, with Ryan the only Greens-held seat they appear to be ahead in.
Philip Dalidakis, who served as a minister in the Andrews government during his five years in Victoria's Legislative Council, said the Greens' "divisive" approach proved costly.
"This election, if nothing else, is proof positive that the Australian public have had enough," Mr Dalidakis told Sky News Australia's Chief News Anchor Kieran Gilbert.
"What the Greens are selling, the Australian public are no longer buying. This all comes down to the fact that they've been divisive.
"They've taken a conflict... thousands of kilometres away from home, they have weaponised it here and they have attempted to try and win votes at the expense of social harmony here at home and people have had enough."
Mr Dalidakis said the Greens was "no longer the party of Bob Brown", drifting away from core environmental issues they made traction on.
"If you go back and have a look at the news clippings for the last 18 months, you'd be hard pressed to find more than a dozen mentions of the environment by Greens' spokespeople," he said.
"They have moved away from environmental issues.
"In fact all that they've done is they've tried to weaponise social disharmony and disunity and attempted to try and vote harvest from it.
"The fact of the matter is that the Greens political party have gone down a very, very dirty and murky road."
While Mr Dalidakis said the Greens "will do well to learn from the lessons that they've just experienced", he indicated that has not yet been the case.
"In the last 48 hours, I've heard a number of different Senators double down on this and say in actual fact they probably should have gone harder," he said.
"Well, this is fair warning, if they go harder, the rest of the Australian public will treat them they way that they just did on Saturday."
Mr Bandt's primary vote was down 4.40 per cent in Melbourne, while the Green's first preferences dropped 1.40 per cent in Ryan, 2.88 per cent in Griffith and 1.71 per cent in Brisbane.
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