At his time of life, you would think Drew Hutton had greener pastures to tend – specifically, on his retreat in the verdant Sunshine Coast hinterland. Or that he would be busy living up to the promise he made to his wife that he was through with the guff and grind of politics to finally put her first.
But here he is, aged 79 and with the fire burning afresh in his flat belly, walking away from the party he co-founded in 1992 with his old friend Bob Brown to strike out in a bold new venture.
There’s no doubt some in the Greens will say good riddance. Hutton’s falling out with the hierarchy in his home state of Queensland has been epic. What began as a dispute over the right to speak his mind – on transgender policy, of all things – metastasised into a tooth and nail struggle over the values and direction of the party, pitting the stalwart activist against both a vindictive state machine and Brisbane-based federal Greens leader Larissa Waters.
Hutton’s last hurrah was to steer Larissa Waters through preselection to become the first Greens senator from Queensland in 2010. They no longer speak.
“I’ve never been one for putting hard work into a hopeless cause,” Hutton tells Inquirer.
“Given that fanatics are in control and the membership just simply is either too frightened or too uninterested to take back control of the party, it’s a hopeless cause. I’m not going to waste my energy on it.”
“My politics are still exactly the same as they were back in the 1980s when I first started setting up green political organisations,” he says. “I believe in the four pillars of green politics: ecological sustainability, social justice, democracy, and nonviolence. They’re my guiding principles, but they are no longer the guiding principles of the Greens.
“The issue for the Greens is they have no ability to talk to people outside that particular constituency,” he explains.
“These people have contempt for ordinary Australians. They’re university educated and predominantly from the inner city. They’re into identity politics. They’re professional, managerial elites and they don’t relate to … working-class Australians.”
“Unless somebody wakes up Labor and the Greens to the fact that they are not representing the people they purport to, the progressive side of politics is going to disintegrate in this country,” Hutton warns. “The Greens are going to stay at a sub-primary (vote) level, Labor is going to become increasingly unpopular out there and One Nation is going to cannibalise their vote. The left is going to have to take a very good look at itself if it wants to stay relevant in Australian politics.”
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