Australian Greens co-founder Drew Hutton has revealed what drove him to quit the party after more than 30 years, telling Sky News he now considers them to be 'beyond reform'.
A difficult decision
Mr Hutton quit the Greens on Wednesday, telling the party leadership that while he still believed in 'Green politics', he had been left with no choice but to resign his membership.
'I'm very sad about this as the Greens was a major part of my life's work. However, their support for gender extremism, their rejection of freedom of speech and their refusal to see the world in any other terms than the narrow class bubble they are in meant I had little choice,' he wrote in a post on Facebook.
The 79-year-old environmental activist played a crucial role in the formation of the Queensland Greens before co-founding the Australian Greens with former leader Bob Brown in the early 1990s.
Long-standing tensions
However Mr Hutton, who also founded the Lock the Gate campaign, has been at odds with the leadership of the Queensland Greens since 2022 after he spoke against the 'authoritarian and anti-democratic' expulsion of members who had expressed dissenting views on the transgender rights debate.
His refusal to delete posts criticising the expulsion of a Victorian Greens member resulted in him being expelled from the party in 2023. But the 79-year-old challenged the decision in the courts, leading to his membership being reinstated in March this year.
Frozen out
Asked by Sky News host Caleb Bond why he had quit the party just three months after his membership was reinstated, Mr Hutton said he had hoped to change the party's positions on a few core issues but they had frozen him out.
'I was hoping that I might be able to change their minds about… the lack of free speech, the extremism on gender issues, and their intolerance of people who don't share their narrow cultural concerns,' Mr Hutton said.
'I think they're quite self-evidently problems that the Greens have. They don't see it that way, they think that they don't really deserve any sort of self-analysis or criticism.'
'I mean, basically they just froze me out. They refused to pick up the phone to me, they refused to answer emails, and nobody much in the party was prepared to come out and take them on, even when they agreed with me.'
'So I thought, I'm wasting my time here. I may as well go and support good community independence, people who are good on the environment, who knew the difference between a man and a woman, and believed in free speech. And that's what I'm going to do.'
A life's work
The lifelong environmentalist said he was sad to leave the party because it had been a large part of his life's work.
'I spent over 30 years, most of that actually being a leading spokesperson for the party, and I set it up, and I wrote most of their policies and press releases, and so on.'
'So I feel very sad about that. I've had a few sleepless nights, but nevertheless, you move on with life.'
'If I can't achieve the sorts of things I think are important inside the Greens, I'll go outside the Greens and do it there.'
Cultural bubble
Asked why he thought the Greens had become 'so captured by this far-left agenda' on issues like gender politics, Mr Hutton said it was stuck in a 'cultural bubble'.
'They come from a particular class that's youngish, lives in largely in inner suburban areas of the major cities, and have university degrees,' he said.
The Greens co-founder said the attitude this class of people have had towards ordinary Australians is a large part of the reason so many people are flocking to One Nation.
'One Nation has very cleverly built on the resentment that a lot of Australians feel towards that particular group,' he said.
'These people who've got economic security, they've got access to political power, and they have a culture which disdains them.'
'I think the thing that I found most obnoxious, really, was the fact that they really have no empathy with ordinary Australians.'
He said that he had learned through his experience founding the Lock the Gate campaign – a regional and rural campaign against the gas and coal industries – that you need to learn from people of all walks of life.
'I had to talk with people from all parts of Australian society and learn to value them and learn to empathise with their plight,' he said.
'That taught me that if you're going to be effective in this life, you've got to be able to talk to more than just a narrow little cultural bubble.'
No future for Greens
Asked whether he saw any future for the Greens, Mr Hutton said they were 'beyond reform'.
'I think the whole identity politics ideology, gender ideology has gone so deep in the party that even though there are still plenty of good people in it, the leadership has been taken over by this, and they're not going to let go,' he said.
'This party is going to either stay still or disappear over the next decade.'
