# Max Chandler-Mather

Max Chandler-Mather (/-ˈmeɪðər/ -⁠MAY-dhər; born 15 February 1992) is an Australian politician and trade unionist. He is the Greens member for the Division of Griffith following the 2022 Australian federal election, having defeated the incumbent Labor Party member Terri Butler.
A resident of Woolloongabba, Chandler-Mather is a member of the Queensland Greens and worked for the party prior to being elected to parliament.

## Early life and career

Chandler-Mather grew up in the suburb of West End. His parents, Tim Mather and Kim Chandler, were members of the Australian Labor Party (ALP). He attended Brisbane State High School.
Chandler-Mather completed a Bachelor of Arts with First Class Honours in History at the University of Queensland. While at university he was a member of the Labor Party, and a member of the Labor Left faction, after being encouraged to join by his parents. Chandler-Mather quit the ALP in 2013, stating in 2022 that he could not remain as a member of the party following Julia Gillard's reestablishment of off-shore detention centres in Nauru. Chandler-Mather worked part-time as a call centre worker at the trade union United Voice where senior organisers attempted to pressure him to rejoin the ALP.
After graduating, Chandler-Mather was a trade union organiser for the National Tertiary Education Union.
Despite not being a member of the Greens at the time, Chandler-Mather was employed as Jonathan Sriranganathan's campaign manager for his successful 2016 campaign for Brisbane City Council. Chandler-Mather and Sriranganathan organised their campaign around the left-wing social theory of the right to the city, arguing that property developers and banks have turned cities such as Brisbane into 'the new factory', resulting in people believing they do not have power over local communities.

## Political career

After Sriranganathan's successful campaign, Chandler-Mather was employed as a full-time campaign strategist for the Queensland Greens, and aimed to take the seat of Griffith. Chandler-Mather contested Griffith at the 2019 Australian federal election and achieved a 6.6% swing, but failed to get elected.
Chandler-Mather re-contested Griffith at the 2022 Australian federal election, and won with a 10.9% swing. His campaign was aimed at community engagement with politics, particularly local aircraft noise and housing affordability campaigns, and had over 1,000 volunteers who door-knocked 29,000 homes. Following his election to the Australian parliament, Chandler-Mather was appointed as the Greens' spokesperson on housing and homelessness. In this role he advocated for a rent freeze, removing the discount on the capital gains tax, public housing and a government owned property deveolper. In September 2023, Chandler-Mather negotiated $3 billion for social and public housing in return for passing the Housing Australia Future Fund.
In May 2023, Independent MP Helen Haines and Liberal National MP Michelle Landry made complaints to the Speaker regarding personal attacks against him by Labor MPs in parliament, described as "vicious" by Haines. The attacks occurred in the context of dispute between Labor and the Greens about housing policy and rent caps.
On 27 August 2024, Chandler-Mather took to the stage of a rally in Brisbane, protesting legislation passed the previous week to force the CFMEU into administration. With Prime Minister Anthony Albanese the target, some placards in the crowd portrayed the prime minister as Adolf Hitler with the word "Albanazi" which Chandler-Mather asked to be removed.

## Political positions

In a 2020 interview with Tom Ballard, Chandler-Mather expressed a desire to turn the Queensland Greens into a mass party that was primarily supported by the working class, though he stated he did not identify as a socialist ideologically, instead claiming that his priorities merely overlapped with what is often perceived as socialism. Chandler-Mather's positions were deemed by the Green Left Weekly to be firmly on the left-wing of the Greens, noting his support for a four-day workweek and the public ownership of the electricity and telecommunications industries. Chandler-Mather describes his politics during his time at university as supporting democratic socialism. He has also been described as a "left populist".
In 2023, defending his party's transitional demand that Australian rents should be frozen then capped, he said that passing the Housing Australia Future Fund bill would mollify renters and set back the Greens' campaign.

## Electoral history

House of Representatives :
| Year | Electorate | Party | Party | First Preference Result | First Preference Result | First Preference Result | First Preference Result | Two Candidate Result | Two Candidate Result | Two Candidate Result | Two Candidate Result |
| Year | Electorate | Party | Party | Votes | % | ±% | Position | Votes | % | ±% | Result |
| 2019 | Griffith | | Greens | 23,562 | 23.65 | 6.67 | Third | Excluded | Excluded | Excluded | Excluded |
| 2022 | Griffith | | Greens | 36,771 | 34.59 | 10.94 | First | 64,271 | 60.46 | 60.46 | Elected |
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