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After winning three lower house Queensland seats in the 2022 Federal Election, the Australian Greens are looking to expand their Northern Empire in 2025.
As became clear last time, the Queensland chapter of the Greens take a notably different approach to voter engagement.
Gone are the days of tree-tory Melbourne lawyers running in safe Liberal seats just to simply stir up their conservative in-laws. It seems the QLD Greens are now starting to deliver proper retail politicians.
And with populist election promises like ‘free mental and dental’ as well as ‘rent caps’ and ‘tax billionaires’ – it seems the Greenslanders are starting to speak fluent Queensland.
On top of fielding candidates in winnable seats, with attractive campaign slogans, the Greens have also ramped up their use of hyphens.
The use of the hyphen has not always been prominent in Greens politics. However, political historians believe the party started embracing compound surnames after being eased into it by former party leader Richard Di Natale.
With Di Natale helping transform the Greens from a bunch of alpaca wool wearing tree-huggers to relatively normal people who could sit through an entire football match, it was then decided that majority of candidates moving forward should have double-barrelled surnames.
This was made easier by the fact that double-barreled surnames no longer carry the old stereotype of blue-blooded families being unable to decide on why dynasty is more important. This is thanks the rise of Polynesian rugby league players embracing the hyphen first.
But now, the Greens are trying to escalate the amount of both words and hyphens in their campaign material, climaxing today with the announcement of a new Queensland candidate that has not just two but THREE dads.
Tim Marshall-Atticus-Bell will be contesting the marginal Queensland seat of Yawannagokhunt on May 3.
His dads Bruce, Kerrod and Graham have been door-knocking every day of the campaign, and all three of them say they are very proud of their little triple barrelled prodigy.
