Politics with Michelle Grattan: Sarah Hanson-Young on why progressives need to ‘take on’ One Nation

First elected to parliament in 2007 at the age of 25, Sarah Hanson-Young is now the Greens’ longest serving federal politician.

Asked to compare this current term to the Albanese government’s first three years in power, Hanson-Young said the Greens had been busier negotiating with the government.

She said new Greens’ leader Larissa Waters’ philosophy was to “get stuff done”.

In the current Senate, the government is forced to deal with either the Coalition or the Greens to get legislation through.

But when the government recently passed its gambling and National Disability Insurance Scheme reforms, they chose the Coalition over the Greens, much to the minor party’s frustration.

To discuss the Greens’ view of how they’re travelling halfway through this term, Hanson-Young – currently the party’s arts, communications, environment and water spokesperson – joined The Conversation’s politics podcast.

I’ve been doing this some time now.

And you know each prime minister is different, but every term is even different for each prime minister.

And how the prime minister of the day interacts with the Senate, particularly at a time [when] we obviously have balance of power in the Senate.

This term we have had to spend a lot of time in negotiations.

That wasn’t the case last time […] we weren’t in sole balance of power then. […] I think [Larissa Waters’] approach to things […] is she wants to get stuff done.

She said that from the beginning.

And she wants to do that and we are doing that.

But we also have to stay true to our values and that means standing up for people who are finding it pretty tough and pretty rough right now.