Representative Max Chandler-Mather Contact information

Max Chandler-Mather is an Australian politician and trade unionist, born on February 15th, 1992. He is a member of the Queensland Greens and is currently serving as the Greens member for the Division of Griffith in the Australian Federal Parliament, having defeated the incumbent Labor Party member Terri Butler in the 2022 Australian federal election.

Chandler-Mather grew up in the suburb of West End, where his parents, Tim Mather and Kim Chandler, were members of the Australian Labor Party (ALP). He completed his Bachelor of Arts with First Class Honours in History at the University of Queensland, during which time he was also a member of the ALP and the Labor Left faction. However, he quit the party in 2013, citing his disagreement with Kevin Rudd’s establishment of off-shore detention centres in Nauru.

After graduating, Chandler-Mather worked as a trade union organiser for the National Tertiary Education Union. Despite not being a member of the Greens at the time, he was employed as Jonathan Sriranganathan’s campaign manager for his successful 2016 campaign for Brisbane City Council. The campaign was centred around the left-wing social theory of the right to the city, arguing that property developers and banks have turned cities into ’the new factory’, resulting in people feeling powerless over their local communities.

Chandler-Mather then worked as a full-time campaign strategist for the Queensland Greens, with the aim of taking the seat of Griffith. He contested Griffith at the 2019 Australian federal election and achieved a 6.6% swing, but was not elected. However, he re-contested the seat at the 2022 Australian federal election and won with a 10.9% swing. His campaign was focused on community engagement with politics, particularly on local aircraft noise and housing affordability campaigns. He reportedly had over 1,000 volunteers who door-knocked 29,000 homes during the campaign.

Following his election to the Australian parliament, Chandler-Mather was appointed as the party’s spokesperson on housing and homelessness. He has expressed a desire to turn the Queensland Greens into a mass party that is primarily supported by the working class, but does not identify as a socialist ideologically. His politics during his time at university were supportive of democratic socialism. Chandler-Mather’s political positions are firmly on the left-wing of the Greens, with him supporting a four-day workweek and public ownership of the electricity and telecommunications industries, among other policies.