Adam Paul Bandt (born 11 March 1972) is an Australian politician and former industrial lawyer who is the leader of the Australian Greens and federal MP for Melbourne. Previously, he served as co-deputy leader of the Greens from 2012 to 2015 and 2017 to 2020. He was elected leader following the resignation of Senator Richard Di Natale in February 2020.
Bandt won his seat in the 2010 federal election, becoming the first member of the Greens elected to the House of Representatives at a federal election, and the second overall after Michael Organ, who was elected at a by-election. Bandt first contested the seat in 2007, narrowly losing to the Labor Party's Lindsay Tanner. Following his success in the 2010 election, Bandt retained the seat in 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2022 elections.
Early life and education
Childhood and education
Bandt was born in Adelaide on 11 March 1972. He is the son of Allan and Moira Bandt. His mother, a teacher and school principal, was born in England and arrived in Australia as a Ten Pound Pom. His father was a social worker who later ran a human resources consultancy. He is of Barossa German descent on his father's side.
Bandt moved to Perth at about the age of 10 and attended Hollywood Senior High School. He graduated from Murdoch University in 1996 with Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws degrees, and was awarded the Sir Ronald Wilson Prize for Academic Achievement, "which is given to the graduate who best combines distinguished academic performance in law units with qualities of character, leadership and all-round contribution to the life of the university".
Early political activity
While in high school, Bandt went to his first demonstration, protesting against a visit of a nuclear-powered ship to Fremantle. In his mid-teens, from 1987 to 1989, he was a member of the Australian Labor Party (ALP). Bandt later stated he had left the party because of the removal of free university under Hawke and Keating, and blamed the Higher Education Contributions Scheme. Bandt stated the change "started making education so expensive and putting people in debt".
At Murdoch University, Bandt was a student activist and member of the Left Alliance. During university, he stated he was inspired by the thought of Leon Trotsky. He was president of the student union and an active campaigner for higher living allowances for students, and for free education. While he was a student in 1995, Bandt described the Greens as a "bourgeois" party, but that supporting them might be the most effective strategy, saying that "Communists can’t fetishise alternative political parties, but should always make some kind of materially based assessment about the effectiveness of any given strategy come election time". Writing for the ABC, former Liberal MP and Minister Kevin Andrews said that this made it clear "Bandt views the Greens as a vehicle for his ideological pursuits".
Pre-parliamentary career
After finishing university, Bandt worked for student unions. During the period before his election to parliament in 2010, he lived in Parkville, Victoria and worked as an industrial and public interest lawyer, becoming a partner at Slater & Gordon, with unions for clients. He decided to join the Greens in 2004. He had articles published on links between anti-terror legislation and labour laws and worked on issues facing outworkers in the textiles industry. Bandt said he also represented firefighters and coal workers "dealing with privatisation."
In 2006, Bandt published a paper entitled "The Wages of Fear: Labour Laws and Terror".
In 2008, having gone part-time at Slater & Gordon in order to do so, Bandt completed a PhD at Monash University, supervised by cultural theorist Andrew Milner, with his thesis titled "Work to Rule: Rethinking Pashukanis, Marx and Law". It states: "This thesis is an attempt to rethink Marxist legal theory." In 2012, he described his thesis as looking "at the connection between globalisation and the trend of governments to take away peoples' rights by suspending the rule of law", saying he "reviewed authors who write about the connection between the economy and the law from across the political spectrum", ultimately arguing "that governments increasingly don't accept that people have inalienable rights". His thesis was embargoed for three years in the hopes of having it published as a book.
In 2009, Bandt published a paper arguing that emergencies, such as the global financial crisis and war on terror, have been used by neoliberal "strong states" to "undermine basic rights".
Member of Parliament (2010–present)