‘More than happy for them to underestimate me’: Greens MP Stephen Bates on being young, gay and unafraid

A few weeks ago Stephen Bates was watching a movie at home with his partner, Scott, when he got a phone call. It was from a scrutineer watching the vote count on the night of the 2022 federal election. They’d seen enough. 

“Iron your shirt because Antony Green’s about to call the seat for you,” they told him. 

Bates, who ran as an Australian Greens candidate for the seat of Brisbane against incumbent LNP MP Trevor Evans, thanked them and hung up. He turned to Scott and told him the news: “I think I just got elected to the House of Representatives.” 

It’d be easy to say Bates’ win is like a fairytale. He’s a 29-year-old retail worker who managed to flip a seat belonging to a former chief of the National Retail Association. His election is part of a seismic shift that rejected a decade of climate inaction and “politics as usual”. 

That’s not how he tells it, though. Bates speaks about the hard work that went into a year-long door-knocking campaign. He speaks about the bumps along the way (Scott responded to the news of his victory by saying, “This wasn’t part of the plan! You didn’t sign up to win”).

And importantly, Bates says his election is the beginning, not the end, of the story.

Bates tells Crikey he had a good feeling about his chances based on his time spent door-knocking, often hearing from people that climate change was their top issue. The moment that sealed it was on the first day of pre-polling. He was at Brisbane City Hall. There was a queue of people lining up to vote early. Speaking to his volunteers, Bates told them that early voting traditionally favours the LNP and to not be disappointed if people didn’t want to take their how-to-vote cards. But when Bates looked at the line, he noticed something.

“Half of them only had my how-to-vote card. That’s when I knew the swing was going to happen. It’s going to be between me and the Labor candidate,” he said.

Bates is going to Canberra as part of a bloc of Greens MPs from neighbouring seats in the Queensland capital: in addition to him there’s Max Chandler-Mather in Griffith and Elizabeth Watson-Brown in Ryan. The trio campaigned together and, in Bates’ telling, are “proper friends”. 

After the excitement of the election weekend, Bates had a week off from politics. He famously had to go and finish off three shifts at the Apple Store after being elected, something he enjoyed because he had a chance to say a proper goodbye to his colleagues (some of whom had volunteered on his campaign). Bates was moved to the back of the store to do admin work after people began to come in, saying they knew him and asking for discounts. A Daily Mail photographer even paid a visit.

Since then, Bates says he’s been in limbo. People have been contacting him in his capacity as a new MP and expecting him to get on with the job, while he’s still sorting out an office, hiring staff, and trying to figure out the wi-fi details: “We can’t do too much, we’re waiting for relevant departments to give us information and there’s all this human resources set-up to do. It’s weird.”

Bates says he’s not intimidated coming into Parliament. During the campaign, he said he heard his political opponents refer to him as the “retail boy” — something he viewed as intentionally dismissive. But what others viewed as a sign that the Greens “weren’t taking the seat seriously” was actually a strength, Bates says. He rattles off statistics about his new electorate having the highest number of queer constituents in the country, as well as huge numbers of voters under 30 and people working in the service and hospitality industry. 

“That was a huge reason why the political class underestimated me,” he says with a laugh. “Well, I’m more than happy for them to underestimate me.”

Bates is the spokesperson for the Greens on LGBTIQA+ topics, and he says he has his sights on a few issues, including a new religious discrimination bill that the new government has promised to pass, a ban on conversion therapy, and changing restrictions on who can donate blood. He wants to do more than just policy, too. When he came out in his early 20s, he remembers thinking that he didn’t have any openly gay or queer people to look up to. Now, he wants to be that person for others.

“Going into this I knew I would be shit on for being gay, young and inexperienced,” he said.

“I was elected the same way as other people were. If other politicians have an issue with me, they can take it up with the voters.”