The Greens’ federal election result has been widely condemned as a “disaster”.

The party has been all but wiped out in the House of Representatives. It has lost three of its four members, including leader Adam Bandt, who has just conceded his once safe seat of Melbourne. This leaves the Brisbane electorate of Ryan as the Greens’ only remaining seat in the lower house.

Yet the tired explanations being rolled out – the party is too extreme, too obstructionist, too distant from a mythical single-issue environmentalist past – misidentify the party’s dilemmas.

And they overlook the fact the Greens’ influence will be greater in the new parliament, at least in the Senate.

(The author seems to be in a pretty unique position to comment, given that they literally wrote a PhD thesis on the Greens a few years ago)