Pick a lane? Trina Massey would rather push every lever she’s got
Trina Massey is sitting in a quiet nook at Echo & Bounce, the Woolloongabba venue where Greens faithful watched as their party was almost wiped from the lower house at the last federal election.
She was also there on election night last year when inner-city MPs Stephen Bates and Max Chandler-Mather – whose seat overlapped with her council ward – lost their seats.
It was a dramatic reversal of Brisbane’s “greenslide” three years earlier, and an echo of a poor showing in the most recent state poll, when South Brisbane’s Greens representative Amy MacMahon was ousted.
But Massey isn’t keen to focus on the disappointments experienced in the last few years.
At the last council election, she retained the Gabba ward and was joined by Paddington councillor Seal Chong Wah. She thinks more Greens councillors could be elected in 2028.
“A good result for us is not only increasing our vote, a good result is getting our message out there, getting people talking,” she says, sipping an iced black coffee.
“Whether that means the Greens are going to win four, six or eight wards in 2028, I don’t know … I think a good result would be that we increase the number of councillors.
“It doesn’t have to be LNP … There are other ways you can run council.”
Massey is well known in the area as an amateur DJ – she’s booked to play a set at this venue hours after we meet – and collects records obsessively. A favourite artist is the Phil Spector-backed ’60s girl group the Ronettes. She’s also a keen bushwalker, and collects Pokemon and Marvel cards to bond with her younger brother.
Massey is one of just a handful of LGBTQ women of colour in publicly elected roles across Australia, and among the few renters on Brisbane City Council, living with a housemate in Kangaroo Point.
“The reality is the political system doesn’t really reflect people like me,” she says.
Born in the Philippines, she moved to Newcastle as a six-year-old and came to Brisbane four years later. She grew up primarily in Stafford, attending Queen of Apostles Primary School and St Rita’s College, before studying political science and history at UQ.
She went on exchange to the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and says a later stint working for the UN in conflict resolution among segregated Macedonian and Albanian populations in the post-war Balkans was a formative political experience.
Back in Brisbane, she started her own record label and worked for Ipswich council, before embarking on the path that would lead her to representative politics.
She says the unexpected re-election of Scott Morrison’s Coalition at the 2019 federal election prompted her decision to join the party.
“I realised posting on Facebook every two or three years wasn’t enough,” she says.
“When I decided what party to join, it really went down to what my values were … I believe in fairness and justice, and so for me it was the Greens.”
She was parachuted into the Gabba when Jonathan Sriranganathan stood down to run for mayor, and was elected in her own right in 2024.
While the Greens’ have gone backwards at the national and state level, she strongly disputes the narrative its overall popularity is in retreat.
Her predecessor in the Gabba ward told the ABC earlier this year he believed the party was too closely aligned with Labor, and failing to position itself as a genuine anti-establishment force.
“The problem for the Greens is they’re not capitalising on that widespread frustration and disenchantment,” Sriranganathan said.
“The Greens basically have to pick a lane. They have to decide, are they an anti-establishment party of deep change, or are they a centre-left, tweak-things-around-the-edges party? They’re trying to do a bit of both at the moment and it’s not working for them electorally.”
Massey disagrees. She says there’s space in the party for moderates and those pushing for more radical structural change.
“I think we can do both,” she says. “I think if we look historically, no political change has been made possible by just doing one lane ... I do both.
“Residents want me to press every lever … protest and disruption is a lever, and some things we do have to protest.
“This idea that the Greens are in decline is completely not a real narrative.”
Massey rejects the idea that her party can’t replicate the success of insurgent left-wing movements overseas. However, she admits it has long struggled with messaging – sometimes failing to effectively sell policies with broad mainstream appeal.
She points to its push in 2017 to make all public transport trips $1 in Queensland – a move rejected by the major parties years before they both adopted 50 cent fares.
“We were told we were crazy … we’ve been so instrumental in pushing policies or changes that both major parties have never wanted to even look at, but we’ve had challenges in communicating those wins.”
In 2024, a number of wards came down to a contest between the Greens and LNP, and Massey believes a small increase in her party’s primary vote could result in a significant haul of seats.
She identifies the two biggest problems on Brisbane City Council as the sell-off of public assets – including the Visy and Goprint sites, both in her ward – and a lack of public consultation, which she thinks has become endemic under the LNP’s 20-year reign.
“The Schrinner administration believes its job is to just approve development with no parameters, with no thoughts about housing affordability,” she says.
“The city developers building developments are getting away with everything … [the council and state government] basically enable developers to run roughshod across local communities.”
Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner has confirmed he will run for reelection in 2028, and Labor leader Jared Cassidy is also weighing up a bid for the top job.
Massey says a personal campaign for lord mayor is off the cards for now – but could come one day.
“It is something that I will definitely consider in the future. Brisbane needs better leadership.”
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