“Well, this wasn’t in my diary a week ago,” the Greens’ newly elected federal leader, David Shoebridge, says from the altar of an inclusive church in Melbourne’s inner north.

The New South Wales senator was a late addition to the launch of the Victorian Greens election campaign on Thursday but delivered a rousing political sermon to the converted.

There was no sign of animosity over the fact Max Chandler-Mather had jumped the gun, announcing a policy on Tuesday through the party’s thinktank to force the sale of 200 Coles and Woolworths supermarkets and replace them with government grocery stores.

“In 51 days, the whole country will be watching Victoria. I can already tell you are going to set the momentum,” Shoebridge said.

“You are going to get the ball rolling in what is going to be an extremely exciting, extraordinary moment for the Greens, but more fundamentally, for this country, because we’re going to take our country back, and it starts right here in Victoria.”Shoebridge drew the media’s attention to Fitzroy North Community Church, where the Greens served up a buffet of vegetarian and vegan dishes, washed down with beers from Melbourne’s Moon Dog Brewery, and sold raffle tickets with prizes such as the “joy of free public transport” (a $100 pre-paid Myki ticket), “free dental” (a check up, clean and X-rays courtesy of a CBD dental clinic) and a Playstation controller signed by “Fornite expert” and Tasmanian senator, Nick McKim. “I don’t think we’ve ever had this much media at one of these,” one guest was overheard saying.

A candidate said it felt like “election night”. Shoebridge said he had to “muscle [his] way in through the door because of the sheer numbers”.

Since taking on the role last week, Shoebridge has promised to reconnect the Greens with millions of disaffected voters– people who, as he put it in his speech, read the headlines in the morning and are then tempted to “pull the doona back over your head”.

Figures released ahead of the event by the Greens suggest it is having some impact – the party recorded an additional 884 members in the past week – its biggest membership bump since the 2025 federal election.

Shoebridge’s Victorian counterpart, Ellen Sandell, said the state branch had added 230 members. Within the span of seven minutes on Thursday night, it also collected $10,000 worth of donation pledges. “We are getting members coming into this party like never before, because right now, in this moment, we have rekindled hope in politics,” Shoebridge said.

“We have said the government is not there just for some kind of managed decline to make things slightly less shit than the other side would make them. Government is there … to make our lives better and richer and stronger and more united.”

Sandell said the campaign would be the party’s “biggest” in the state and it was “on track to win more seats than any state Greens party has ever won before”. “Honest to God … this is our moment,” she said. Both Shoebridge and Sandell laid the blame for the rise of One Nation at the feet of Labor, which they said both federally and at a state level had failed to improve voters’ lives.

Sandell said the Greens would “replace Labor” – a line she first began using in May, well before Shoebridge adopted it last week– by offering “bold ideas, some positive solutions, hell, even some political vision”.

She mentioned public housing “for everyone who needs it”, rent controls, free public transport and dental care and publicly owned renewable energy – and higher taxes on banks and gambling companies to pay for it. As foreshadowed by Chandler-Mather, she also announced a $350m plan to trial 10 publicly owned supermarkets across Victoria, which would sell essentials for 30% less than Coles and Woolworths.

“Mayor Mamdani has done it in New York, we can do it here in Victoria too,” she said.

One guest grumbled that the state party’s policy went further – by giving the Essential Services Commission, which currently regulates prices in Victoria’s energy, water and transport sectors – the power to also cap the price of essential supermarket items.

The Greens currently hold Melbourne, Richmond and Brunswick and have six Labor-held seats in their sights including Northcote, held by MP Kat Theophanous by just 184 votes.

They are also targeting Footscray, Pascoe Vale and Preston north of the Yarra, while south of the river they want to reclaim Prahran, which they lost to the Liberals at a byelection in 2025. But it is worth noting the Greens have preached this before. In 2018, they vowed to seize the balance of power and work with Labor to form “the most progressive government this state has seen”.

Labor instead won in a “Danslide”, and the Greens lost half of their eight seats. In the 2022 state election, the party again targeted several of the same Labor-held electorates.

It did not win them.

Then there’s the result of the 2025 federal election, where the Greens failed to capture several of their target Victorian electorates and Adam Bandt lost the seat of Melbourne. But on Thursday night Sandell was not interested in tempering the ambition. “We’re not fucking around, we’re here to make history.”