Australia’s Greens are preparing to elect a new leader after Larissa Waters unexpectedly resigned, saying her chronic kidney disease had worsened. Three contenders have emerged in an unusual contest for a party that has often sought consensus before leadership votes. The candidates represent almost half of the Greens’ 11-member parliamentary party room.
New South Wales senator David Shoebridge is running on a joint ticket with Victorian senator Steph Hodgins-May, who is seeking the deputy leadership. Their ticket faces another joint bid led by NSW senator Mehreen Faruqi, with Tasmanian senator Nick McKim as her deputy candidate. South Australian senator Sarah Hanson-Young, a veteran Green and the first to signal a leadership bid, is currently expected to run for leader alone.
Greens MPs will meet in Sydney over the next two days at a previously planned retreat and vote on Waters’s successor. Waters herself was elevated without opposition after the election in May last year. This time, six MPs who are not running will have the deciding votes in the 11-person party room.
Shoebridge and Hodgins-May said they wanted to replace Labor rather than reform it. They also pledged to grow the Greens, press for climate action and create distance from the United States and what they called the interests of the one per cent. Shoebridge served in the NSW state parliament from 2010 to 2022 before entering federal parliament at the 2022 election. He is a prominent opponent of the AUKUS agreement, arguing that Australia’s closeness to the United States creates a sovereignty risk. Hodgins-May entered the Senate in 2024 through a casual vacancy left by retiring Victorian senator Janet Rice and has recently taken on a more prominent public role for the party.
Faruqi’s leadership pitch called for party growth and described the economic model as broken and harmful to voters. She has voiced frustration that the Greens’ polling has not risen since the election while support for One Nation has grown. Hanson-Young, meanwhile, warned of what she called One Nation’s hate-peddling politics and emphasised environmental protection.
In a letter to colleagues, MP Adam Bandt-Chandler-Mather said the Greens received almost two million votes at the last election, yet only 11 elected representatives would determine the party’s strategic direction. Source: The Sydney Morning Herald.