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NSW senator David Shoebridge won the Greens' first contested leadership ballot, succeeding Larissa Waters, who resigned due to worsening chronic kidney disease. He vows to build a mass movement and replace Labor, with Stephanie Hodgins-May as deputy.
David Shoebridge has been elected leader of the Australian Greens in the party's first ever contested leadership ballot, following the resignation of Larissa Waters. The NSW senator, 55, won the vote on Wednesday, defeating a ticket of Mehreen Faruqi and Nick McKim, while veteran Sarah Hanson-Young ran alone.
Shoebridge and Hodgins-May Take Charge
Waters stepped down on Monday, forced by worsening chronic kidney disease. Shoebridge ran with deputy leader Stephanie Hodgins-May, 41, who joined parliament two years ago after working for the UN and Greenpeace. The pair surged through the middle of the contest on a joint ticket.
It is the third change of Greens direction in two years, coming after the party lost three of its four lower house seats and leader Adam Bandt at the 2025 election, then lost Senator Dorinda Cox to Labor. In his first speech as leader, Shoebridge put economics at the centre of his vision. This is an extraordinary moment in politics, and we can all feel it, he said.
After four years of a Labor government, things have got better for the 1 per cent but much, much harder for ordinary Australians. He said he and Hodgins-May would present a fresh, new, strong base connecting people's material lives and struggles to how politics was failing them. Shoebridge said the Greens would build on Waters' work, paying tribute to her efforts consolidating the party's voter base. He rejected the more consultative approach of his predecessor.
I'll say this to the Labor Party: if you put serious material change on the table of the parliament, we'll vote for that, right? But after four years of watching them not do that, we're not here to make Labor better. Coalition MPs are said to be pleased, while some Labor MPs brace for tougher negotiations. On Instagram, Shoebridge said: Down the climate crisis, war, greed and an ever more unsure future, the Greens will not stop fighting.
Greens Vision for Economic Change
For you, and with you. This will mean making the Greens a bigger mass movement and upholding the grassroots pillar the party was founded on. We have heard, and respect, the calls for genuine grassroots involvement in selection of the leadership team and will work with the party on this.
Former MP Max Chandler-Mather, now leading the Greens Institute think tank, wrote to MPs that grassroots members should help elect the next leader, noting the party won almost 2 million votes in May 2025 yet just 11 representatives would decide its direction. Waters listed her achievements as pushing the government to overhaul Australia's 25-year-old environment laws, new standards for native forest logging, better controls on land clearing, and delaying coal and gas projects.
Under Waters, the Greens helped Labor pass gun buyback legislation and its budget tax package. The diminished party now holds the sole balance of power in the Senate on bills not supported by the Coalition. Shoebridge grew up on Sydney's north shore, attended James Ruse Agricultural High School and the University of Sydney, and worked as an employment lawyer and barrister. He represented the Greens on Woollahra Council in 2004 before entering NSW politics in 2010.
A Political Career Built on Toughness
NSW politics is brutal, he said, citing campaigns against corruption, bringing down premiers and fighting for ICAC resources. He chaired the powerful Public Accountability Committee and focused on transparency and civil liberties. Since entering federal parliament in 2022, he has zeroed in on defence, AUKUS, refugees and Australia's relationship with the United States.
He is known as a brutal interrogator and effective crossbencher, with a reputation as a policy wonk and legal brain who runs his own media strategy and masters detail. But he can be divisive, with some seeing him as self-serving. Many Jewish Australians have been dismayed by his advocacy for Palestine; he dealt awkwardly with a question on that, insisting the Greens had strong Jewish community connections.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong has been a leading critic, describing his pursuit of the government's role in the supply chain of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel as unconscionable behaviour. In Senate hearings she accused him of lying and using misinformation to foment division. He has returned serve with a flourish finessed over 16 years of practice.
Leadership Challenges and Future Direction
He now has just 18 months to fine-tune a leadership style that brings hundreds of thousands more Australians into the mass movement the Greens are promising. Sarah Hanson-Young, elected in 2008 as the party's longest-serving senator, is seen as a more pragmatic deal maker and is pushing for Labor to toughen digital duty-of-care laws. We are at a defining moment.
People deserve better than the failed policies and weak excuses from the Labor and Liberal parties and the hate peddling from Pauline Hanson's One Nation, she said. Our communities and environment are being hammered by a rigged system. I will fight with everything I've got, she wrote on social media on Tuesday.
Greens co-founder Drew Hutton, who quit the party after winning a legal battle to have his life membership reinstated, told The Australian none of the candidates would get the party out of identity politics and back into strong environmental and social justice advocacy. They now only talk to the inner-city middle-class people with degrees who have the luxury to be able to espouse identity politics, he said.
The Greens have stalled at around 12 per cent vote share between the last two elections.
SBSNews 
smh:David Shoebridge is one of parliament’s best operators. His new task as Greens leader is far broaderThis story was compiled and edited by the HeadTopics newsroom and HT AI from the reports above.
David Shoebridge The Greens Larissa Waters Australian Politics Senate Leadership Australian Greens Greens Leadership Ballot Stephanie Hodgins-May
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