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The Greens will elect a new leader this week after Larissa Waters withdrew due to chronic kidney disease. Key contenders include Sarah Hanson‑Young, Mehreen Faruqi and David Shoebridge, while the party faces pressure to block Labor's fossil‑fuel projects and confront One Nation's rise.
The Australian Greens will elect a new leader this week following Larissa Waters' sudden resignation, which she said she could not manage alongside a severe chronic kidney disease.
Waters, who had led the party for just over a year, left the front‑bench after a period of declining health, prompting an urgent leadership contest. The party meeting, staged over two days in Sydney, brings together 11 senior members, including Senator Sarah Hanson‑Young, Deputy Leader Mehreen Faruqi, Senator David Shoebridge and Senator Steph Hodgins‑May, as well as the only lower‑house Greens MP, Elizabeth Watson‑Brown.
Greens leaders seek consensus and contest
The group is expected to decide on a new leader by consensus, with a deputy chosen to sit alongside the chair. Hanson‑Young and Faruqi announced on Tuesday that they would both stand for the leadership. Faruqi, 63, has been deputy since 2022 and has been a vocal critic of Israel's war in Gaza, actions that earned her a ban from overseas trips and a ruling in a 2024 racial‑discrimination case after a One Nation senator insulted her.
She is running with Nick McKim, the Treasury spokesperson, as her deputy. David Shoebridge, also from New South Wales, clarified that he was not ruling himself in or out, leaving room for an open contest. A dark‑horse candidate, Senator Steph Hodgins‑May, who joined the Senate in 2022 as an environmental lawyer, has also signalled interest. The new leader will face intense pressure from grassroots Greens members to block all new coal and gas projects approved by the Labor government.
Adam Bandt, now chief executive of the Australian Conservation Foundation, said the next leader must use "whatever means" to prevent approvals of projects like Woodside's Browse gas project on the Scott Reef, fracking in the Beetaloo Basin, and the use of fracked gas by data centres. He added that the leader will also have to confront Pauline Hanson's One Nation party and hold Labor and the government to higher climate standards.
Calls for direct member election
Former Greens MP Max Chandler‑Mather has urged that the leadership vote be opened to all party members rather than just MPs, arguing that a direct member‑elected approach could replicate the success of figures such as UK Greens leader Zack Polanski or New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Polling latest shows the Greens hovering around 13‑15 % primary vote, with a slight dip in recent months.
Bob Brown, former party leader, told the ABC that he was very confident of the calibre of candidates and that whoever is elected will be capable of "taking on" One Nation politician Pauline Hanson in debate. The new leader will lead a 10‑senator bloc in the Senate and will squarely confront the Albanese government's fossil‑fuel agenda while galvanising the party's progressive momentum, which grew under Waters' leadership amid campaigning for a gas‑export tax that mobilised over 70,000 people.
Future strategy and election impact
In short, the Greens' leadership decision will set the tone for the party's strategy ahead of the next federal election and will determine how vigorously the group challenges Labor's environmental policy and confronts the growing threat posed by One Nation.
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abcnews:This story was compiled and edited by the HeadTopics newsroom and HT AI from the reports above.
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