James Campbell: Greens play it safe with Larissa Walters election

Mahreen Faruqi would have been a win-win for Labor and Sarah Hanson-Young a threat, but the Greens have instead displayed a survival instinct by opting for Larissa Waters.

You can’t expect to have everything.

It should have been enough for Labor that Adam Bandt has exited our national politics stage left.

It was surely too much for them to expect the Greens would have given them Mahreen Faruqi as his replacement.

Instead of the Senator for Gaza, the Greens have instead opted for the – in their terms anyway – middle-of-the-road, Larissa Waters, demonstrating they are possessed of a survival instinct which has been largely absent for the past three.

The government’s view about the third contender – the passed-over South Australian – Sarah Hanson-Young is mixed.

On the one hand as the most-right wing – again in Greens’ terms – shy, as she is known in Canberra, would have been easily the biggest threat electorally.

But on the other hand as the most pragmatic she would have been the easiest for the Government to deal with on legislation as it will need to do in the new senate.

Newly elected Greens leader Larissa Waters gives her first press conference in Melbourne. Picture: Luis Enrique Ascui

Faruqi would have been a win-win for Labor – not only a public facing disaster for the Greens but one with the capacity to tear them apart internally.

With the hitherto lowish profile Queenslander, Waters, a former lawyer who until today was best known having to resign after discovering she was inadvertently a Canadian, the Greens have opted for the closest thing to a continuity candidate.

The paradox of the Greens’ election outcome is that while they suffered the humiliation of losing all but one of their lower-house seats after telling the world they were on a long-march through the inner city of Melbourne, they will, thanks to Labor’s improved numbers in the senate be far more powerful in Canberra from July, 1.

It will be interesting to see how Waters and her colleagues use that power.