Truth about Greens wipeout amid new fight
Two women have emerged as frontrunners to replace Adam Bandt as the Greens face a crushing electoral wipeout. Here’s why the party still holds power in parliament.
Sarah Hanson-Young and Mehreen Faruqi are firming as the leading candidates to replace Adam Bandt
Questions are emerging over whether Greens Senate leader Larissa Water wants to take on all the controversy that goes with being the leader and is reportedly happy in the service as the Senate leader.
That leaves two likely candidates – South Australian Sarah Hanson-Young and the deputy leader Mehreen Faruqi.
Greens insiders point out that unlike the Labor Party, the Greens partyroom and not the membership elect the leader.
Some suggest that Senator Faruqi would likely win a membership ballot.
But they reckon Sarah Hanson-Young could come out on top in a ballot of MPs and senators.
Speaking to ABC Radio National on Thursday morning, Ms Faruqi insisted “Adam is still leader” with “lots of results still to be counted”.
“Adam is a fantastic leader, and we work really well as a team as leader and deputy leader, and I am hoping that he gets back in and we can continue on with that leadership team,” Ms Faruqi said.
Mr Bandt conceded just after 2 pm.
Shell-shocked Greens Senators are reeling after an electoral wipe-out that could see them lose all of their seats in the House of Representatives.
Despite going backwards in the lower house, the party’s 11 Senators means Labor will be reliant on them or the Liberals to get the 39 votes required to pass legislation.
That makes the Greens the key voting bloc Labor will need to deal with to pass laws.
While the Greens have conceded two seats in Queensland – Griffith and Brisbane – they are still in the fight for Ryan in Queensland.
In the seat of Melbourne, Mr Bandt is yet to formally concede defeat as the vote count continues with another 15,000 pre-poll votes to be counted. The ABC and Sky News have both called the seat as a Labor gain.
After campaigning with influencer Abbie Chatfield and a giant toothbrush, Mr Bandt said after the election that he had no regrets despite recording a 4 per cent swing against him in Melbourne.
“Today, millions of people have voted Greens with hope and ambition,’’ he said.
“We have secured the biggest national vote in our history.
“And together we have kicked Dutton out.”
PM urges the Greens to “look in the mirror”
But Anthony Albanese has urged the Greens to “look in the mirror” before complaining about the culture at Parliament House in a brutal take-down.
Outgoing Greens MP Max Chandler-Mather said that Parliament House had a “sick culture” and suggested it was a toxic workplace.
“He should have a good look at the way he asks questions in the parliament and maybe what he needs is a mirror and a reflection on what he is no longer in parliament,” Mr Albanese said.
“So I think it is a bit rich for him, of all people, who has been rejected by his own electorate after just one term, and indeed, the seat of Melbourne is very much under a cloud, is the best way you could put it.
“His attitude – this is a guy who stood before signs at a CFMEU rally in Brisbane, describing me as a Nazi.”
The outgoing Greens MP accused the Prime Minister of targeting him with political abuse.
“Every time I stood up, I screamed and yelled at,” he told Triple J Hack.
“The Prime Minister spent a lot of time in my electorate attacking me, the property industry, the mining industry, all coming after us,’ he said
“Can you imagine you’re in a workplace and you have people in that workplace come up and just yell and scream at you while you’re trying to give a speech. It’s odd.”
The 2025 Australian Greens leadership will be decided by the party room at a date to be determined but if history is a guide a leadership contest would break with tradition.
The Greens have never had a leadership vote for the top job
The Greens have never had a ballot for the leadership since the inception of the party and the leaders’ have always been elected unopposed.
Twenty years ago Tasmanian Bob Brown was elected unopposed as leader, prior to this they did not have a party leader, preferring a consultative model of government.
In 2008, Christine Milne was appointed as the Australian Greens first deputy leader.
The Greens did have a deputy leadership spill in 2010 following the 2010 Australian federal election.
The contest was between Senator for Tasmania Christine Milne and Senator for South Australia Sarah Hanson-Young, who was critical of the Greens supporting the minority Labor Gillard government. She lost.
In 2012, Bob Brown announced he was retiring. Christine Milne was elected unopposed.
Adam Bandt and Sarah Hanson-Young contested the deputy leadership. Sarah Hanson-Young lost again.
In 2015, the Greens got a new leader, Victorian Richard Di Natale. Once again he was appointed unopposed.
In 2020, he retired and Adam Bandt was elected unopposed.
Here are the 11 Greens Senators who will decide the party’s next leader.
Senator Larissa Waters (Qld) 2011 – present
Veteran Senator Larissa Waters is currently the Greens Leader in the Senate and national spokesperson on Women and Democracy.
Before entering politics, she worked as an environmental lawyer.
The Canadian-born politician made headlines in 2017 when she was forced to resign from parliament over the dual-citizenship crisis.
“I’m living in Brisbane/Meanjin with my two young daughters, the younger of whom caused a bit of a stir when she became the first baby to be breastfed in our federal parliament,’’ she says in her official Greens biography.
Senator Sarah Hanson-Young (SA), 2008 – present
South Australian Sarah Hanson-Young famously pulled out a dead salmon from underneath her desk last year in a protest against a government “stitch up” over environmental laws.
Hanson-Young then said: “On the eve of an election, have you sold out your environmental credentials for a rotten, stinking extinction salmon”, before pulling out a large, dead fish wrapped in plastic.
She is the longest-serving Greens Senator after entering politics 17 years ago.
Senator Hanson-Young also launched defamation action to force a male MP to pay her $120,000 in damages after she accused him of slut-shaming her after a feud in the Senate when he told her to “stop shagging men.”
Senator David Shoebridge (NSW), 2022 – present
David Shoebridge, 53, is a former barrister.
He was elected to the Senate as the party’s lead candidate in New South Wales at the 2022 federal election and is active on parliamentary committees.
Highly experienced, he previously served in the NSW state parliament for over a decade and is a public accountability campaigner.
In June 2020 a part-time member of Shoebridge’s staff was charged with defacing a statue of James Cook in Hyde Park, Sydney outside of work hours.
He refused to sack the staffer due to the actions being taken outside of work hours.
Senator Peter Whish-Wilson (Tas), 2012 – present
An environmental campaigner who fought against the Tamar Valley pulp mill, Senator Whish-Wilson is an economist and a lifelong surfer.
In 2016, he proposed that an army sniper should be used to stake out a beach in Tasmania’s northwest to protect penguins by shooting dogs.
“I think it is the only thing we can do here,” he explained.
“Our party has spoken to Parks and Wildlife, [and we need to do] what they did in Sydney and bring in a sniper, bring in an army sniper.
He proposed that dog owners should be warned in a letter drop that their dogs will be shot if found wandering on the beach undersupervised.
“If your dogs are going to be down there, they’re going to get shot, this is what we’ve had to do in other areas,” he said.
Senator Nick McKim (Tas), 2015 – present
Asylum seeker campaigner Nick McKimm unleashed on a climate sceptic Liberal National Party rival telling Matt Canavan: ‘Shut your mouth – people are dying because of … sociopaths like you.’
The Tasmanian senator said: ‘I’m usually an optimistic person but I just want to say …’ – prompting Queenslander Mr Canavan to interject, “You hide it well.”
“Mate, you can shut your mouth,’’ Senator McKim replied.
Senator Jordon Steele-John (WA), 2017 – present
Since his election in 2017 Senator Steele-John has advocated for disabled people, including the establishment of a Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of Disabled People.
Senator Mehreen Faruqi (NSW), 2018 – present
Last year a judge ruled One Nation’s Senator Pauline Hanson breached a racial anti-discrimination law by telling Pakistan-born Senator Mehreen Faruqi to return to her homeland.
Faruqi sued Hanson in Federal Court over a 2022 exchange on the social media platform X, then called Twitter, under a provision of the Racial Discrimination Act that bans public actions and statements that offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate people because of their race, colour or national or ethnic origin.
After the death of Queen Elizabeth II, Faruqi, deputy leader of the Australian Greens party, posted, “I cannot mourn the leader of a racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonised peoples.”
Hanson, the leader of the One Nation party, replied that Faruqi had immigrated to take “advantage” of Australia, and told the Lahore-born Muslim to return to Pakistan.
Senator Dorinda Cox (WA), 2021 – present
The Western Australian Greens senator was accused of bullying behaviour last year and issued an apology citing “challenging conditions both politically and personally”.
“There have been many challenges during my first three years in office including the Covid epidemic, taking on the First Nations portfolio alongside the Voice Referendum, and leading many significant committee inquiries,” she said in a statement.
“All while establishing and recruiting two office based teams to secure my six-year term with the ambition of an effective, safe and supportive work environment.
“As the employer, I take responsibility for any shortcomings in what has occurred during this period and I apologise for the distress this may have caused.”
“There are parts of the reporting that reflect staff grievances that were not presented to me, or that were assessed and not progressed by the independent Parliamentary Workplace Support Service,” she said.
Senator Barbara Pocock (SA), 2022 – present
An economist, Senator Pocock was one of a number of MPs and senators who handed back their access to Qantas’ prestigious chairman’s lounge in the name of integrity. She was instrumental in establishing the Senate committee inquiring into the consulting industry,
Senator Penny Allman-Payne (Qld), 2022 – present
A former high school teacher and am an active member of the Queensland Teachers’ Union, she entered parliament in 2022.
Senator Steph Hodgins-May (Vic), 2024 – present
She was preselected by the Greens to replace Janet Rice upon Rice’s retirement in the first half of 2024. An environmental lawyer, she argued that government inaction has caused Australia to become a global pariah when it came to issues around the environment.[25]
She is also an advocate for Australia increasing its foreign aid budget and to focus more on international development.[5]
Abbie Chatfield reacts
Influencer Abbie Chatfield, who campaigned with Mr Bandt during the 2025 election said she was crying tears of joy on Saturday after it emerged that not only were the Liberal Party struck by a total wipe-out, but Opposition Leader Peter Dutton had lost his seat.
“First of all, I’m okay with this outcome,” she said.
“I wish Adam Bandt would have kept his seat. But obviously the greater good was to keep Dutton out. Now that was achieved, that was the main goal.”
Meanwhile, Jewish groups have come out in force to welcome the “purge” of Adam Bandt from parliament as he looks set to lose his seat of Melbourne.
Slamming the Greens party as anti-Semitic, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry has blamed their loss of seats to the party’s hard line stance on the Israel-Hamas conflict.
“Jewish law precludes us from celebrating the misfortunes of others, but the fact that the people of Melbourne decided to purge Adam Bandt from the federal parliament is a good thing,” said Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.
“Bandt led a political party in this country to become institutionally antisemitic,” he said.
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