By Matthew Knott
Sarah Hanson-Young and Mehreen Faruqi are firming as frontrunners for the Greens leadership, as the party debates whether to shift in a more moderate direction or maintain Adam Bandt’s confrontational approach for the next term of parliament.
Greens insiders said the party was bracing for its first genuinely competitive leadership ballot after the shock loss of Bandt’s seat of Melbourne left the party unprepared for a leadership transition.
Larissa Waters, Mehreen Faruqi and Sarah Hanson-Young.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
None of the Greens MPs have declared their candidacy for the vacant leadership position, but allies of Faruqi and Hanson-Young are canvassing colleagues to gauge levels of support.
Queensland senator Larissa Waters is also being urged by many grassroots members to run for the leadership, but it is unclear if she is willing to contest a ballot because of family commitments.
The party’s defence spokesman, David Shoebridge, is being widely discussed as a possible deputy and ruled himself out of the leadership running on Friday afternoon. He would be unlikely to be deputy if Faruqi were elected leader at a ballot set to take place next Thursday, as they are both from the same state.
Shoebridge defended the party’s performance at the election, telling the ABC: “Yes, we could have taken a much more watered-down package to the election, but it wouldn’t have been honest to the state of the challenges that we see Australia and the world has to face.”
Pointing to the Greens’ efforts to secure funding for public housing, Shoebridge said the party should consider whether it was politically smart to try to improve Labor legislation through the negotiation.
“We should think clearly about if the government of the day wants to make a terrible mistake and have pretend solutions, well maybe you just say, ‘OK, that’s a pretend solution. It will not work.’ We articulate why it won’t work. We try and make it better. But, you know, don’t get in the way of your enemy and your opponent when it’s making a mistake.”
Tasmanian senator Nick McKim ruled himself out of contention on Friday, saying he had “decided not to take the job on” and did not want to let the party down.
“There’s obviously chats and discussions under way, and there’s people who are considering throwing their hat in the ring,” he told the ABC. “We’ve just got to come through it in a calm way and come out as a united team.”
Faruqi showed she had support in the party room when she was elected Bandt’s deputy in 2022, in contrast with Hanson-Young, who has run several times for the deputy position but never received the support of colleagues.
Hanson-Young, however, is seen as representing a clear break with the Bandt era and more likely to pursue a pragmatic approach of working with the Labor government where the parties have common ground.
A Greens source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the prospect of a leadership face-off had made many in the party feel uncomfortable because they were not accustomed to the process.
“It’s always been a stage-managed handover, but now there is no leader to hand over,” the source said. “Everyone is trying to figure out what to do.”
Sarah Hanson-Young is now the longest-serving sitting Greens MP.Credit: James Brickwood
The Greens leader – including Bandt and predecessors Richard Di Natale and Christine Milne – has traditionally been elected unopposed by the party room, reflecting the party’s consensus style of decision-making.
While there has been much discussion about whether the party should return to its environmental roots, some within the Greens said the real flashpoint would be parliamentary strategy and how to work with an emboldened Labor government.
The Greens will have the balance of power in the Senate, meaning Labor will not have to seek the support of other independent and minor party crossbenchers to pass legislation.
“The question is: do we want to be Labor’s little brother or a party in our own right?” a Greens source said.
Faruqi would probably position herself as a progressive champion seeking to first and foremost lead for the 1.65 million Australians who gave the Greens their first preference vote at the election.
Mehreen Faruqi was closely aligned with Adam Bandt.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
”We will sit down and talk to our colleagues, our members and our supporters, and we will think about a strategy,” Faruqi told The Project on Thursday night.
“I don’t accept that the people of Australia don’t want us in the lower house. We have many seats in state parliaments, and we still have one in federal parliament.”
She is associated with the activist wing of the party and played a prominent role in attacking the government over its response to Israel’s war in Gaza.
Faruqi led her Greens colleagues in a Senate walkout in November 2023 over the government’s reluctance to call for a ceasefire, labelling her Labor opponents “gutless, heartless cowards”.
She would probably have a contentious relationship with leading pro-Israel groups if elected leader.
“Australians have witnessed the Greens, led by Adam Bandt and Mehreen Faruqi, peddle dangerous antisemitic conspiracy theories, spew anti-Israel rhetoric, fail to call out terrorism and demonise the Jewish community,” Zionist Federation of Australia president Jeremy Liebler said after Bandt’s defeat.
Following the death of Queen Elizabeth II, Faruqi said: “I cannot mourn the leader of a racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonised peoples.”
Some within the party have defended her record as an environmentalist, pointing out she has a PhD in environmental engineering and spent much of the election campaigning in the regional NSW seat of Richmond, which the Greens almost won from Labor.
Hanson-Young, who rose to prominence as an asylum seeker advocate, controversially challenged Milne for the party’s deputy position in 2010 and again missed out on a co-deputy position in 2020.
She is now the party’s longest-serving member of parliament.
Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.