Shoebridge says Greens must ‘replace’ Labor in first speech as leader

Newly elected Greens leader David Shoebridge has vowed to take the fight to both Labor and One Nation and cast the left-wing party as the best alternative for a growing base of disaffected voters.

The former barrister and staunch AUKUS opponent was elected on a joint ticket with new Victorian senator Steph Hodgins-May as his deputy on Wednesday, following the shock resignation of former leader Larissa Waters due to worsening chronic kidney disease.

“This is an extraordinary moment in politics and we can all feel it. Politics, as usual, is not providing the answers that people are desperately calling for,” Shoebridge told a Sydney press conference after his election.

“Things have got harder, much, much harder, for ordinary Australians. What has become so clear after four years of this government, and years before, is that we are not here to make the Labor Party any better. The Greens are here to replace them.”

Shoebridge was elected in a rare contested vote for a party that typically seeks consensus before leadership elections, receiving seven votes to NSW senator Mehreen Faruqi’s four on a two-candidate preferred count.

Hodgins-May was elected deputy with six votes to Tasmanian senator Vanessa Bleyer’s five. Bleyer has sat in the Senate for just over two months.

In a statement posted to social media, Faruqi, the former deputy leader, said she was disappointed to have not been elected and called for party members to have the right to vote in leadership elections moving forward. Faruqi ran on a joint ticket with Tasmanian senator Nick McKim as deputy candidate.

Fallen Queensland MP Max Chandler-Mather made a similar request in a letter sent to Greens parliamentarians on Tuesday. Shoebridge said both he and Hodgins-May were committed to the “democratisation” of the party, and that conversations on the matter were ongoing.

Veteran South Australian senator Sarah Hanson-Young was the third contender for leadership, running on a solo ticket. The senator was knocked out in the first round after receiving only two votes from the 11-person caucus.

Addressing the media after his election, Shoebridge said One Nation was gaining traction in the polls because Labor had facilitated its growth, and that the Greens were the only party capable of combating Pauline Hanson.

Shoebridge highlighted that One Nation was polling around 7 per cent early last year, before significant increases in its popularity over the past year to a high of 29 per cent in this masthead’s Resolve Political Monitor.

“What we need to do is bridge that gap … with hope. With a sense of political momentum and positivity,” Shoebridge said.

The Greens have maintained a steady support of between 11 and 12 per cent over the past year in polls published by this masthead.

Speaking immediately after Shoebridge’s election, Treasurer Jim Chalmers urged the new Greens leader to “focus on the risks posed to workers and to our economy by One Nation, the Liberal Party and the National Party”.

The vote took place during a pre-planned “retreat” in Sydney this week, in which matters of policy and strategy were also set to be discussed.

Shoebridge has been in politics for 22 years, serving on the inner-Sydney Woollahra Council from 2004 to 2012, and in the NSW state parliament from 2010, until he transitioned to the Senate in 2022.

Before entering state parliament Shoebridge was a barrister at Denman Chambers in Sydney. The 55-year-old is currently the party’s spokesman on foreign affairs, defence and immigration, and has established himself as a fierce combatant in Senate estimates hearings.

Most recently, the Greens were offered a spot on a Senate inquiry into artificial intelligence under the condition he was not the party’s representative, according to Shoebridge.

A member of the party’s hard-left, Shoebridge is the parliament’s primary opposer of the AUKUS treaty, arguing that proximity to the United States and President Donald Trump represents a sovereign risk to Australia. The senator has repeatedly called for Australia’s nuclear submarine deal with the United States and the United Kingdom to be abolished.

Hodgins-May is one of the Green’s two millennial senators and a relative newcomer to parliament, joining in 2024 to fill a casual vacancy left by retiring Victorian senator Janet Rice. She has taken a position of more prominence recently, making repeated media appearances on behalf of the party.

The new deputy formerly worked for Greenpeace, as an adviser at the United Nations and as a property lawyer. She has led the charge for the party seeking a minimum 25 per cent tax on gas exports.

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