Almost half the Greens partyroom is contesting in leadership showdown

Greens senator David Shoebridge will challenge for the party leadership on a joint ticket with Victorian senator Steph Hodgins-May as his deputy, setting up a rare three-way contest for the future of the party ahead of a vote this week.

Shoebridge and Hodgins-May will face off against another joint ticket led by NSW senator Mehreen Faruqi and deputy candidate Nick McKim, from Tasmania, as well as veteran South Australian senator Sarah Hanson-Young who is currently expected to run on a leader-only ticket.

In a statement, Shoebridge and Hodgins-May said they “do not seek to reform Labor, but replace them” as they shared their intention to grow the party, push for climate action and create distance from the United States and “the 1 per cent”.

Greens MPs will meet in Sydney over the next two days for a pre-planned “retreat” in which they will vote for a leader after the unexpected resignation of current leader Larissa Waters. Waters cited worsening chronic kidney disease for her shock retirement.

The Greens have typically sought a consensus candidate before leadership votes, with Waters promoted following last May’s election in an unopposed ballot. However, the pool of candidates for this week’s vote represents almost half of the 11-person party room, giving six parliamentarians who are not running the power to decide.

Both Shoebridge and Faruqi are staunch critics of Australia’s relationship with the United States and will prosecute hard-left positions on economics and foreign policy.

Shoebridge served as a NSW state MP for the Greens from 2010 to 2022, before moving to federal parliament at the 2022 election. He is the parliament’s primary opposer of the AUKUS treaty, arguing that proximity to the United States and President Trump represents a sovereign risk to Australia.

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.

In her pitch for the leadership, Faruqi said the Greens needed to grow, highlighting a “broken” economic model that was hurting voters. The senator has ventilated her frustration that the Greens have not seen a boost in the polls since the election, amid the ascendancy of One Nation, compared to the rise of populist left-wing leaders in the UK such as Greens leader Zack Polanski and the New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Hanson-Young, the first Green to put their hand up for leadership candidacy, raised the threat of a “hate peddling” One Nation, and highlighted protection of the environment in her pitch to party members. Hanson-Young said on Tuesday she was contacting her colleagues to seek their support.

“The selection of a new leader comes at a time of genuine debate and disagreement about the future strategic and political direction of the party. That debate couldn’t have higher stakes,” Chandler-Mather wrote in a letter to parliamentary colleagues.

He said the Greens received almost 2 million votes last election, yet the direction of the party’s leadership would be determined by just 11 elected representatives.

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.