The Australian Greens held a number of leadership elections and deputy leadership elections. The most recent was held in 2022.
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The Greens had their first leadership election on 29 November 2005; prior to this they did not have a party leader, preferring a consultative model of government.
At a party conference in Hobart, the Greens announced their intention to formalise their party's structure in anticipation of a growing presence in Federal Parliament.
Tasmanian Senator Bob Brown was elected leader unopposed, with Western Australian Senator Rachel Siewert appointed the party's first Whip. [1]
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The 2008 Australian Greens deputy leadership election was held on 10 November 2008.
Tasmanian senator Christine Milne was elected to the position, becoming the first federal Greens deputy leader. [2] [3]
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The Greens had a deputy leadership spill in 2010 following the 2010 Australian federal election. [4]
The role was contested by Senator for Tasmania Christine Milne and Senator for South Australia Sarah Hanson-Young. [4] Hanson-Young was critical of the Greens supporting the minority Labor Gillard government, and wanted the party to negotiate with the Liberal Party, while Milne wished to critically maintain the agreement. [5]
The election was won by Christine Milne. [4]
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Brown served as party leader until 13 April 2012, when he announced his retirement from politics. [6]
The Greens parliamentary party room was immediately convened to appoint a new leader and deputy leader. Christine Milne, Senator from Tasmania, was elected unopposed to the leadership. [7]
The deputy leader seat was contested between Adam Bandt, the member for Melbourne in the House of Representatives, and Sarah Hanson-Young. [8] Bandt became the second Greens MP to be elected to the position of deputy leader of the party, Milne having previously filled the role after its establishment in 2008. [6]
The leadership election had no effect on the deal that existed between the governing Gillard Labor Government and the Greens, to which Milne remained a signatory.
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On the morning of 6 May 2015, Christine Milne announced on Twitter her resignation from the position of leader of the Greens, prompting a meeting of the Greens' parliamentary party room to fill her replacement. [9]
Shortly after her announcement, Victorian senator Richard Di Natale revealed he would stand as a candidate for the leadership, whilst the media speculated incumbent deputy leader Adam Bandt would seek re-election to the position. [9]
At the party room meeting however, Bandt did not seek re-election to the deputy leadership, later saying he was "happy" to hand over the role and instead focus on the birth of his partner's baby. [10] Consequently, the party decided to elect two senators as co-deputy leaders; Scott Ludlam and Larissa Waters. [11]
Di Natale was elected to the leadership unopposed and he became the first leader of the Australian Greens to represent a state other than Tasmania. [11] [12]
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The 2020 Australian Greens leadership election began on 3 February, after incumbent Richard Di Natale announced his resignation as federal leader of the Greens. He also announced his plan to retire from federal parliament in the coming months.
On the day of his announcement, Greens MP for the seat of Melbourne Adam Bandt, revealed he would contest the party's leadership. [13] A party-room election for the leadership was held the following day, and Bandt was elected unopposed to the leadership position. He became the first Greens member of the House of Representatives, and not the Senate, to be elected leader. [14]
The positions of co-deputy leaders were also filled at the meeting. Three senators, Nick McKim, Larissa Waters, and Mehreen Faruqi contested the role. [15] Larissa Waters was re-elected to the role, with Nick McKim joining her. [16]
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On the 10 June 2022, almost three weeks after the 2022 Australian federal election, the Australian Greens members of parliament met and re-elected Adam Bandt as federal leader of the Greens, "by consensus". [17]
Bandt was sick with COVID-19 and was unable to attend the meeting. The party elected Mehreen Faruqi as deputy leader, replacing Larissa Waters, [18] as well as Larissa Waters as the party's Leader in the Senate, Lidia Thorpe as the Deputy Leader in the Senate, Sarah Hanson-Young as Manager of Greens Business in the Senate, Janet Rice as Party Room Chair, and Nick McKim as Senate Whip.
The Australian Greens (AG), commonly referred to simply as the Greens, are a confederation of green state and territory political parties in Australia. As of the 2022 federal election, the Greens are the third largest political party in Australia by vote and the fourth-largest by elected representation. The leader of the party is Adam Bandt, with Mehreen Faruqi serving as deputy leader. Larissa Waters currently holds the role of Senate leader.
Andrew John Julian Bartlett is an Australian politician, social worker, academic, and social campaigner who served as a Senator for Queensland from 1997 to 2008 and from 2017 to 2018. He represented the Australian Democrats in his first stint in the Senate, including as party leader from 2002 to 2004 and deputy leader from 2004 to 2008. In November 2017, he returned to the Senate as a member of the Australian Greens, replacing Larissa Waters after her disqualification during the parliamentary eligibility crisis. He resigned from the Senate in August 2018 in an unsuccessful attempt to win the House of Representatives seat of Brisbane, allowing Waters to fill his seat in advance of the 2019 election.
The Tasmanian Greens are a political party in Australia which developed from numerous environmental campaigns in Tasmania, including the flooding of Lake Pedder and the Franklin Dam campaign. They form a part of the Australian Greens.
Janet Frances Powell was an Australian politician.
Christine Anne Milne is an Australian politician who served as a Senator for Tasmania. She was the leader of the parliamentary caucus of the Australian Greens from 2012 to 2015. Milne stepped down as leader on 6 May 2015, replaced by Richard Di Natale.
Rachel Mary Siewert is an Australian politician. She was a senator for Western Australia from 2005 to 2021, representing the Australian Greens, and served as the party's co-deputy leader from 2017 to 2018. She previously worked as coordinator of the Conservation Council of Western Australia.
Nicholas James McKim is an Australian politician, currently a member of the Australian Senate representing Tasmania. He was previously a Tasmanian Greens member of the Tasmanian House of Assembly elected at the 2002 election, representing the Franklin electorate from 2002 to 2015, and led the party from 2008 until 2014. On 21 April 2010, he became the first member of the Greens in any Australian ministry. From February 2020 until June 2022, he served as co-deputy leader of the Australian Greens.
The Queensland Greens is a Green party in Queensland, Australia, and a state member of the Australian Greens. The party is currently represented in all three levels of government, by Larissa Waters and Penny Allman-Payne in the federal Senate; Stephen Bates, Max Chandler-Mather, and Elizabeth Watson-Brown in the House of Representatives; Michael Berkman and Amy MacMahon in the state Legislative Assembly; and Trina Massey and Seal Chong Wah in Brisbane City Council.
The Victorian Greens, officially known as the Australian Greens Victoria, is the Victorian state member party of the Australian Greens, a green political party in Australia.
Richard Luigi Di Natale is a former Australian politician who was a senator for Victoria. He was also the leader of the Australian Greens from 2015 to 2020. Di Natale was elected to the Senate in the 2010 federal election. A former general practitioner, Di Natale became federal parliamentary leader of the Australian Greens on 6 May 2015 following the resignation of Christine Milne. He was the leader of the Greens during the 2016 and 2019 federal elections.
Sarah Coral Hanson-Young is an Australian politician who has been a Senator for South Australia since July 2008, representing the Australian Greens. She is the youngest woman to be elected to federal parliament, winning election at the age of 25 and taking office at the age of 26. She was the youngest person ever elected to the Senate, until Jordon Steele-John was elected in 2017.
Scott Ludlam is a New Zealand-born Australian former politician. A member of the Australian Greens, he was a senator in the Australian Senate from July 2008 to July 2017 and served as deputy leader of the Greens. Ludlam represented the state of Western Australia and resigned when it was found that he had been ineligible to sit in the Senate due to holding dual citizenship of New Zealand and Australia.
Adam Paul Bandt is an Australian politician and former industrial lawyer who is the leader of the Australian Greens and federal MP for Melbourne. Previously, he served as co-deputy leader of the Greens from 2012 to 2015 and 2017 to 2020. He was elected leader following the resignation of Richard Di Natale in February 2020.
Larissa Joy Waters is an Australian politician. She is a member of the Australian Greens and has served as a Senator for Queensland since 2018. She previously served in the Senate from 2011 to 2017, resigning during the parliamentary eligibility crisis due to her holding Canadian citizenship in violation of Section 44 of the Constitution of Australia. Waters serves as her party's Senate leader, in office since February 2020. She previously served as co-deputy leader from May 2015 to July 2017 and again from December 2018 to June 2022.
Benjamin Richard "Ben" Oquist is a policy analyst, commentator and political and communications strategist.
The 45th Parliament of Australia was a meeting of the legislative branch of the Australian federal government, composed of the Australian Senate and the Australian House of Representatives. It met in Canberra from 30 August 2016 to 4 April 2019. The 2016 general election held on 2 July gave the Coalition of the Liberal and National Parties control of the House, albeit with a slimmer majority than the 44th Parliament, allowing their leader Malcolm Turnbull to stay in office as the 29th Prime Minister of Australia. During the term of the parliament, the government slipped into minority due to defections and by-elections. The leadership of the government also changed during the parliament, when Scott Morrison replaced Turnbull as Liberal Leader and Prime Minister in August 2018. The 45th Parliament was officially prorogued by the Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove at 8:29 a.m. on 11 April 2019, and the House of Representatives dissolved at 8:30 a.m.
Lidia Alma Thorpe is an Aboriginal Australian independent politician. She has been a senator for Victoria since 2020 and is the first Aboriginal senator from that state. She was a member of the Australian Greens until February 2023, when she quit the party over disagreements concerning the proposed Indigenous Voice to Parliament, and became a leading figure in the "progressive No" campaign for the Voice referendum in October 2023. She had also served as the Greens' deputy leader in the Senate from June to October 2022.
A leadership spill for the federal leadership of the National Party of Australia was held on 4 February 2020, and was called by the Member for Wide Bay, Llew O'Brien.
The Australian Greens frontbench consists of all Greens members of Parliament serving as the party's spokespeople inside Parliament on various issues, each member being assigned shadow portfolios for their speaking duties. This allows the Greens to shadow government policies and actions from the party perspective.
The history of the Australian Greens has its origins in the green parties founded in the 1980s in each of the states of Australia.
