Greens leader Larissa Waters has announced she will step down due to ill health, with a party room meeting scheduled for next week to choose her successor. Waters revealed on Monday night she has been managing a pre-existing kidney disease, but that her health had “declined significantly over the course of recent months”. She said while her prognosis for recovery was positive, the pressure of the party’s leadership, including additional travel demands, was detracting from a focus on her health.
Waters replaced Adam Bandt as Greens leader after the 2025 election, in which Bandt lost his lower house seat in a shock result. But some Greens members have expressed frustration with the party’s position under Waters, including its cut-through with voters as the major parties haemorrhage support to One Nation. Get our new political email, free app or daily news podcast Waters said in a statement she would take a period of medical leave, before returning to parliament to represent Queensland in the Senate.
Waters was first elected to the Senate in 2011 but was forced to resign in July 2017 after discovering she held duel Canadian citizenship during parliament’s eligibility crisis. After renouncing her citizenship, she returned to the upper house in September 2018 to fill a vacancy. Waters was a co-deputy leader to Bandt, and to former leader Richard Di Natale at various times between 2015 and 2022.
As the party’s spokesperson for women, Waters played a role in shaping the independent parliamentary workplace watchdog based on recommendations from Kate Jenkins’ report into the culture in Parliament House. The Greens have been reduced to a single lower house MP – Ryan’s Elizabeth Watson-Brown – after the May election, with minor primary vote swings against Bandt and two Queensland incumbents, Max Chandler-Mather and Stephen Bates. The party maintains the losses were due to a drop in votes for the Liberal party favouring Labor candidates, as well as a reduction in favourable preference flows.
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