New Australian Greens leader David Shoebridge has said the party must “seize this moment” and connect with millions of disaffected voters to “make them believe in politics again”. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing The Guardian.

Moments after winning Wednesday’s party-room ballot, Shoebridge, a former corporate lawyer, councillor from Woollahra in Sydney’s affluent eastern suburbs and state upper house MP, signalled he would take a more combative approach to not only One Nation, but the government as well. He argued the Greens were “not here to reform the Labor party. We are here to replace the Labor party.”

“The Greens need to seize this moment because politics demands it of us,” he said.

“This is an extraordinary moment in politics, and we can all feel it. We can feel that politics as usual is not providing the answers that people are desperately calling for now.”

Progressives in Australia have been buoyed up by the successes of socialist outsider candidates in the US and UK, but there have been quiet frustrations inside the Greens that they haven’t managed to emulate the likes of Zohran Mamdani, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Zack Polanski in the United Kingdom.

Shoebridge says the Greens must both fill a “vacuum” left by Labor and “recognise” the factors driving disaffected voters to Hanson.

“Our task in this moment is to connect with those millions of Australians who have quite legitimate and real anger with politics, and make them believe in politics again, and not believe in the politics of hate and division,” he said.

Another task, of course, is internal. The Greens usually decide leaders by consensus, but Shoebridge won a rare contested party-room vote. He saw off challenges from Mehreen Faruqi and Sarah Hanson-Young, initially winning six of 11 votes. Shoebridge was last to publicly declare his hand, and the optics of a white man besting two women more experienced in federal politics will surely be dissected by some in the party.

Faruqi, shortly after the result was decided, said she was “disappointed the party chose another direction” and claimed “many others will feel the same way”. She said ordinary party members felt “frustration” the leadership was decided by politicians, not grassroots membership; Shoebridge earlier had said he supported grassroots involvement in choosing leaders, and will be held to this.

He also will preside over a critical period of renewal for the Greens, with the veteran senator Peter Whish-Wilson already having left parliament, and South Australian senator Barbara Pocock not contesting the next election.

There is a push on from some in the party’s more activist ranks for those spots to be given to younger, digitally savvy, vigorous campaigners in the mould of the US “democratic socialist” movement.

One key point to look out for is Shoebridge’s strategy for negotiating with Labor on legislation. Bandt campaigned at the 2022 election on pushing Labor to go further, but government sources pinned his unexpected defeat in 2025 on the Greens playing hardball on housing legislation. Larissa Waters took a more constructive approach, seeming more open to negotiations. Judging from past performance, and his pledge to “replace” not “reform” Labor, Shoebridge may take the tougher line.

Waters is well-liked, both among colleagues and more broadly across federal politics, seen as more conciliatory and pragmatic than some in her party room. There was genuine remorse and upset in the Greens as she stood down from the leadership to focus on managing a chronic kidney issue, and she must be given ample credit for holding the party together after the unexpected losses of leader Adam Bandt and rising stars Max Chandler-Mather and Stephen Bates at the 2025 election.

On a personal level, it must be acknowledged Shoebridge is not the most popular guy across the parliament or among Labor types, but much of that stems from his relentless style of questioning, needling and interrogation of political opponents and government officials.

Politico reported last week that the government offered the Greens a spot on a new AI committee, but