Greens senator Dorinda Cox has defected to the Labor party, in a move which shocked colleagues and boosts Anthony Albanese’s numbers in federal parliament.
The Western Australian senator appeared alongside the prime minister in Perth on Monday, saying her views were more closely aligned with Labor than the Greens.
Cox is a Yamatji-Noongar woman and former police officer who entered parliament in 2021 in a casual vacancy and was reelected in 2022. Her move means the Greens will have 10 senators, and brings Labor’s total numbers in the upper house to 29.
Cox ran unsuccessfully for the Greens deputy leadershipin the wake of the 3 May federal election and just days ago criticised Labor environment minister, Murray Watt, for his approval of Woodside’s expansion of the North West Shelf gas project out to 2070.
The Greens quickly took down a profile of her on the party’s official website on Monday night, with the leader, Larissa Waters, expressing disappointment at the move.
Cox said on Monday she was “very, very grateful for this opportunity and I want to thank the Labor team for welcoming me”.
“During some deep reflection, what my values represent as a First Nations woman, as a proud West Australian, what it is that I would like to achieve in my political life and what you can’t do from the crossbench is make change,” she said.
“Alongside the wonderful team that the prime minister has, you are able to make change, you are able to do the things that raise up and represent the voice of Western Australia and Canberra, and that’s what they elected me to do.”
Albanese said Cox approached the government about joining Labor, but “didn’t ask for anything” in return for the defection. Labor’s national executive approved the decision before it became public.
The announcement comes a day before the federal cabinet meets in Perth on Tuesday.
“She wants to be part of a team that is delivering progress for this country by being part of a government that can make decisions to make a difference,” Albanese said.
Albanese was asked about reports in Nine newspapers last year that at least 20 staff had left Cox’s office since she entered the Senate as the replacement for outgoing Greens senator Rachel Siewert.
At the time,Cox said she took responsibility for “any shortcomings”in her office and apologised for any distress that may have caused.
He said Labor had “examined everything that had been considered in the past” and it was felt that the “issues were dealt with appropriately”.
Cox confirmed she gave Waters just 90 minutes notice before announcing her move. Her Senate term runs until the 2028 election.
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Greens sources speaking on condition of anonymity said they were not surprised at Cox quitting the party but shocked at her defection to Labor specifically. One source said they believed Cox may have struggled to win pre-selection for next election, after losing some internal support inside the party, and that she had been disappointed at not winning a leadership position in the Greens’ recent party room processes.Cox had released several press statements scathing of Labor’s record on fossil fuel and First Nations issues in recent months, including a statement on 12 May claiming the government was “being held for ransom” by coal and gas companies, and is “not committed to transitioning towards renewables”.She also claimed in April that “the Albanese Labor government dropped our people like a hot potato after the voice referendum, and abandoned the other two elements of the Uluru Statement from the Heart.”“The major party leaders in Dutton and Albanese offer First Nations communities nothing except empty rhetoric,” Cox said.
“When the two most powerful men in Australia can stand on national TV and lament they are ‘heartbroken’ and ‘that our parties have failed First Nations people’, imagine how First Nations people feel who have no power to make the change required.”Cox last week put her name to a Greens joint statement – alongside Waters, Sarah Hanson-Young and Peter Whish-Wilson – claiming that “the new environment minister has spectacularly failed his first test in the job, after approving the climate-wrecking North West Shelf dirty gas extension to 2070.”
Waters said Cox’s defection was wrong, citing the North West Shelf decision and the damage to Indigenous heritage sites. She said the Greens would continue to work to advance Indigenous rights.
“Senator Cox would have had more chance of effecting change by continuing to work with the Greens in the sole balance of power,” Waters said.