Larissa Waters has urged Labor to be bold on environmental protections, saying the Liberal party being left in the “electoral wilderness” means now is the time for the Albanese government to go against its “timidity”.
Thenew federal Greens leader– who was elected unopposed on Thursday – has also acknowledged her party was a casualty of the Trump effect, sending voters “into the arms of Labor”.
The Queensland senator emerged from Melbourne’s commonwealth parliamentary office on Thursday afternoon, hugging the Greens’ new leadership team after a 90-minute meeting to decide its new captain.
Grinning in front of reporters as she addressed them for the first time as leader, Waters said the minor party wanted to see “politics with heart”.
“Sorry, I’m a grinner,” Waters told Guardian Australia, shortly after the news became public.
The Greens’ fifth leader was elected after the shock loss of former leader, Adam Bandt, in the Greens’ stronghold of Melbourne. With NSW senator Mehreen Faruqi as her deputy, the all-female leadership team will wield the party’s balance of power in the Senate.
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Waters said she hoped Labor would use its momentous win in the May election to reject the “timidity” Australians saw during its first term.
“It’s pretty clear that the Liberal party is now essentially in the electoral wilderness,” she said.
“This is an opportunity now for [Labor] to actually do what’s necessary, and to be a bit brave and a bit bold. It looks like the Liberals aren’t going to come back into government any time soon, and I’m perfectly fine with that – but people don’t want that sort of timidity, and they don’t want the just, ‘Oh, here’s the tiniest shred of help’. They actually need some real reform.”
One of the areas Waters is keen to push Labor on will be environmental protection reforms. As a lawyer for almost a decade in Queensland’s environmental defenders office, Waters said the laws were only working for developers, miners and native forest loggers – not the environment.
A proposed environmental protection agency under the Albanese government was dumped before the federal electionamid a major backlash from Western Australia.
The proposed body would have been able to make approval and regulatory decisions and impose beefed-up penalties while another body, Environment Information Australia, would have provided data, information and analysis.
Albanese haspromised to deliver a different modelin his second term as prime minister but the details on how it will work have not yet been released.
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Waters said the Greens still want to see native forest logging banned and a commitment to not open any new coalmines or gas fields.
“We’re urging the government to be bold and to do what needs to be done, because the biosphere sustains us all. You can’t negotiate with nature,” she said.
“I think if you have an Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, it is not too much to ask that it protects the environment and the biodiversity.
“I am afraid that the political machinations between premiers and the prime minister and the influence of the big miners and the logging industry have held sway for far too long, and we would like to see nature actually protected.”
Waters said she would fight to push the government to fully fund frontline and legal services for women and children fleeing violence.
“There is no excuse for underfunded women’s refuges or for underfunded legal services when the government is wasting billions of dollars on nuclear friggin’ submarines,” she said.
With the progressive minor party holding key votes to pass laws in the Senate, Waters said the party would remain “firm but constructive” with Labor to get outcomes.
Reflecting on the party’s own losses, which saw Max Chandler-Mather and Stephen Bates lose their Brisbane seats as well as Bandt losing Melbourne, Waters said the Greens would “keep our ears and our hearts open to what the review tells us” once the election postmortem is delivered.
“It’s just very clear to us that the Trump effect really sent people into the arms of Labor. And we were the casualties of that,” she said.
“When the tide is heading that way, even a stronger swimmer can’t resist it. So, look, we really mourn the loss of Adam and Max and Stephen from our party room,” she said.
In a press conference earlier on Thursday, Waters said she intended to encourage Bandt back into parliament. But for now, she said her goal was to fix the problems people – and the planet – are facing.
“It’s not about me or one individual or any one party. I think we’re here to serve and I invite us all to do our best in that regard.”