The Greens need to let the sunshine in or risk stagnation

October 1, 2026 — 5:30pm

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To quote Alanis Morissette: isn’t it ironic, don’t you think?

The fictional Roy family from Succession is everything the Greens detest: an avaricious and amoral media dynasty clearly based on the Murdoch family.

Yet the Greens’ leadership battle this week resembled a scene from the beloved HBO show, whose scriptwriters found increasingly extravagant ways (like a superyacht anchored off the coast of Croatia) to isolate their protagonists from the outside world as they schemed for power.

Larissa Waters’ surprise resignation as party leader on Monday came ahead of a two-day Greens’ retreat in Sydney, where the party’s federal MPs were gathering to talk policy and strategy behind closed doors. The retreat suddenly took on a heightened significance as the place the Greens would decide their new leader. (The Succession scriptwriters may well have picked somewhere more cinematic – an eco-lodge in the Blue Mountains, perhaps, rather than the sterile Commonwealth Parliamentary Offices in the Sydney CBD.)

David Shoebridge is one of parliament’s best operators. His new task as Greens leader is far broader

By lunchtime on Wednesday, NSW Senator David Shoebridge had been anointed the new leader after defeating colleagues Sarah Hanson-Young and Mehreen Faruqi.

The rapid handover avoided a drawn-out, messy contest in which the leadership contenders would have had to make a public case for why they were the best person to lead the party to the next election. There were no vision........

© Brisbane Times