Source : Perth Now news
Greens Leader Larissa Waters has announced she is stepping down as party leader due to ill health.
In a statement, Senator Waters said she was managing a pre-existing kidney disease that had declined “significantly” over recent months.
“While her prognosis for recovery is positive, she has made the difficult decision that the demands of leadership, including the additional travel, are not compatible with giving her health the priority it needs,” the statement continues.
“Senator Waters will take a period of medical leave, and return to parliament in the role of Senator for Queensland as soon as she can.”
A party room meeting to determine the next Greens leader will be held later this week.
Senator Waters – who is the party’s national spokesperson on Climate Change, Energy, Emergency Management, Women, and First Nations – said it had been a “tremendous honour” to lead over the past 19 months.
“I’m really sad that illness means my time as leader has been cut short, but our movement needs a leader in good health to lead us to success at the next election,” she said.
“Passing the torch on to the next leader of the Party will put them in the best position to take the Greens to the next election, fighting for people, not the corporate interests that run Labor, Liberals and One Nation.”
Expanding on her announcement via X (formerly Twitter), Senator Waters said “our movement knows what needs to happen”.
“No new coal and gas, a phase-out of gas exports, private profit out of care, and our essential services back in public hands. Privatisation has failed. Politicians should work for people, not mega-corporations,” she wrote.
“We can have a safe climate and everything we need to live a good life. That’s what every door knocked and every booth staffed is for.
“When our party room elects a new leader, I’ll be cheering them on every step of the way.”
Senator Waters said the fight needs “more time and energy” than she was able to give in her current capacity, while focusing on her recovery.
“I’d like to thank my colleagues for their understanding, and the medical professionals who have supported me through this process,” she said.
“I will keep working for the people of Queensland, for women’s safety and for climate action when I am able to return to parliament.”
Senator Waters took the leadership role in May 2025 after Adam Bandt’s defeat at the federal election that same year.
She was first elected as the party’s Senator for Queensland in 2010.
In 2017, Senator Waters resigned from the Senate amid Australia’s parliamentary dual citizen crisis – revealing she held dual citizenship with Canada.
She was re-appointed a year later to fill a casual vacancy left by then-Senator Andrew Bartlett’s resignation.
In a statement, Senator Waters reflected on how she used the Greens’ balance of power in the Senate to deliver “significant outcomes” for the Australian public.
This included an overhaul of Australia’s environmental laws to “bring native forest logging under national environmental standards within 18 months, tighten controls on land clearing, and stop coal and gas projects being fast-tracked to approval or declared ‘national interest’ projects.”
She also credited the Greens for supporting gun reforms in the wake of the Bondi Beach terror attack and “(pressing) the government to split them out of its rushed omnibus bill so they could pass without delay”.
More to come
