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

David Shoebridge is a brutal interrogator who knows his way around parliamentary process.

Many Australians would best know his face from viral clips of his back-and-forth with ministers and senior bureaucrats during upper house hearings. The former barrister holds a reputation, among both colleagues and rivals, as one of the most effective crossbenchers in Australian politics.

But he now has a much broader mission. It’s one that will take him out of the Senate chamber and adversarial day-to-day politics, and into the reaches of ordinary households and communities across the country.

The hard-left senator from NSW wants to replace the federal Labor Party with a mass movement of everyday Australians.

While the ambition is lofty, it is not new, having often been articulated by Greens founder Bob Brown. The question is whether Shoebridge, 55, can deliver – or even get close – given the Greens have stalled at a 12 per cent vote share between the last two elections.

Commentators both inside and outside the party have been asking why the Greens have not had the same success capitalising on voter discontent as Zohran Mamdani and Zack Polanski have managed overseas.

Shoebridge echoed their populist catch cries as he took the helm of the left-wing minor party in a rare contested vote on Wednesday, surging through the middle on a ticket with deputy Stephanie Hodgins-May, 41, to beat senators Sarah Hanson-Young and Mehreen Faruqi for the top job.

Greens MPs have historically been cast as two archetypes – the tree huggers and the watermelons.

Shoebridge is firmly in the watermelon camp: green on the outside and red (communist) on the inside. With his first speech as leader on Wednesday, economics were central to his vision.

“This is an extraordinary moment in politics, and we can all feel it,” he said. “After four years of a Labor government, things have got … better for the 1 per cent but much, much harder for ordinary Australians.”

Shoebridge said he and Hodgins-May would present a “fresh, new, strong base” that connected the dots between people’s material lives, stresses and struggles, and how they were being failed by politics, the major parties and One Nation.

How are they going to do it?

“Barely 12 months ago, One Nation were on 7 per cent. We’ve got a platform that’s double that. We are so close to this,” Shoebridge said. “What we need to do is bridge that gap … with a sense of political momentum and positivity.”

Shoebridge is a Greens hardliner, but the party platform is already full to the brim with redistributive policies. Waters launched a “Tax the 1 per cent” campaign earlier this year, and the party’s agenda has remained relatively stable over the federal party’s 34-year history.

And when it comes to image, there’s not much difference between Shoebridge and his bespectacled predecessors Adam Bandt and Richard Di Natale.

It means any change under his leadership is more likely to be in style than substance, insiders believe.

Central to that is how Shoebridge handles negotiations with the government. Many in the Greens underplay disputes about the party’s strategy, but in general, the thrust of debate generally pits pragmatism against populism.

Waters came to the leadership promising a consultative and constructive approach, after a period under Bandt where the Greens were often accused of obstruction. Since then, the party has helped Labor pass key legislation, including its budget tax package.

Shoebridge is making no such overtures.

Asked what his own approach would be, he said: “I’ll say this to the Labor Party: if you put serious material change on the table of the parliament, we’ll vote for that, right? But after four years of watching them not do that … We’re not here to make Labor better.”

The prospect has some Coalition MPs licking their lips, and some Labor MPs bracing for a tougher time. They expect Shoebridge will slow the passage of legislation and avoid handing wins to the government. They think he has the smarts to do so.

Shoebridge, who grew up on Sydney’s north shore, was a graduate of James Ruse Agricultural High School and the University of Sydney. He worked as an employment lawyer and barrister, and represented the Greens on Woollahra Council in 2004 before entering NSW politics in 2010.

“NSW politics is brutal,” Shoebridge said on Wednesday, citing his campaigns against corruption, bringing down premiers and fighting for ICAC resources. “If you want to earn your stripes in Australian politics, I reckon the bear pit of the NSW parliament isn’t a bad spot.”

In NSW, he chaired the powerful Public Accountability Committee and had a focus on transparency and civil liberties. Since entering federal parliament in 2022, he has zeroed in on defence, AUKUS, refugees and Australia’s relationship with the United States.

Shoebridge’s 16-year political career has cemented his reputation as a policy wonk, legal brain and effective operator. He runs his own media strategy, is often on the phone, and masters detail.

State colleagues from both the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers and then-Labor opposition described him as a champion of accountability and a skilled parliamentarian whose departure left a hole in the NSW upper house.

More recently, federal Liberal senator James Paterson told The Guardian that Shoebridge was “easily the most effective Green and one of the most impactful crossbenchers in the Senate”.

But he can be divisive, and others see him as self-serving and disingenuous. Many Jewish Australians have been dismayed by the manner of his advocacy for Palestine; Shoebridge dealt awkwardly with a question about that on Wednesday, insisting the Greens had strong connections in the Jewish community.

In Canberra, Foreign Minister Penny Wong has been a leading critic, describing Shoebridge’s pursuit of the government’s role in the supply chain of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel as “unconscionable behaviour”.

In Senate hearings, she has accused Shoebridge of lying and using misinformation to make political points that foment division. The combative senator has returned serve, with a flourish finessed throughout 16 years of practice.

He will have less time – just 18 months – to fine-tune a leadership style that brings hundreds of thousands more Australians on board with the mass movement the Greens are promising.

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