Waters steps down as Greens leader on health grounds

Larissa Waters has announced she will step down as leader of the Australian Greens due to ill health.

The announcement was made on 28 September 2026. A party room meeting is scheduled for next week to elect her successor. The Guardian

Waters said she has been managing a pre-existing kidney disease that declined significantly over recent months. She described her prognosis for recovery as positive. She said the pressures of the leadership, including extra travel demands, were not compatible with holding the top job while she recovers.

She will take a period of medical leave. She intends to return to parliament to represent Queensland in the Senate.

The vacancy will go to a party room ballot. Deputy Leader Mehreen Faruqi and Senator Sarah Hanson-Young are likely to contest it.

Waters took over the leadership from Adam Bandt after the 2025 election. Bandt lost his lower house seat at that election.

Her current tenure followed an earlier interruption. She previously resigned from the Senate after discovering she had not renounced her Canadian citizenship. Reuters Parliamentary records also list her as a substitute member for Health on 31 October 2014 and as serving on Women's Health from 20 August 2026 to 26 August 2026. APH

The broader context here is straightforward for anyone who has watched minor-party leaderships turn over in Canberra. A Senate-based leader carries a different set of constraints to a House-based one. Travel is relentless. Visibility has to be manufactured. Internal authority has to be continually renegotiated in the party room. That is not a complaint. It is the job description.

Looking at what this means for the Greens, the timing does the party no favours, but the process is familiar. A contested ballot next week settles the immediate question of who speaks for the party. It does not settle the longer question of how the next leader balances parliamentary tactics with organisational demands. That takes longer. It is tested in divisions, negotiations and preselections, not in a single vote.

In my view, the medical leave detail matters. Waters is not leaving parliament. She intends to return to the Senate for Queensland. That keeps the leadership change as a leadership change, not a casual vacancy or a wider reshuffle. For a crossbench operation, that distinction counts.

In practical terms, the test for the party room is discipline. The public line will be orderly. Keeping it that way through a ballot takes work. Staff, senators and state branches all have a stake in the outcome. The leader who can hold those parts together tends to last. Spin will fill the gap if they do not.

Looking ahead, whoever wins inherits the same structural load Waters described. The job requires constant movement between Canberra and the states. Recovery does not allow it. Voters rarely see that part. Staffers live it.

The broader lesson for Canberra is unglamorous but real. Health pressures do not pause for sitting calendars. Parties cope best when succession rules are clear and used quickly. A meeting next week points to that understanding. The rest is execution.