What do you think the Greens have gotten wrong in the past?

Well, I mean, our politics is done in the moment.

And so I think you can always go back retrospectively and say, well, with the benefit of hindsight, maybe we should have done X or maybe we should have done Y, but your politics is crafted with what's in front of you.

And I think Larissa did a great job leading us after the 2025 election.

But what I think I've been hearing from our members is they want to know what our political goals are.

And I think telling honestly and frankly to our supporters and to the broader electorate that it's a dead-end project trying to sort of appeal to Labor's missing conscience to try and fix what's going wrong in politics, that they have actually no interest in tackling corporate power, tackling some of the obscene expenditure on projects like AUKUS.

They seem to have no commitment at all to dealing with the environmental and climate crisis we see.

Have you had much to do with her? Have you got much to say about her? And does it give you a bit of a special relationship with Angus Taylor? Yeah.

I think it's actually a very good idea and I'd go further and raise it to $40,000 or $50,000 because I've never understood why people on such a low income have to pay any tax to the government in the first place.

Well, absolutely.

You know, we were having a look at...

the fact that we've got this cost of living crisis happening.

Everyone can feel it.

And then we decided to go and have a look at, well, how do tax brackets work? You know, how does the tax system work in this place? And to be frank, we...

we just tried a sort of first principles approach.

What would you do if you were in charge?

I think it's actually a very good idea, and I'd go further and raise it to $40,000 or $50,000, because I've never understood why people on such a low income have to pay any tax to the government in the first place.

Well, absolutely.

We were having a look at...

the fact that we've got this cost of living crisis happening.

Everyone can feel it.

And then we decided to go and have a look at, well, how do tax brackets work? You know, how does the tax system work in this place? And to be frank, we...

we just tried a sort of first principles approach.

What would you do if you were in charge?

Do you think it's just objective circumstances that One Nation has got votes from Liberals from the right? Or is it a question of messaging? Is it a question of grassroots organising? Like, what do you think?

I think there's an element of each of that.

Like, clearly you can see there is a right the proponents in the right, where they're getting their support base, cannibalising the coalition, you know, and those parties have been in this endless drift to the right, getting more extreme on migration, more extreme on punching down on people, more extreme in, you know, being anti-climate action.

You know, there's an element of that kind of... hard right nasty politics, that they're having that civil war amongst.

And that's not a place we are going to have a political engagement with other than to reject it.

So there's that.

But I think we should also be really being frank about what we have and haven't done well.

And I'm wondering, is that media muckraking? And can you just clarify exactly what the Greens policy is on Ukraine?

Just before we talk about matters within your party, how do you reflect on the safety concerns that have been raised in the most tragic of fashions with the incident involving independent MP Helen Haynes, who has now lost both of her legs? How do you reflect on what's happened?

Well, first of all, I mean, just deep grief for Helen and her husband, her family and her community.

Helen is an extraordinary human being.

We've worked very closely together, particularly on the National Anti-Corruption Commission.

Helen's work in that space to ensure we get some sunshine over what's happening, to look at some of the chronic failures there.

We've worked together in the committee.

We've you know, I suppose, schemed behind the scenes in order to try and get as much possible daylight we can.

Is enough being done? Are there enough resources to make members of parliament feel safe, in your view?

Are you calling for the forced sale of 200 Coles and Woolworths supermarkets to be then converted into public grocers to try and slash grocery bills? Tell me about this idea.

Yeah.

Well, so this has come from the Green Institute, our party's think tank, and, you know, Max Chainla- Chain-La-Mai, uh, um, who's, who's headed that up.

I think it's a, a really incredibly important contribution at the moment.

So what the proposal is that Coles and Woolies, who have been, last time I checked, I think they made $2 billion in profits last year, $2 billion in profits.

They are this duopoly that completely controls food supply in this country, completely controls food supply, and, and everyone knows that they're out there price gouging.

They're using their duopoly powers to maximize their profits, and meanwhile, everyone's having, you know, real anxiety about whether or not they can afford to pay for their, their, their trolley of groceries when they get to the checkout.

[laughs]

Initially, identifying new harms was going to rest with the minister, but the government is now expected to scrap that and allow Parliament to make those decisions.

We've been making it clear from the moment we saw the exposure draft that, you know, bucket loads of ministerial discretion were not gonna get our support.

So what about the Greens?

One of our concerns is that as Labor so often does, they've been marching off to the right, putting extra loopholes and carve-outs to help One Nation and the Coalition, um, and we wanna make sure that the legislation is true to its original intent.

But do you kind of go, "Well, if it was gonna happen, this is the best time, and it gives us a lot of time to lead into twenty twenty-eight"?

Well, I think it does do that.

I mean, we've got 18 months to two years to really make this thing sing and to say to people, like if...

We, we can all feel how everyone's doing it hard.

Like you, it doesn't matter where you go in the country.

You talk to people, and they're making pretty hard decisions in their life about, you know, are they gonna keep the comprehensive insurance on their car or are they gonna fix the fridge? Um, anxious about pushing the, the trolley down the supermarket aisle about, um, what, what's it gonna show when you go to the checkout? And, uh, people know that things have got harder.

Four years of Labor, and things have just got harder for people.

Why do you think your colleagues chose for you to run the party?

Yeah, how are things in the party room in terms of some of those splits at the moment, would you say?

Well, I mean, you say splits.

What I would actually say is, you know, the reason why there was a complex debate in the party room on the forest stuff is because, well, this will surprise you.

We as a party are deeply connected with the forest protectors and the environment movement, deeply connected all across the country on that.

And within that movement that is like in our DNA, who we've marched into forests with, we're stood in front of bulldozers with, we've campaigned with.

It was a real complex set of views on that.

And it would have been kind of extraordinary if the complexity of the views inside the movement, the environment movement and the forest protection movement, if they didn't have some reflection inside our party room, it actually, I think, was a perfect description of just how connected we are to the movement.

Are you saying something about that approach or a different approach that you want to take as the leader or are you signaling some kind of change on that front?

So what changes under you?

Um, well, yeah, thanks, Daniel.

It's been, um, wasn't the week that I'd intended.

You know, none of us wanted to be here.

L-Larissa had the rock-solid support of the party room.

Um, she'd done, uh, a, an incredible job holding the team together and, um, developing the platforms, working out the core, um, the core campaigning points, um, and also developing a kind of collective leadership model, um, where she literally gave the team the space to get out and, you know, work in their portfolios, build the case for change.

And I, I especially, uh, you know, I really felt the beneficiary of that, um, the sort of support and encouragement that Larissa gave.

How are you going to talk to those disenfranchised Australians in the suburbs, especially as a lawyer from the eastern suburbs of Sydney where, um, you know, you present differently to One Nation, as you should, but how are you gonna cut through and speak to people in the suburbs on their level about the issues that impact them?

I think under five.

Yeah, three, three, three prosecutions.

And then when I asked in Senate Estimates, I asked the acting commissioner, there was the acting CEO, I said, well, what were they? Tell me what they were.

Couldn't remember what they were.

Couldn't remember what they'd done over three years.

You know, if you wanted a summary of how utterly useless that thing is.

That's it.

Can I just ask, where does this anger and hatred come from? Is this trendy for you all to be wearing keffiyehs and making noise about the Middle East over and over again when you're an elected

Are you starting week one with a target on your back?

No, what we had was a contested ballot for the leadership.

We had three people out of, I think, an extraordinary pool of talent in the federal party room who all wanted to take on this extraordinary job that I've now been given.

Having a bunch of people wanting to do this job, excited by the job, absolutely united on policy is a sign of strength.

So, you know, I like the contest of ideas.

I reckon having a contest of ideas is what makes politics and democracy better.

And I was really glad that together with Steph Hodgins-May, Senator from Victoria, our leadership team has got support and we're looking forward to getting on with the job.

Can I just ask, where does this anger and hatred come from? Is this trendy for you all to be wearing keffiyehs and making noise about the Middle East over and over

What's happened since then? It feels like we're not in that place.

Well, I tell you what, I feel like we are super in that place from the conversations I've been having in the last 24 hours from the sense of momentum that's happening now.

But if you're referencing the 2025 election, which was really tough for us, you know, no sugarcoating it, really tough election for us.

That was, we'd had Labor in for three years, you know, nothing much had changed, you know, people weren't able to articulate really what they were there for.

But then we had Peter Dutton and Donald Trump.

You probably, you know, people have a dim memory of Peter Dutton and that's probably a good thing, but we have a very current picture of Donald Trump.

And Labor came out and said, oh, they are the antidote, you know, to this sort of Trumpian far-right politics.

But how do you propose that the Greens do become the government of the day, not in the capacity of a coalition?

Do you think that the project is too advanced to be stopped? Is it inevitable that there will be American-made nuclear submarines in Australia in a few years' time?

yeah i mean that is one of the least inevitable projects you could possibly imagine tom like uh you know you you know i could i could we could spend the next hour talking about all of the fundamental failures in that project you know the fact that the us production facilities they're meant to be churning out 2.3 nuclear subs a year in order to to find any spares for australia they're barely hit one maybe 1.1 or 1.2 and every year they fail to meet the gap gets bigger and bigger and bigger The likelihood of the US having any so-called spare nuclear submarines to give to us in the early 2030s is vanishingly small.

And then the UK nuclear project, which is the one that we're partnering with to build these new AUKUS submarines from 2040 onwards, That is in a complete meltdown.

You know, that's not even a nuclear pun.

Like, it's in a complete meltdown.

No element of that project seems to have any likelihood of producing nuclear submarines.

You know, we have the government refusing to tell us even where the design path is at.

How will you sit down across from Labor in negotiations? Now, I know they're not everything in the new job and you're not seeking to be an adjunct to the Labor political project, but it is one part of the job given you've got the balance of power in the Senate.

Do you think that the project is too advanced to be stopped? Is it inevitable that there will be American-made nuclear submarines in Australia in a few years' time?

Yeah, I mean, that is one of the least inevitable projects you could possibly [laughs] imagine, Tom.

Like, uh, you know, you, you...

I, I could, I could, we could spend the next hour talking about all of the fundamental failures in that project.

You know, the fact that the US production facilities, they're meant to be churning out 2.3 nuclear subs a, um, a year in order to, to, to find any spares for Australia, they're barely hitting one, maybe 1.1 or 1.2. And every year they fail to meet, the gap gets bigger and bigger and bigger.

The likelihood of the US having any so-called spare nuclear submarines to give to us in the early 2030s is vanishingly small.

Um, and then the UK nuclear project, which is the one that we're partnering with to build these new AUKUS submarines from 2040 onwards, that is in a complete meltdown.

How will you sit down across from Labor in negotiations? Uh, now I know they're not everything in the new job, and you're not seeking to be an adjunct to the Labor political project, but it is one part of the job, given you've got the balance of power in the Senate.

I'm not going

to disclose.

You know, by the time we distributed preferences, it was 7-4.

And I think what we saw with the contest in the party room was three candidates from a party room, which I will say is absolutely bursting with talent, or wanting to lead the party and take the party on at this really critical moment.

You know, that is what you would want.

You would want, you know, eager contest to take the reins of a political party at a moment like this and take on this challenge.

And, you know, if there hadn't been a contest, well, I think that would be a story.

bursting with talent in the past? I just don't see why you're calling it a virtue this time, but in the past consensus was a

How do you think you can harness the frustration that people have with the major parties at the moment, noting that the Greens' polling support nationally has been pretty steady at around 12% for quite a long time and there really hasn't been an ability to break through that amount? What are you going to bring? that can make a step change difference for the Greens?

Well, we are in a terrific position.

This platform that has been given to the current team by the work of Adam Bandt and the work of Larissa Waters, and I really want to give credit to the work that Larissa has done.

You know, we've seen other political parties who have had their you know, the Labor Party, the Coalition, the Nats, we've seen their support just getting decimated and ripped apart.

And Larissa has held and groaned, not to the extent that I would, you know, I think we would want to see, but held and groaned the vote in pretty remarkable circumstances.

And it is a terrific platform.

to go on and make this moment what it can be for people who want politics to actually not just deliver some message and some pathetic half-baked pretend reform.

the rise of One Nation as a challenge to the Greens or is their rise an opportunity for you?

But for a minister, the cooling off period is supposed to be 18 months.

But it's 18 months from when you cease being that minister.

So you might have been, you know, minister for social services and then you move on to being defence minister and then you leave office and you can straight away do the lobbying for your social services work with all your connections.

You have to wait 18 months until you do your defence one and then you roll into that.

But, look, I mean, you know, earlier, I think earlier this year, Christopher Pyne hosted a schmoozy event over in the US all about AUKUS.

had all his clients there, you know, saying, hi, I'm Christopher Pine, I've got all these connections.

And I think some of the shameful elements about that was, you know, okay, he can do that.

Is it already out of control? What do you make about this AI hack fiasco?

And this was his response.

Well, we agree that the immigration system is in a mess under Labor and it was in a mess under the coalition.

And we agree that the number of bridging visas, the more than 400,000 bridging visas in the system, needs to be radically reduced.

And what we disagree with is this package that has come from Labor.

One of the key issues we have with what was announced yesterday was Labor said they wanted to look back to before 2015 and, you know, they wanted to lean into the sort of Tony Abbott era.

And the lesson they took from before 2015 is to build more detention centres, to contract with a US multinational prison operator that is actually the corporation of choice for Donald Trump for his ICE detention centres.

and to expand the number of private prisons here and put people in those private prisons.

Uh, do the Greens agree that net overseas migration numbers need to fall or are you happy where they are?

Well, what we agree that the immigration system is in a mess under Labor, and it was in a mess under the Coalition, and we agree that the number of bridging visas, the more than four hundred thousand bridging visas in the system, needs to be radically reduced.

And what we, what we disagree with is this package that has come from Labor.

I mean, one of the key, one of the key issues we have with what was announced yesterday was Labor said they wanted to look back to before twenty fifteen and, you know, they wanted to lean into the sort of Tony Abbott era.

And the lesson they took from before twenty fifteen is to build more detention centers, to contract with a US multinational pri- prison operator that is, is actually the, the, the corporation of choice for Donald Trump for his ICE detention centers, and to expand the number of private prisons here and put people in those private prisons.

Now, that is not how you deal with overstayers, 'cause the evidence from before twenty fifteen, um, says that there's a far more effective way of reducing overstayers, and it's not putting people in prison.

They're with their kids and their family.

Do you agree with that?

And given what we just saw from the UK, France and Canada, do you think Australia is going to, they're going to be dragged along here and we'll actually see some movement or where do you think things are sitting there?

Well, I mean, if you'd listen to the rhetoric from Labour for the last, what, three years, they've always said, oh, we're not going to move on Israel and Palestine without, you know, the comfort of like-minded countries and we're going to work in concert with like-minded countries and, you know, like-minded countries, like-minded countries, like-minded countries.

And now when those same...

And that's always been code for Canada, the UK and bits of Europe, right? And now all those like-minded countries and actually a whole bunch of other countries have signed on to that commitment to say...

they will put a ban on products coming from those illegal Israeli settlements in West Bank.

The UK has done it.

France has done it.

What is going on there? In spite of the best efforts of you or Pocock or any of the others, is this just a done deal and we've just got to live with it now?

What's being done to make sure that technology like this is stopping at crime prevention or isn't being rolled out and expanded further?

Well, Chris, I have to tell you, there's nothing stopping it becoming just sort of a creeping into the rest of our lives.

And even when we have, you know, state and federal governments or corporations like Bunnings saying, oh, we're going to use it only for eggs.

I mean, that's just plainly bollocks.

Because when Bunnings are running facial recognition to stop potential thieves, right, they're not just scanning the face of a potential, you know, someone who's going to nick their stuff.

they're scanning absolutely everybody's face because that's how it works.

Like everybody's face gets scanned.

Why is there such low resistance? I know that you mentioned your party is pushing back on it, but why aren't you seeming to find support elsewhere?

Uh, w- what's your observation? What's happening here?

Well, yesterday, families, uh, supporters of those people seeking asylum were in absolute tumult, desperately concerned about what was happening, getting within less than 24 hours two totally different messages out of the government.

Now, Minister Burke wouldn't have presented those savage cuts unless he'd been through a process, and then it's, um, turned on its head by the prime minister in less than 24 hours.

This is the problem when a political party is, is not acting on any core principle.

There's no principle behind what Labor's doing here about helping people, uh, fleeing conflict, about meeting our international commitments.

It's the, the 24-hour news cycle, watching how people are reacting, a handful of MPs are reacting, the community response.

That's what produces this flip within 24 hours, an utter lack of principle.

Is this good consensus?

It's a real problem in keeping any kind of corruption out of politics.

Well, I just literally earlier this morning, I finished signing off the form that I have to give to the ACT Corrections Department to allow me to bring my phone in when I go and meet with David McBride, who's in jail at the moment, in a jail in Canberra, you know, like 5Ks, 7Ks from Parliament House.

And David McBride is in jail because he bravely told the truth about war crimes, right? And he's been saying repeatedly that, that the senior brass inside Defence have got off scot-free with war crimes, and that's not right.

They should be held to account.

And, you know, and I go as often as I can and visit David in prison because I'm incredibly grateful for the work he's done to blow the whistle on Defence, to put his career, it turns out his liberty, at stake in order to tell the truth.

Now, what he said has been pretty much verified by independent reports.

There still isn't any accountability to senior defence.

Rated PG-13.

Again, what are you hoping the IPWP will or can do, you know, to really push the West Papua's cause further?

Well, I think one of the most important things we can do is actually talk about West Papua.

West Papua is, uh, uh, barely 250 kilometers from Australia.

You know, it, it's ...

I, I travel a bigger distance from my home in Sydney to when I drive to come, um, to Parliament in Canberra, um, than is the distance between Australia and West Papua.

One of our closest neighbors, uh, and it is never mentioned or almost never mentioned, uh, in the Australian Parliament, um, even though there, there are such significant human rights, um, issues occurring in West Papua.

And I think one of the most important things we did, um, in, in, in hosting the delegation, speaking with Benny Wenda, speaking with the West Papuans from, from across Australia, was, was speak truth about this in the Australian Federal Parliament because, uh, in largely d- due to the, the impact that people perceive it having on our relationship with Indonesia, um, there is a, a, a collective silence on the human rights issues happening in West Papua.

I mean, are you worried that these incidences may deter public support for that independence movement?