Greens Senator-elect Larrisa Waters
Queensland’s first Greens senator Larissa Waters, while all fired up after her recent election success, now has to be patient as she faces a long wait before she can take her Senate seat in Canberra.
While she can’t take office until the new Senate term starts next July, senator-elect Larissa will be keeping busy by going back to her old job part-time as an environmental lawyer in Brisbane.
She’s jubilant at the Greens great results after a campaign that won her party 14 per cent of the vote, increased the number of Green senators to nine and introduced the first Green member to the lower house.
It’s a result that essentially, from next July, tips the balance of legislative power to Bob Brown’s Green team. As part of that team, Larissa is now making preparations. It’s not as hectic as full-on campaigning, but the passion and optimism is still there.
“It’s still sinking in,” said Larissa who has won a Senate seat at her second attempt, having narrowly missed out in 2007. For now she will be dovetailing her work with the Environmental Defenders Office with some unpaid senator-elect tasks.
“Unfortunately, being the Greens, we don’t have as much in resources as the major parties. So I don’t have a wage or any staff until next July and my ability to do parliamentary work is pretty constrained until then,” she said.
“As an environmental lawyer I can still be helping the community. However, in terms of my senator-elect work I’ll be doing a little media work and the occasional public speech and trying to help with people’s inquiries.
“The enormity of the task ahead is sinking in; the responsibility of being the only Green elected in Queensland – the first and certainly not the last. We’ll be working hard for that.”
In the weeks and months ahead Larissa will be having many meetings with her fellow senators and senators-elect to establish portfolio agreements and establish how they will work together now that the team has doubled in size.?”It’s looking really positive – having to adjust my frame of reference and preparing myself for six years of hard slog,” she said.
“A lot of it is mental preparation. But my work as an environmental lawyer is similar to the work that I’ll be doing in the actual parliament itself. It will be a natural progression.
“The preparation will include finding some good staff and having my ear to the ground for Queenslanders and what their issues are. I obviously have a good idea of that already, but there’s a need to set up those mechanisms to ensure that I am still finding out about new issues.”
But Larissa already has a busy agenda and policy list. Her campaign literature says she will push for new jobs in renewable energy, affordable housing, action on climate change, protect food growing land from coal mining and gas fields, high quality public health and education, a fair go for indigenous communities and new Australians.
As an environmental lawyer says she has been close to people who have been disadvantage because some community and property rights and environmental protection has been lacking.
“I asked myself ‘how can you change that?’ The answer was ‘you need to be in parliament making those laws,” she said.
“I think the system’s rules need to change and I hope to have the opportunity to do that once I take office in July.”
Larissa says it’s a vital time for the Greens because it’s a vital time for the planet. She hopes she and her colleagues can take advantage of the political momentum to get action taken on climate change sooner than later.
“The science now says we have less than a decade to turn around our greenhouse emissions. If the Greens can be part of that through our role in the balance of power then it would be such a great honour to be part of that,” she said.
For the moment, she said, senators-elect don’t have a formal role to play.
“But we will be involved behind the scenes. We will be performing our roles within our home states. As senator-elect for Queensland, I’ve still got a lot of responsibilities here that I will continue to discharge.”
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