September 11, 2026 — 3:55pmGreens leader Larissa Waters says her leadership is secure and the party is ready for a broader fight on climate policy, despite the spectacle of three Greens senators crossing the floor to vote with the Nationals on a key vote on Thursday night.Long-serving South Australian Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young also said that Waters’ position as leader was safe.Waters told this masthead that no one in her party room or outside the party had raised concerns with her about her leadership, after the Greens took a position contrary to the urging of former leaders Bob Brown and Christine Milne.Senator Larissa Waters, leader of the Australian Greens, at Parliament House in Canberra.Alex Ellinghausen“I have a really respectful relationship with my colleagues, and that feeling’s mutual,” Waters said.“No one loved coming to a different position on this issue, but everyone understands that people who’ve thought about it deeply can disagree on the method of getting to the same place.“This was Labor putting us in an impossible position by backtracking on a commitment to establish a national park and then demanding carbon credits for it. So we took a difficult decision, and it wasn’t an easy one to take.”The Greens under Waters’ leadership voted with Labor to allow state governments to earn carbon credits from protecting forest, which the NSW government wants to use for the Great Koala National Park and can also be used by other states. The Greens were wedged because they hold concerns about the role of carbon credits in allowing pollution to continue, but want to protect forests.The Australia Institute co-chief executive Richard Denniss, who was opposed to the carbon credits, had described it as “the Greens’ first major climate test in the Senate under leader Larissa Waters”.Waters rejected that it was a leadership test. “TAI can have their views, that’s fine. I don’t think he’s correct in this one, but that’s, you know, I don’t speak for them – I speak for the Greens.”Waters said that the party engaged in “lots of discussions and lots of hugs”, ensuring disagreement was respectful and party unity survived. Waters was seen hugging Tasmanian senator Vanessa Bleyer immediately after the vote in the Senate.Bleyer, who was sworn in only days earlier as a replacement for Peter Whish-Wilson, was one of the three who crossed the floor along with fellow Tasmanian Nick McKim and Western Australia’s Jordon Steele-John.At a time when One Nation is monstering the major parties in the polls and byelections, the Greens’ vote is holding steady on 12 per cent in this masthead’s Resolve Political Monitor.Waters said it was an uneven playing field.“Billionaires are paying Pauline Hanson to spread her lies,” she said. “It is not the fault of your neighbour, who might happen to be a migrant, that people’s lives are getting tougher, and she’s been helped out by billionaires and big corporations giving her wads of dough to fly around the country and spam billboards and pay for social media ads. But then when she comes into parliament, she votes for billionaires and corporate interests.”Waters said the party would put this week’s vote behind them, and that she was excited about the fight ahead to secure improvements to the Safeguard Mechanism, Labor’s flagship climate policy that is under statutory review, while trying to knock out 40 per cent of the carbon credit market.More on this debatePragmatism v Purity: Once again, the environmental movement is cleaved in two, with giants such as Bob Brown and Tim Flannery on different sides.Carbon credits for protecting public forests: The Greens have defied intense lobbying and voted against a Nationals motion to kill off the scheme.Civil war inside environmental movement: The fate of the Great Koala National Park hangs in the balance as a new carbon accounting method divides conservationists.Caitlin Fitzsimmons is the environment and climate reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald. She was previously the social affairs reporter and the Money editor.Connect via email.From our partners