Arabic version: شوبريدج يشيد ويهاجم سياسات حزب العمال

According to ABC News, new Greens leader David Shoebridge became emotional in his first interview since succeeding Larissa Waters as he remembered his political mentor, former NSW Greens MP John Kaye, who died in 2016.

Shoebridge described Kaye as a person of “incredible principle” and “incredible courage”, as well as a close friend. He said Kaye had taken him under his wing during his first four or five years in the New South Wales Parliament and taught him to pursue politics with principle, hold firm on campaigns and sustain ideas over years. Shoebridge said he had felt Kaye’s hand behind his back at multiple points in his political career.

The new leader then sharply criticised Labor over cost-of-living pressures and housing policy. He said Australians were anxious about supermarket costs and angry that politics had not addressed their fundamental material concerns. Speaking a day after interest rates were raised to a 15-year high, Shoebridge said the housing policy backed by the Greens had not shifted the dial after three years and had not fixed the housing crisis.

Shoebridge takes over after the Greens suffered heavy defeats at the last federal election, when former leader Adam Bandt and Max Chandler-Mather were among those to lose their seats. He said he would focus on core policies aimed at connecting with the majority of Australians, including targeting an economy he said had been driven for an elite 1 per cent. He said the party’s policies and platforms should be communicated at scale with a mass membership movement.