The leader of the Australian Greens, Christine Milne, has announced her resignation and party leader and as a member of the Senate, after revealing that she would not be standing for another six-year Senate term.
Milne – who assumed the Greens leadership role in 2012, after the resignation of the party’s founding leader, Bob Brown – said in a statement posted on social media (see below) on Wednesday that she had decided not to contest the 2016 election, and so would resign as leader.
She said she had informed Greens MPs and senators on Wednesday morning and that a ballot to elect a replacement would take place at 11.30am. Federal member for Melbourne, Adam Bandt, was the party’s deputy leader under Milne.
The vote resulted in Victorian senator and health spokesman Richard Di Natale being elected unopposed to take over the leadership position, with Senators Scott Ludlam and Larissa Waters to act as co-deputies.
Milne said her decision was “made with family”, after a 25-year career in politics.
“I have achieved what I set out to achieve when I took over the leadership,” Milne said in the statement. “The Greens have gone from strength to strength with solid election results and a growing, engaged party membership.
“I promised a more cabinet-style, collaborative approach to leadership. I am so proud of the way my colleagues have responded. We are a strong, capable, visionary Greens team.
“We have stood strongly for a safe climate and an end to wealth inequality. We have stood with the community against the cruelty of the Abbott Government, with their first budget resoundingly rejected by the people, and the Senate.”
Milne, who is soon to become a grandmother, recently said in a personal blog on the Greens’ web page that women today didn’t need to stop ageing or stop being grandmothers, or stop having babies to be in politics.
But she also used the blog to outline some of the challenges she faced in early her political career, as woman and a mother.
“I broke into politics at a time when you had to behave like a man to succeed,” Milne wrote, “and the only time ‘real’ men talked about their families was when they were resigning from politics. It was a time when people truly wanted to see women in the kitchen, not in the parliament.”
