2026-07-24
A BETTER KIND OF POWER
By Senator Larissa Waters
This month marks twenty years since I became a member of the Greens, and one of the hardest truths I’ve learned in that time is that politics is always, at its heart, about power.
Who has it. Who gets heard. Who gets ignored. And what happens when ordinary people come up against institutions with far more money, access and influence than they could ever hope to have.
Over the past month, we’ve seen that play out again and again.
The gambling lobby has given the major parties more than $6 million over five years, while corporations, broadcasters and sporting codes fought stronger reforms. In the end, Labor and the Liberals struck a deal to pass weak gambling laws that protected many of the industry’s interests.
Disabled people, families and carers told their stories, rallied and warned what NDIS cuts would mean for their lives. Labor, the Liberals and One Nation joined forces to pass the cuts anyway.
And when we call for multinational gas corporations making billions from resources that belong to all of us to pay a minimum 25% tax on exports, Labor refuses to act and instead rushes to reassure the gas industry.
Together, these fights ask critical questions about power - and those questions matter even more as our political landscape changes.
People are rightly frustrated. Housing is unaffordable. Groceries cost too much. Climate and nature are in crisis. Healthcare is harder to access. Huge corporations keep making extraordinary profits, the major parties keep taking millions in donations, and Gina Rinehart is flying Pauline Hanson around Europe.
No wonder people are angry with the political establishment.
But anger at the establishment, on its own, does not make a party an alternative to it.
The real test comes when power is contested.
When a corporation is asked to pay more. When an industry faces meaningful regulation. When someone without money or influence needs Parliament to stand beside them.
Whose side are you on then?
For the Greens, that question goes to the heart of who we are.
Our movement is powered by people. Members, volunteers, supporters and people who give what they can because they believe politics can be better.
That independence matters. It means we can take on powerful interests without wondering what a billionaire donor or corporate lobbyist might think.
But independence alone is not enough.
We have to keep building a movement that can change what is politically possible. That means reaching people who haven’t heard enough from us, listening with curiosity, trying new ideas and offering something better than the division of the far right.
It means asking new questions about how we campaign and organise, reviewing how we work, and making sure everyone in our movement has a meaningful way to contribute.
It means doing the patient work of building trust and community, not just asking people for their vote when an election comes around.
And when we face tough votes in parliament or at elections, we keep going. We learn, we organise, and we think about the people depending on us to succeed.
The forces we are up against have enormous money and influence.
But what we are building is a better kind of power: people working together, for each other- and over the last twenty years I have learned never to underestimate what that can achieve.