Larissa Waters

Biography

Waters was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and grew up in Brisbane.

She has a Bachelor of Science and a Bachelor of Laws from Griffith University and a Graduate Diploma in Legal Practice from the New South Wales College of Law. From 2000–2001 she was a Legal Researcher at the Queensland Land and Resources Tribunal (predecessor of the Land Court of Queensland), from 2001–2002 a Lawyer at Freehills, and from 2002–2011 was a Lawyer with the Environmental Defenders Office.

As of 2010 she lived in Bardon with her partner Jeremy Gates and their daughter. In 2017 she became the first politician to breastfeed a baby in the federal parliament of Australia when she breastfed her new baby daughter, Alia Joy, in the senate chamber there. Also in 2017, she became the first woman to breastfeed while moving a motion in that same senate, again when breastfeeding Alia Joy.

Political career

Waters was the lead Senate candidate for the Greens in Queensland at the 2007 federal election. The party received 7.3 percent of the statewide vote (an increase of 1.9 points), but this was not enough to secure her election. Waters again stood for office at the 2009 Queensland state election, running for the seat of Mount Coot-tha. The seat was held by the sitting Treasurer of Queensland, Andrew Fraser of the Labor Party. She polled 23.1 percent on first preferences, with Ronan Lee (25.9 percent in Indooroopilly) the only Greens candidate with a higher percentage.

Waters was again placed first on the Greens' senate ticket at the 2010 federal election. She was elected with 12.8 per cent of the vote, an increase of 5.4 percentage points. In May 2015, Waters was elected to the Greens' "leadership triumvirate". She was made a "co-deputy leader" alongside Scott Ludlam, with Richard Di Natale replacing Christine Milne as the party leader. Waters was re-elected to the senate at the 2016 double-dissolution election, winning a three-year term with 6.9 percent of the vote.

Resignation

Waters resigned from the Senate on 18 July 2017, following the realisation that she held dual Australian and Canadian citizenship, thereby making her ineligible to be elected under section 44 of the Australian Constitution. Her resignation came four days after her fellow Greens co-deputy leader Scott Ludlam had resigned from the Senate over dual citizenship, which prompted several other MPs and Senators to clarify their citizenship status. Waters had been born to Australian parents in Canada, and returned with them to Australia as a baby. She stated that she had previously believed that she was solely an Australian citizen, and that if she had wished to gain Canadian citizenship she would have needed to take active steps before age 21—but now discovered she had in fact always held dual citizenship since birth. Her seat is likely to be filled by a recount, giving former Australian Democrats leader Andrew Bartlett, who held the second position after Waters on the Greens' 2016 Senate ticket in Queensland, a high chance of returning to the Senate.

On 8 August 2017, Waters announced that she had renounced her Canadian citizenship and declared her intent to stand for Greens preselection and return to parliament at the next federal election.