Larissa Waters will become the first senator among the section 44 casualties to return to parliament, after Andrew Bartlett announced his resignation, setting the stage for the woman he replaced to return to the Senate.
Bartlett will stand down as the Greens senator for Queensland in August. He returned to the upper chamber late last year, following Waters’ discovery in July that she was a dual-Canadian citizen.
Waters was born in Canada to Australian parents and left as an infant, but erroneously believed she would have to apply for Canadian citizenship to hold it, a situation that would have been true under Canada’s citizenship laws if she had been born a few months later.
After winning back the Queensland ticket No 1 spot, after Bartlett declared he would run against the LNP’s Trevor Evans in the lower house electorate of Brisbane, Waters was expected to return to parliament following the next election.
But with rumours of an early federal election refusing to die down, Bartlett said he was stepping down prematurely to better prepare his Brisbane election campaign, clearing the way for Waters.
Waters told Guardian Australia her year out of parliament had given her perspective.
“What struck me most was how out of touch politicians are with the people they’re supposed to represent. It’s why politicians are held in such low regard – all people see is pollies hurling insults at each other across the chamber, and having cosy lunches with lobbyists, instead of debating the real issues that people are struggling with,” she said.
“Many people are financially struggling and can’t get access to the services they deserve – services that a good government should provide – meanwhile the government wastes billions on tax cuts for its corporate mates, and funds fighter jets and statues of Captain Cook instead of universal housing and publicly owned clean energy. They look like arrogant elites.
“The decisions that the Coalition government are making, usually with the endorsement of Labor, are actually making life harder for people, and often trashing the environment and fuelling global warming. But people have woken up to the fact that those decisions are being made in the interests of big corporate donors, and they want their democracy back.”
