Profile: Larissa Waters

Humanitarian leader Mahatma Gandhi was famously quoted saying “be the change that you wish to see in the world,” but few manage to live this message as thoroughly as Green’s Senator Larissa Waters. The 37 year old environmentalist and feminist is taking Australia’s future into her own hands. After 10 years of practicing as a lawyer, the Brisbane environmentalist and feminist decided that too many Australian laws were sub-par in too many areas, and that she would be the one to step up and call for change, if that was what it took.

“It was a few years of trying to tell people ‘yes, I agree that environmental destruction is terrible but you have no legal rights to stop it’. Just realising that whilst I loved practicing the law that the laws weren’t strong enough to do what I thought they should be able to do. So I figured ‘Well, you’ve got to get into parliament to change those laws. So here I am,” she explained in an interview in the open air kitchen of her flawless rooftop Paddington office.

“I had to wait for about 18 months for them to find a place and to do a refurbish because this is an old bank building so they had to do quite a bit of fixing it up and then they wanted to put in all this nonsense security stuff so I had to wait for this office but I’m really glad that I waited. We used a local architect who is very into eco-friendly design, so we’ve used all locally sourced fabrics with no toxic components and recycled camphor laurel, which is obviously a weed species. We’ve tried to have a green office in the little ‘g’ sense of the word,” she said, her eyes gazing over my shoulder to take in the breath-taking city view.

In the August, 2010 Federal Election Waters was elected into the senate becoming the only Greens senator for Queensland. Waters is in the minority being one of 31 women in the senate and of only nine senators for the Australian Greens party. 

Reminiscing about how much she loved practicing law Waters admits that while she enjoys her work in politics she’s still not your typical politician.

“In terms of the parliament itself, it’s full of old, grey, slightly chubby men who are relatively well off. It’s very much a stereotype of privilege,” she laughed, her legs crossed towards me on the comfortable retro-flower printed orange and khaki brown lounge. A light lipstick mark was left on her mug as she sipped her black coffee before going on to detail the ongoing battle for gender equality still present in our community.

“We’re making gains in female representation. We’re at about 30% now in parliament which is better than it used to be but it’s no 51% which is what we are in the normal population figures. You can certainly sense that the institutions itself has some inherent sexism but we’re gradually changing that.
 But it looks in recent times that we’ve taken some significant steps back with only one woman in cabinet now and with the assistant minister for women saying that she’s not a feminist and bizarrely the Prime Minister saying that he is because he’s got three beautiful daughters,” she said.

Not surprisingly more than half of Waters’ staffers are female, something that her office manager, Dominic Jarvis, says is probably a mix of chance and Waters’ manner of leading by example.

“I think it’s just how it fell this time. But I do, I think there’s something to it,” he said.

Waters’ passion for the environment has been prevalent throughout her life. In her first speech as senator she spoke about her early moves towards environmental activism.

“I won the environment prize at Rainworth State School in grades 4, 5 and 6, and my sense of injustice was ignited in my early teens when reading David Day’s Whale Wars about the international whaling fights of the 1980s. At 14 I turned vegetarian because of my love for animals and later for ecological reasons, and have continued that decision for 20 years now,” she said.

The deep respect for the environment that is so prevalent in both Waters’ personality and political career stemmed from the teaching of her parents at an early age.

“My folks have always been nature lovers and bushwalkers and kind of respected that it’s our role as human beings to look after the planet and that we’re not worth more or less than other creatures.


We’re just part of an ecosystem and need to live in harmony and pass it on to future generations in ideally a better condition than what it is. I guess I just grew up believing that and it’s just always been something that I’ve felt and wanted to work to try to see happen,” she said.

Waters is further making an impact on future generations by guest lecturing for university students in Brisbane and, like her parents, influencing her daughter with her beliefs at a young age.

“She’s a beautiful little girl and she’s really funny because she comes out saying things like ‘we have to save the reef from Tony Abbott’ and things like that,” said Vandeleur.

From the “Earth Choice” dishwashing tablets sitting in the eco-friendly kitchen to taking time when she has none to speak with university students about the issues that are important to her, there’s no doubting the fact that Waters lives and breathes the example of change that she hopes the world will follow.