2026-10-29
By Steph Hodgins-May
Deputy Parlimentary Leader of the Austrealian Greens Senator for Victoria
What a year it has been! From taking on the gas giants and demanding Australians get a fair return for our resources, to fighting for a better early learning system, standing up for transparency and accountability in our democracy, and working alongside communities across Victoria, this has been a year of asking a pretty simple question: who is this government working for?
There have been some big fights, some important wins, and plenty of moments where we’ve had to push back against powerful interests. But there has also been an enormous amount of energy from our members, volunteers and communities who refuse to accept that politics has to be done the way it always has been.
Resources
This year has been defined by the growing grassroots campaign to make Australia’s gas giants finally pay their fair share.
In March, I secured a Senate Select Committee into the taxation of Australia’s gas resources, and I was proud to chair the inquiry. Over April and May, we heard from economists, academics, and community organisations about how Australia taxes its gas exports and what a fairer system could look like.
The evidence made one thing very clear: Australians are missing out on the enormous wealth being generated from our gas resources. A minimum 25 per cent tax on gas exports could raise around $17 billion a year, money that could help ease cost-of-living pressures, invest in essential services and importantly, accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels.
We also heard from gas executives themselves, desperately trying to pull the wool over our eyes and avoid scrutiny. When Woodside’s CEO refused to front the inquiry, I took the fight directly to the company’s AGM in Perth and asked her why she wouldn’t appear before the committee.
Whilst the committee couldn’t reach consensus on a recommendation, they agreed that the question of a gas tax must be revisited. My additional comments made the case clearly: stand up to the gas giants and replace the current tax system with a minimum 25 per cent tax on gas export revenue.
We gave the major parties plenty of opportunities, including when I moved an amendment calling for a 25 per cent gas export tax, which Labor, the Coalition and One Nation united to vote down. We’ll keep taking it all the way until we secure a fair return on the resources that all of us own.
I’ve also continued to challenge the expansion of the gas industry, including the government’s support for new gas projects and its support of disproven carbon capture and storage as a way of extending the life of fossil fuels. I helped expose the ongoing methane leak at Santos’ Darwin LNG facility and continued pressing the government on whether Barossa gas should be allowed to flow into a facility that has been leaking for years.
The gas industry has enormous resources and enormous access to the Labor government. Our job is to make sure ordinary Australians have a louder voice than them.
Climate and Energy
As a former environmental lawyer and a mum of two young kids who deserve to grow up on a safe planet, I’m proud to serve as Assistant Spokesperson for Climate and Energy alongside our leader Larissa Waters. This year I’ve continued to press the government on whether its climate and energy policies are actually consistent with a safe climate future.
One of my favourite moments was bringing a string of dead spiny sea dragons into the Senate chamber, as a reminder of the deadly impact of the South Australian algal bloom and the complicitness of Santos in this crime against our aquatic wildlife and climate.
I was among so many parents who were left disgusted and alarmed by Comms Declare’s research exposing hundreds of fossil-fuel sponsored programs reaching children as young as six months old. I was proud to stand alongside Comms Declare to launch the report and to push for a Senate inquiry into fossil fuel influence in schools, early learning centres and community programs.
That inquiry was voted down by the major parties, but I’m standing by what I said then: get your dirty hands off our kids. I won’t stop pushing until fossil fuel money is out of our schools, early learning centres and communities.
This year has also been marked by Labor’s utter lack of ambition on climate. Whether it’s their pathetically low emission reduction targets, a failure to put a climate trigger in their environmental reforms, continued approvals for new coal and gas projects, or the extraordinary contortions required to answer a simple question at Senate Estimates: does this government subsidise fossil fuels or not? — the gap between Labor’s rhetoric and its actions just keeps getting wider.
At the same time, I’ve been hearing from the people actually doing the work of building a cleaner future. It has been a delight to meet young people leading the climate movement, parents fighting to put solar and batteries on their schools and early learning centres, farmers leading sustainable agriculture, communities fighting against data-centres, and entrepreneurs desperately looking for the capital they need to get innovative clean tech off the ground.
To all these groups: thank you. Keep knocking on those doors. If they don’t open, we’ll help you kick them down.
Early Childhood Education and Care
Early learning is one of the most powerful equalising forces in our society, and this year I’ve continued pushing for a system that puts children, families and educators ahead of corporate profits.
I established a Senate inquiry into quality and safety in early childhood education and care which travelled to Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney and Canberra, hearing directly from parents, educators, advocates, experts and providers about what is going wrong in the sector.
The inquiry also put some of the country's biggest providers under scrutiny with for-profit provider G8 Education’s CEO acknowledging that more than one in five of its centres had received multiple compliance notices. The Liberal-controlled committee’s final report stopped well short of acknowledging the problem with the market-based system, let alone the solution, so I made sure to set out our own vision in our Greens’ dissenting report.
I’ve also continued fighting for the educators who keep the system running. The Greens have pushed for a 25 per cent pay rise, and we fought to extend the Worker Retention Payment, which provides a 15 per cent wage increase for many educators, which was only announced at the 11th hour by Labor after relentless pressure from us and the sector.
We’ve also kept pushing for an independent Early Childhood Education and Care Commission. After sustained pressure from the Greens, Labor finally began work towards a national commission, but consultation is not enough. We need a commission to ensure we build a system that guarantees quality and safety, properly values educators and makes high-quality early learning genuinely accessible to every family.
Democracy
This year I’ve taken on the democracy portfolio and my focus has been pretty simple: making sure this government is accountable to the people, not the corporations with the money and connections to get through the door.
This year I re-introduced legislation to ban political donations from industries including fossil fuels, gambling and weapons, and to cap individual political donations at a fair amount.
And I continued pushing for meaningful lobbying reform, including crashing Labor’s $5500-a-head budget-night fundraiser in Canberra to expose the access that wealthy corporations and their lobbyists get while you’re locked out.
The connection between these issues and the gas campaign could not be clearer. While Australians are asking for a fair return from our resources, gas companies are spending millions to lobby against it. That is why I also brought a motion to the Senate to ban gas lobbyists interacting with the government, a move that the major parties and even some on the crossbench teamed up to vote down.
This year I joined the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters following the 2025 federal election, where I’ve been examining electoral participation, integrity and the ways we can make our democracy more representative and accessible.
I also want to mention the passing of the baton from my good friend and colleague Senator Peter Whish-Wilson, who has now retired after a long career as a Greens Senator for Tasmania. In his last few years as a Senator, Pete had a relentless focus on exposing how misinformation and disinformation are threatening our democracy, the coordinated and concerted efforts behind it, and what can be done to tackle this existential threat. It’s a privilege to take this work on as part of the democracy portfolio, and I look forward to doing him proud.
On the Ground in Victoria
It has been a pleasure to spend another year working alongside Greens members, state colleagues, volunteers and communities across Victoria. This year we’ve particularly focused on building a stronger local presence, including moving our new electorate office to the heart of Windsor so we can be more accessible to constituents.
Locally, we’ve continued to support communities fighting for accessible public services and healthcare. When cohealth services were threatened with closure, I stood alongside staff, patients and state MPs to fight for the future of these vital services, raising the issue in federal Parliament by tabling a petition.
We’ve also kept bringing people together through community events. We’ve hosted Baby Clothes Swaps in Docklands, Richmond, Elwood, Croydon, Prahran and Albert Park, nine of these in total. We’ve also hosted six community dinners/meals, including a breakfast BBQ in support of the St Kilda PCYC which was threatened with closure. We hosted a family fun day in Alma Park during the summer school holidays, and welcomed the community to our then-new electorate office.
We’ve continued to fight the demolition of public housing towers across Victoria alongside our colleagues in State parliament. To that end, we hosted constituent outreach meetings at four public housing towers in order to ensure that the tenants were aware of their legal rights. We continue to provide support to the residents’ committees of those towers.
We hosted stalls at the local primary schools to alert parents to the State government’s delay of funding for public schools (which effectively cut school funding for their kids).
We’ve worked alongside local organisations and residents on issues including stopping early learning centres from closing down, and brought the gas tax debate to the streets through events and webinars.
Our casework team has also continued to advocate for Victorians dealing with the NDIS, immigration, Centrelink and other government systems. We’ve achieved some real, tangible outcomes for people despite being up against it with a broken system that shuts too many people out. I’m so proud of the impact my office is able to have.
Looking Ahead
The year I’m not backing down. We’ll keep making the case for a fair return from Australia’s resources, taking on the fossil fuel lobby and fighting for a rapid transition to clean energy.
We’ll keep pushing for a universal, high-quality early learning system that works for families and properly values educators, not at some distant point in the future, but right now.
We’lll keep fighting for a democracy where access to government isn’t determined by money, corporate connections or who can afford the best lobbyists.
And I’m taking on the Waste & Recycling portfolio to continue on the great work of Pete Whish-Wilson, including calling for immediate federal action on plastic packaging waste.
None of this is possible without our members, volunteers, community organisations and everyone who takes the time to get involved. Whether you’ve knocked on a door, come to a community event, shared our campaigns, contacted my office, signed a petition or simply had a conversation with someone about what needs to change, you are part of this work.
- Steph