Larissa Waters urges Labor to be bold while Liberals in ‘electoral wilderness’ and says Greens hurt by ‘Trump effect’

Larissa Waters has said the Labor government needs to ‘do what needs to be done, because the biosphere sustains us all. You can’t negotiate with nature’. Photograph: Joel Carrett/AAP

Larissa Waters has urged Labor to be bold on environmental protections, saying the Liberal party being left in the “electoral wilderness” means now is the time for the Albanese government to go against its “timidity”.

The new federal Greens leader – who was elected unopposed on Thursday – has also acknowledged her party was a casualty of the Trump effect, sending voters “into the arms of Labor”.