Larissa Waters’ sudden resignation prompted a closer look at the political menagerie otherwise known as the Greens as they went in search of a new leader. Unsurprisingly, they found one in left field, there being no right field, in the terrain they inhabit.

It was also not surprising that the party overcame its vocal aversion to white privilege and elected a couple of well-heeled white lawyers, or, in the language of the left: a pale, stale, male and female. They may not reflect the party’s rhetoric but they mirror its membership.

Senator David Shoebridge, a former barrister, and Senator Steph Hodgins-May, an environmental lawyer with a United Nations background, overcame the disadvantage of having no apparent disadvantage.

Shoebridge is a former barrister whose CV virtuously emphasises advocacy for social justice and First Nations rights but conspicuously lacks a proclamation of marginalisation.

Hodgins-May is blessed with a hyphenated name, which seems to be almost an unwritten party membership requirement, but she seems to be as intersectionally challenged as her leader.

Both seem to be cisgender and, disappointingly, their pronouns align with their gender assigned at birth – he/him and she/her.

The punters, perhaps fooled by the Greens professed love of grievance, predicted a win for Mehreen Faruqi, Australia’s answer to Zohran Mamdani, although the similarities don’t go much further than shared South Asian origins and radical Green Islamist politics.

Mamdani oozes Bollywood glamour and Brown privilege. His mother was an actress at Harvard before receiving international accolades for directing Salaam Bombay! and Monsoon Wedding. His father is a professor at Columbia University who specialises in African history and politics. Brains, beauty and talent have combined to produce a potent brew: a communist with charisma. In the crowded marketplace of revolutionary indignation, good looks remain an advantage that no redistribution programme has yet abolished.

Life has not been so kind to Faruqi, who has been the victim of racism, sexism and Islamophobia since coming to Australia. It explains why she has been forced to eke out a living as a federal senator on $278,970.

Disgracefully, that only puts her in the top 2 to 3 per cent of Australians by income, an obvious indicator of the discrimination which has marred her life in the Antipodes. The ascension of Shoebridge and Hodgins-May, clearly a case of the Greens’ white supremacism, is just the latest chapter.

A Greens leadership battle is usually as transparent as a papal conclave, but in a demonstration that even progressives can make progress, the parliamentary members eschewed the usual search for consensus and opted to vote, announcing the results.

In the best tradition of Bertolt Brecht, Faruqi, outraged by the results, called to dissolve the voters – her parliamentary members – and renewed her demand that all party members be allowed to vote for her.

If Faruqi had won, it would have meant that the Greens had finally completed their transition from tree huggers to ‘P’ huggers (for those unfamiliar with the Green alphabet, P is for Palestine).

That is on trend. One only has to look at Greta Thunberg’s keffiyeh and her holiday snaps aboard Club Med Hamas to see that enthusiasm for global boiling has cooled.

This does not mean the Greens have abandoned climageddon. Senator Nick McKim, an old-time preacher of environmental hellfire and brimstone, ran as Faruqi’s prospective deputy, offering a smorgasbord of catastrophe and a heady mix of protests and pogroms.

Sarah Hanson-Young, meanwhile, was damned in the media as a moderate — the kiss of death for an aspiring Greens leader. She is as hyphenated as anyone in the party, yet despite dragging stinking salmon into the Senate to save the species from extinction, she was as popular as yesterday’s sushi, finishing third out of three.

The significant result, however, was not who lost but what the winner intends.

The triumph of Shoebridge marks a new chapter. As he put it, he’s not here to reform Labor, but to replace it.

Albanese should take him at his word.

Until now, One Nation’s rise has largely threatened the Coalition, particularly the Nationals.

Transfixed by the orange tsunami that could wash away the mainstream parties of the right and, latterly, of the left, few commentators have paid attention to the strength of the Greens vote.

Unlike the Coalition, and more recently Labor, support for the Greens has held steady in the polls and if anything strengthened. This fits with the rising tide of polarisation around the world.

Shoebridge has put Albanese on notice, that he and his deputy, with their Mr and Mrs Average White Bread looks are coming for the left wing of the Labor party and anyone else in Middle Australia they can persuade to vote for them.

The Greens do not have to sweep the country to cause Labor serious trouble. They need to persuade enough disillusioned Labor voters on the left that the government has abandoned them and the Greens will deliver what Albanese has not.

This is precisely the proposition that One Nation makes to disillusioned conservatives in the Coalition, and we have all witnessed the results.

Why shouldn’t it happen on the left? In America, Democrats who make Che Guevara and Yasser Arafat look like Milquetoast are winning nominations for the midterm congressional elections.

In Britain, it grows harder daily to distinguish the hard-left pro-Palestinians in the Labour party from their counterparts running the UK Greens.

Shoebridge claims the trouble with Labor is that they haven’t provided drastic change: perhaps he missed Chalmers budget that has made mortgage-holders drastically poorer.

Shoebridge said today that when he goes around the country, he never hears people chanting: ‘What do we want? Gradual reform. When do we want it? In due course.’

To understand Shoebridge, it’s worth knowing that he was mentored by former senator Lee Rhiannon, a card-carrying communist who stayed loyal to the Soviet Union even after it collapsed and is still a member of the successor to the Communist party of Australia.

Like Adam Bandt she is a ‘watermelon’ – green on the outside, red on the inside. Presumably, Shoebridge is too.

While Labor watches the orange tsunami, it should keep an eye on the red tide beneath the Greens.