Tasmanian environmental lawyer Vanessa Bleyer will replace Peter Whish-Wilson in the senate after winning a Greens membership ballot finalised on Tuesday.
Bleyer said it was her “absolute privilege” to be chosen.
“I look forward to achieving outcomes for Tasmanians in the senate, including ending native forest logging and providing safe and secure housing to those struggling without it,” she said.
The result caps a long rise through the Greens’ ranks.
Bleyer was unsuccessful in her bid to replace Christine Milne at a 2015 preselection, which was won by Nick McKim.
She ran as the party’s second senate candidate at last year’s federal election and also contested the lower house seat of Braddon at the 2025 state election.
The ballot, counted by the Tasmanian Electoral Commission, was a four-way contest.
Bleyer defeated Bob Brown Foundation campaigners Alistair Allan and Scott Jordan and Tasmanian Greens MP Tabatha Badger.
Her selection gives the party a senator with two decades of legal experience challenging logging and major industrial projects.
Bleyer has operated her own law firm since 2007 and is the Australia Institute’s spokesperson on native forests.
She secured the first permanent injunction to halt native forest logging in Victoria in 2010 and a similar order in Tasmania last year.
She also acted in legal challenges to the proposed Tamar Valley pulp mill – a campaign that drew her into Tasmanian politics and prompted her move to the state in 2010.
Whish-Wilson, who met Bleyer during that campaign in 2007, announced his retirement at the Tasmanian Greens state conference in Launceston in October.
He has held the seat since 2012, when he was appointed to fill the casual vacancy left by former Greens leader Bob Brown.
“I couldn’t be more thrilled that the Tasmanian Greens membership has chosen her to fill my casual vacancy in the senate,” he said.
Whish-Wilson is expected to leave parliament in the first week of August, after the winter break.
His departure ends a senate career best known for marine advocacy, earning him the nickname ‘the surfing senator’.
Bleyer will join Nick McKim as the Greens’ second Tasmanian senator and will be formally appointed once Whish-Wilson resigns.
