She became the third elected leader of the party, from 1 July 1990 to 19 August 1991, when she was deposed in a coup promoted by the party's Queensland division with national executive support. The charge that she had "failed to lift the profile of the party" during her tenure of a year was unsuccessful as justification, and her openly acknowledged relationship with party colleague Sid Spindler was used as leverage to remove her from the leadership. The party's founding leader, Don Chipp, described the coup as the "most tragic story to have hit the Democrats". One suggested reason for the coup was that she was controversially negotiating a coalition or merger with the Greens. After internal disagreements related to her loss of the leadership, she resigned from the party in 1992 and continued as an independent senator until her defeat at the 1993 election. After quitting the Democrats, she reminded the Senate of her non-partisan approach in pursuit of reforms, including a successful private senator's bill:"In the six years that I have been in this place I have valued most highly the cooperative work that I have been able to do with colleagues on all sides of the chamber...for example, I reflect on the magnificent work done by former Senator Peter Baume which played a large part in enabling the passage, unopposed, through the Parliament of my private member's Bill which banned the print advertising of tobacco products. On the other side, I look forward to a successful result on the question of discrimination against homosexuals in the armed forces as a result of important strategic cooperation between myself, Senator Margaret Reynolds and other Labor Party backbenchers."