The major candidates in one of the seats that could play a key role in determining the result of the Australian election were quietly confident as they prepared to cast their votes on Saturday.
One of them, so-called ‘Teal’ independent Monique Ryan, said she was excited that election day had arrived after a tough five week campaign that featured plenty of argy bargy on the hustings.
Ryan, who in 2022 became the first non-Liberal to win the blue-ribbon Melbourne seat of Kooyong since 1944, holds it with a 2.2% margin after toppling former Treasurer Josh Frydenberg.
She was one of six independents elected to the Australian lower house three years ago, joining three others who were returned to Canberra, but it was not enough to stop the centre-left Labor Party winning government with 77 seats.
If independents and the Greens win enough seats in this poll, they could hold the balance of power in the 151-seat Parliament, earning them the leverage to force through their preferred policies around climate change, political integrity, and gender equality.
“Be great to see how things end up at the end of the day,” Ryan said in an interview on Sky News Australia outside a polling booth in her electorate in south-east Melbourne.
Asked about controversies including video of her husband tearing down a rival candidate’s poster, the former neurologist and medical researcher said: “It’s been a tough campaign on both sides. Hopefully people will look at what I’ve achieved in the last three years and will decide that’s been enough to give me another three years.”
On her way to a voting location her Liberal rival Olivia Hamer, the grand-niece of a former Liberal Premier in the state of Victoria, said she was feeling positive.
“Pre-poll (early voting) yesterday was fantastic. The mood is continuing today. I’m confident that hopefully if people put their faith in me, that we will have a change in Kooyong,” she told Sky News.
Hamer brushed off a controversy over local government officers removing some of her signs due to safety concerns, saying: “I’m just focussed on speak to people about the issues that are important to them.”
These incidents prompted the Australian Electoral Commission to call on electoral campaigners to behave respectfully towards voters at pre-poll voting venues.
The ‘teal’ descriptor for Ryan and other independents comes from the blend of blue, the colour traditionally associated with the centre-right Liberal Party, and green, the colour linked with environmentalism and progressive policies.
These independents received significant support from the Climate 200 a fundraising initiative which advocates for policies to address climate change.