Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Melbourne is greener than ever before. We are finishing this year with an incredible result for the Greens in the Victorian local council elections, as we increased Greens representation from 17 councillors to 29. In my electorate of Melbourne, congratulations go to Rohan Leppert and Cathy Oke, who will be returned as councillors for the city of Melbourne. The campaign in Melbourne came so close to electing Dr Olivia Ball and Roxane Ingleton as the first ever Greens lord mayoral team. And well done to the Melbourne volunteer team led by Luisa Livingstone, Bridget Lea and Klaus Mahony.

The Greens will now hold four out of nine spots in the Yarra City Council in my electorate, re-electing Misha Coleman and Amanda Stone and electing James Searle and Mike McEvoy for the first time. Matoc Achol and Tony Reck also recorded terrific votes. A special thanks to Bianca Gibson, Luc Favre, Jessamie Yule, Tom Bunn, Zak Hanyn, Kim Chua and Michael Butler, who volunteered to make this possible, and a huge thanks to retiring Sam Gaylard for his eight years of hard work as a Yarra councillor.

Also within my electorate, well done to Jack Giles, who got within a whisker of being elected to the Moonee Valley City Council, winning the highest number of first preference votes. And well done to Jarrah Woolfrey for your campaigning efforts in Myrnong. And nearby there were historic results for the Greens in Darebin, Moreland and Port Phillip, about which I will say more on another day. I would particularly like to thank Tom Grindrod, who coordinated the efforts of our volunteer teams across Melbourne, Yarra and Moonee Valley. A special thanks to all the support candidates. And finally thanks to all the wonderful Victorian Greens staff. This is your result.