It was exciting news on Saturday evening as results filtered through to show that the sole Greens Minister in the Labor power-sharing government, Shane Rattenbury MLA, was easily returned to Office.

And the good news kept coming when as of Sunday afternoon it was confirmed that Caroline Le Courteur was elected to the Legislative Assembly also!

Congratulations indeed to the ACT Greens on such a great result of doubling our representatives in Government!

Shane Rattenbury. Photo: ABC

Caroline Le Courteur. Photo: ABC

For those who do not follow local Canberra politics, you may be interested to know that the Legislative Assembly prior to this election had 17 members, elected from 3 electorates – those being Brindabella and Ginninderra, which had 5 members each, and 7 members from Molonglo.

In 2014 the Assembly voted to reform the Hare-Clark voting system (single transferable, proportional representation model), expanding the number of members to 25 and increasing the electorates to 5.

That meant that from the 2016 election onwards, 5 members are each elected from 5 electorates – Brindabella, Ginninderra, Kurrajong, Murrumbidgee & Yerrabi.

Given these changes, our new Green MLAs are representatives for Kurrajong (Shane Rattenbury) and Murrumbidgee (Caroline Le Courteur).

Such fantastic news! Congratulations again to the candidates, staff and volunteers!

Reference:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/act-election-2016/results/
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-16/electorate-of-brindabella-hangs-in-the-balance-as-labor-wins/7936962
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Capital_Territory_Legislative_Assembly