Jamie Parker Can’t Lose!
Leichhardt Mayor Jamie Parker has famously become the first Green MP to enter the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, following a historic win over beleaguered former Education Minister, Verity Firth in the formerly safe Labor seat of Balmain.
Other than swimming legend Dawn Fraser running as an Independent, Parker is only the second non-Labor candidate to claim the seat in over 80 years. As the news broke that Ms Firth had conceded a full week after counting started, Federal Greens Leader Bob Brown rushed to congratulate Mr Parker, comparing the significance of his win to that of Greens Federal MP for Melbourne, Adam Bandt.
With counting yet to finish, Greens Online Campaign Director, Neerav Bhatt, indicated that the margin had in fact widened to a few thousand votes. The margin is sufficient to suggest that like many seats across New South Wales, Balmain will remain beyond Labor’s grasp for quite some time to come.
Thanking the outgoing Member for Balmain and congratulating unsuccessful Liberal candidate James Falk, Parker declared the victory a result of dedicated effort by his campaign team and hundreds of supporters and volunteers.
He also declared the result to be “a historic win for the Greens, gaining their first ever lower house seat in the NSW parliament. Our vote has continued to grow, our supporter base continues to grow and our membership has also grown strongly. There is no doubt that the Greens are being seen by an increasing number of people as a credible alternative to the two parties who have held power for so long”.
Parker went on to say that “this is a victory for voters looking for real change who believe that social justice and the environment should be at the heart of politics, not just an afterthought”.
Counting for the final Senate seat is yet to conclude, with hopeful signs that Greens candidate Jeremy Buckingham has in fact pulled ahead of Pauline Hanson. Picking up this third seat to total five members in the Legislative Council will still not be sufficient for Greens to attain the cross bench balance of power that they had hoped for.
