Thank you, Melbourne

Thank you to the people of Melbourne for re-electing me as your state MP.

It’s been an honour to stand up for you, and your values, in Parliament. I look forward to working hard to ensure our community’s values continue to be represented to the state government.

I’m pleased that I will be joined in the parliament by even more Greens MPs in both houses of parliament. At the time of writing, counting in the Upper House has yet to be finalised, but it looks like we’ll have a mostly progressive crossbench in the Upper House with Greens holding the balance of power. This means we were able to keep the extreme fringe right-wing groups out of our parliament (fingers crossed).

But elections aren’t actually about us as politicians – elections are about you, the voters, and the values you care about, and what you want to see for the future.

Throughout the election campaign, I talked about wanting to go further and faster on climate action, the need to build more affordable housing, and bring integrity back into our parliaments. The people of Melbourne voted for this – and we’ll get to work straight away by introducing our Integrity Bill into the parliament before Christmas, which introduces a range of measures to clean up politics and bring more accountability to government.

We also have a lot of work to do to push the government forward on many of our local issues: like better pedestrian safety (especially around schools), accessible trams stops, curbing the influence of big property developers on our planning system, and more.

To find out more about what I’m working on for our electorate, or to let me know what you would like me to work on, please check out ellensandell.com and get in touch [email protected] •

Caption: Ellen Sandell with volunteers and former Greens leader Richard di Natale on election day.