Teal independent to take on Liberals in WA’s South West

“I felt that once again, people were being pushed to follow a party line and they were being pushed into positions as Greens candidates, as Green senators, as Green members of Parliament and, again, there was no true independent representation of what this community is after,” she said.

Winning Forrest as an independent will be no easy feat with the Liberal Party holding the seat since the 1970s.

Retiring Liberal MP Nola Marino retained Forrest with a two-party margin of 4.3 per cent in 2022 but in 2019 she held the seat with a margin of 14.6 per cent.

Chapman said big issues she would focus on was the need for housing in the South West and cost of living.

She said the other big item that arose from the Voices consultation was the conflict between development in the South West and environmental protection.

“We’re in a biodiversity hotspot in the South West, and people are really concerned about land clearing, about loss of biodiversity, and obviously in the longer term, climate change and the implications for our future generations,” she said.

Chapman said she had not yet sought funding from Climate 200 but said election campaigns were expensive exercises so it was still open they may approach them for funding.

“We’re hoping that our community will get behind us and that they will provide the vast majority of our funding,” she said.