Elizabeth Watson-Brown, an experienced architect and advocate for sustainable and socially responsible design, was the Australian Greens’ “breakthrough” candidate in the 2022 federal election, winning the formerly safe Liberal electorate of Ryan in south-east Queensland. In her first speech to parliament, Watson-Brown characterized her electorate as “a cross-section of contemporary Australia.”1 While highly urbanized, Ryan also takes in farmland and some of the wild forests of D’Aguilar National Park. Its places and people are vulnerable to deepening economic and ecological problems. Watson-Brown’s conversations with voters revealed the diversity and complexity of people’s challenges. “There was a sense that the Ryan electorate was taken for granted and abandoned,” she says. “We were offering a comprehensive and wide-ranging agenda
