By Jorian Gardner
“Perhaps we are a little bit naive – but we believe we, The Greens, can do this [politics] a bit differently,” says Shane Rattenbury, lead candidate for The Greens in Molonglo, a seat that he is expected to win at the October ACT election taking the seat of outgoing MLA Deb Foskey.
“Naive”? Not for a moment. Rattenbury, a political advisor for Greenpeace for more than 10 years, isn’t new to the ACT political scene – this will be his third shot in a row at trying to get a seat in the Assembly. 
Not only do The Greens believe they can take a spot in the seven-member Molonglo, an almost dead cert given their history in the electorate but they are also confident about the chances of Amanda Bresnan (in Brindabella) and Meredith Hunter (Ginninderra).
“We are confident because the Greens vote has increased significantly over the years to today where we have a strong base of voters attracted to us,” says Rattenbury. 
“I grew up in Canberra, so it is my home town,” he says. “I want my kids to thank me in the future for the decisions we take now. It’s a very personal thing to me.
“I have known a lot of the politicians here in Canberra, in my role with Greenpeace – and to be honest – most of them are very mediocre and I think I can do a lot better than that. I don’t have tags on myself, but I have a lot of ideas and I think I can make a great difference in this town,” he says.
But Molonglo is becoming crammed with candidates, not only the major parties and The Greens, but three high-profile independents as well – Queanbeyan mayor Frank Pangallo, Canberra Party’s Richard Mulcahy and now the controversial Helen Cross. 
“Good on him (Pangallo) for sticking up his hand, but let’s see some policies from him shall we?” Rattenbury says. “We haven’t seen anything yet that I am aware of.”
“And as far as Richard (Mulcahy) is concerned – I haven’t seen him around really and I have been out to events a lot recently.”
Having sunk the slipper, he says, really, he doesn’t want to talk about the other candidates; he’s concentrating on what The Greens stand for.
“This city faces significant challenges into the future – like what are we going to look like a little bit down the track?’ he says.
“We need to think hard about our urban design; we need to make the city more dense, but at the same time – and this is the challenge for The Greens where many people who vote us value their open spaces – how do we maintain the balance between our thriving city and the ‘bush capital’ image that I think Canberrans really love?
“It just seems that every bit of space is privatised. There needs to be public space.
“The other big issue for us is public transport. In terms of light rail, we are for it broadly, but I wouldn’t get too fixated on the technology just yet, though.  Whatever it is it has to be frequent, reliable and rapid to make people want to use it. I think there is a certain ‘romance’ about light rail, too, that makes people want to use it.”