THE COUNT on Saturday night also revealed the impact of Mr Oakeshott’s tilt at the seat on voting for the Greens and Labor, with both seeing their primary percentages drop by 4.25 and 10.25 respectively.
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Hard-working Greens candidate Carol Vernon said the local vote was always going to be affected by the change in boundaries.
“Plus we then had a well-known independent candidate appear, declaring himself progressive, and campaigning on beliefs that matched some Greens policies, such as tackling climate change,” Mrs Vernon said.
“It was inevitable our vote would be impacted.”
Mrs Vernon said local Greens groups were pleased with the solid 10 per cent Greens' vote across Australia and the return of NSW Greens Senator, Lee Rhiannon.
She remained optimistic, saying that in the long term, Greens voters wanting effective climate change action, protection of our forests, a ban on coal seam gas and new coal mining in Australia and social justice would be around to vote for the Greens at the next election.
She did not say whether or not she was planning to continue as the local candidate.
On Monday night in an ABC television interview, Mr Oakeshott continued to cling to a sliver of hope that things could change when postal voting resumed yesterday.
Commenting on the overall state of play following the election, he said “if this is stability, then I’d take chaos any day”.
And from the point of view of one who has been on the cross benches when the deals were being done in 2010, he said it was difficult to see “how something that worked could be woven” from the disparate voices that had gained a seat in the Senate/
“Where will Malcolm Turnbull, Pauline Hanson and Derryn Hinch find common ground?”
At the time of going to press the break down of the results for the other Cowper candidates was as follows:
Christian Democratic Party (Wayne Lawrence) 3085 (3.38 per cent)
Citizen Electoral Council (Michael Gough) 616 (0.68 per cent)
The Greens (Carol Vernon) 5756 (6.31 per cent)
Labor (Damian Wood) 12,160 (13.34 per cent)
Independent (John Arkan) 2979 (3.27 per cent).
And a final vignette from polling day: Dorrigo’s Grace Jones recently turned 18 and voted for the first time.
The Dorrigo polling booth was in the centre of town in the midst of the monthly markets, which is where the Courier Sun caught up with her.
“It felt a bit scary because I’d never done it before … but I did some research, so when I actually voted it felt good – I felt like a grown-up,” Grace said.
