It’s just a game of preferences now but the important part is that Cootamundra electorate has a new representative.

The Nationals’ Katrina Hodgkinson easily swept to victory despite spirited opposition from Country Labor’s Charlie Sheahan and other parties.

What is important now though, with the talking finished, is that Hodgkinson delivers for Junee and the wider electorate.

There are issues that are shared across the electorate – education and services and others that will be specific to individual towns.

How Hodgkinson makes a difference and if she indeed delivers should, and will be key to how we judge her performance.

It’s important that Hodgkinson is Cootamundra electorate’s representative in state parliament, not a government representative in the Cootamundra electorate.

There are four long years to go before the electorate has the opportunity to express its opinion again and it would be sad if in the intervening years the people who put their name down as candidates were to disappear.

Labor’s Charlie Sheahan won a quarter of the vote and it would be better for the community, and democracy, for voters to have an alternative option for a strong community advocate in 2019 – not candidates who only appear every four years. 

​- Declan Rurenga