We choose to build Momentum. Not because it is easy, but because it is hard

Throughout this election campaign, some suggested we should have sat this one out until we had a bigger following, while many others wanted us to take the 'guaranteed' route and contest with one of the big parties.

Both options entirely miss the point of why we built Momentum in the first place.

First and foremost, I want to take a moment to say a massive thank you to everyone who supported us during this campaign. I recently shared a video summarising our results, but I wanted to expand on the reality of our first run.

As first-timers, we are being told our numbers are very encouraging. Have we established ourselves as a strong and rising third party? I believe so. Would we have liked a better result? Of course.

You don't enter a space without aiming for the highest possible outcome. While we got the equivalent of a national quota on our own steam, our alliance with the good people of ADPD produced a total of 8,696 votes. That is 2.8% of all cast votes.

I believe our biggest bottleneck was our reach, we built a strong manifesto and we had many good ideas, yet we lacked the scale. This is a solvable issue, and we can solve it without bowing down to big money interests.

These initial results will be of great help in solving this issue because they prove that stepping into the arena is not only a worthy goal, but is something many are willing to support. We need more people on our team, and we need to inspire more individuals with the courage to show their faces and actively participate in freeing our country from interests that sacrifice progress on the altar of greed. If you are scared of this space, I can only suggest that by surrounding yourself with genuine and capable people, and that by never sacrificing your values, you can indeed be successful and have no regrets about it. Genuine good intentions are rare, and that is our key differentiator.

To those who told me I would have been elected had I joined the big machinery, possibly you are right. The reality though is that I’ve seen too many good people get elected on those tickets, only to be silenced on critical issues by the very people funding them. So much so that even in private conversations during this election, several candidates from both sides told me they agree with us on several specific issues, especially when it comes to matters affecting the environment, “but I would be sidelined if I speak up.” This is exactly the big money invested into the big parties working as intended.

That proves to me we are on the right track. We don't need an easy way out; we need to do the hard work to continue building a genuine, transparent option from the ground up. An option that is not weighed down by baggage, debt or greedy donors.

This election gave our supporters, my colleagues and myself the energy to keep building.