A second community independent looks set to win a seat in the New South Wales parliament, with the candidate in Wollondilly, Judy Hannan, on track to snatch the south-west Sydney seat.
Hannan does not consider herself to be a teal independent but she did receive some support in kind from Climate 200.
As counting continued on Monday afternoon, the teal candidate in Pittwater, Jacqui Scruby, also remained fractionally in front in the seat after Saturday’s state election.
Hannan, the former mayor of Wollondilly council, is currently ahead of the Liberal MP Nathaniel Smith 53.2% to 46.8%, and said pre-poll votes were running in her favour in two of the three early voting locations.
She did not believe the postal vote would be large enough to upset her lead.
It comes after the mayor of Northern Beaches, Michael Regan, won the seat of Wakehurst as an independent on election night.
In Pittwater, the count remained neck and neck but Scruby finished the day’s counting with 50.84% of the vote to the Liberal candidate, Rory Amon, who was on 49.16%. The seat will probably come down to postal votes and could require a recount.
Postal votes were running two-thirds to Amon and one-third to Scruby, with several days left to go before until the cutoff for receiving them.
Hannan’s win could expand the crossbench in the lower house to 10, up from eight in the last NSW parliament. However, Labor is on track to have a clear majority of more than 47 seats.
“I am quietly confident,” Hannan told Guardian Australia.
“It just shows you that [the Liberals] have taken us for granted and people don’t like it.”
Hannan said she was confident of getting a good hearing from the newly elected Minns government “because Labor would benefit from a seat like Wollondilly being in independent hands”.
She said she was planning to talk to the community and make “a great big list up on the wall” of issues they wanted her to pursue.
Planning and the environmental impacts of the spread of Sydney’s housing into previously rural areas are the main issues in the seat.
The previous government announced plans to fast-track several major housing developments that would see 19,000 new houses developed at Appin and Gilead in the next 20 years.
A major development is already under way at Wilton for a further 15,000 new homes, but there are no clear plans for upgrading infrastructure. Developers are responsible for some of the roads under voluntary planning agreements, but there are no state budget allocations for major road upgrades and public transport.
Development of the town centre at Wilton has not yet commenced, leaving voters concerned about roads, schools and health services.
Some developments will also involve destruction of some koala habitat and endangered Cumberland Plains woodland. The government has released the Cumberland Plains conservation plan that involves maintaining sensitive koala corridors and addressing the loss of vegetation through offsets and reconstruction projects.
In Willoughby, the Liberal MP Tim James looked likely to win against the independent Larissa Penn, who was making a second attempt to take the lower North Shore seat.
By mid-afternoon James’s two-party preferred vote had risen to 51.9% over Penn’s 48.9%. Postal votes are expected to favour the Liberals.
The other teal candidates in North Shore and Lane Cove have been defeated by Liberal party candidates.
This article was amended on 27 March 2023 to clarify that Judy Hannan does not consider herself to be a teal independent
