To help you get to know them, we've asked some key questions - including why they're standing, what they believe are the biggest issues in need of attention, and what their key policies are.

Greens candidate Michael Organ, 65, knows a thing or two about federal parliament after a shock win in the 2002 by-election for the Labor stronghold Division of Cunningham, serving the one term.

Standing 20 years later in the Riverina, Mr Organ is running his election campaign on climate change and cost of living, looking to change local attitudes towards the Greens and steer the electorate away from its safe seat status.

Murrumburrah.

I was born in the Illawarra, north of Wollongong and I grew up there. My father's family had been in the Illawarra since the 1830s. My mother was born in Lockhart and basically went to school here in Wagga Wagga. Last year, I purchased the old [Murrumburrah] council chambers, the whole heritage building. I'm a historian, so when I was looking for some place to live, I thought, maybe I'll pick that up.

I'm a professional archivist and a historian interested in the environment. At the moment, I'm assisting the Murrumburrah Historical Society and cataloguing all their work. I'm really interested in history archives.

I'd sat on council committees [before running for Lord Mayor and federal parliament] - that's almost being political when you put your hand up and say yes. When you want to go beyond just commenting or talking to people about something. I thought if I sit on the council environmental heritage committee, I can actually have some input into what decisions are made. It's like with the Greens, in order to effect change, you have to have some sort of power. You can't just sit on the sidewalk, writing letters to the editor, and whinging and complaining. Sometimes you have to work out, 'how am I best going to be able to achieve those positive outcomes?' We had community protests and there were developments in Wollongong and we'd write submissions, and we'd do all that sort of stuff. And then it went nowhere because the decisions had been made by councillors and by council bureaucrats, and backroom deals. I realised then that at some point that you have to stand up and you have to get inside government, whether it's local, state or federal.

Once I got [into politics], Bob Brown. I mean, Bob was awesome. I'd been a traditional Labor voter because the Illawarra was traditionally Labor - industrial workers, the steelworks, all that sort of thing. But I slowly moved over. I can't remember when but I started to vote Greens. And because Bob was a real inspiration, and once I worked with him, I could see that he was a real leader, he had real leadership qualities. The Dalai Lama, Bob Brown - they're probably my two kind of heroes. And with Bob Brown, I learned a lot from him.

There's two reasons. I was asked by the Greens but the other thing is the state of Australia in all these crises.

Oh, that's easy. Climate change and cost of living. I can see a connection there. I'm not your traditional, necessarily 'green' Green. I'm more [about], which fits in with the Greens, health, education, social welfare, all of that sort of thing. You'll see that people don't realise, they think you're just a tree hugger or something like that. I used to get that from the Liberals when I was in parliament in 2002. Back in 2003, I was talking in parliament about climate change. I come back 20 years later and nothing really has been done.

It's a minute past midnight, it could already be too late and we still have [Matt] Canavan and others going, 'net zero is dead'. Well, coal is dead. The analogy is like someone who's got cancer and the doctor says you have to stop smoking and if you don't stop smoking, you're going to die. If you stop smoking, you've got a chance of living. Well, if we follow the path of the Coalition and Labor, it's like the smoker who won't give up smoking. They won't give up the fossil fuel industry.

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The cost of living, that's a real crisis. Yet, we've got a Coalition government almost denying it, saying it's not there. And every other day in papers such as yourself, we're hearing about housing, and all these various crises in mental health and we know the wages haven't increased under this government. Also, obviously, ICAC. People are sick of of lying and corruption, especially from this government, but even with Labor.

Now that people are getting back to normal, some of those federal programs need to start to operate again. I was just looking up the issue of multiculturalism and I can see the last posting by the federal government was in 2019. It's almost as though they stopped all those multicultural programs, which were about supporting festivities and festivals.

We've had a mental health crisis, which is still playing out, which needs to be properly funded. Australians need care, they need help on so many different fronts.

We've been around for almost 50 years now, so I'm hoping that people will start moving away from thinking Labor or Liberal. I'm hoping that the Greens have some sort of impact here, that my work will hopefully help in assisting David Shoebridge become the next senator, and we get some sort of balance of power.

Obviously, with Mr McCormack on 60 per cent, it's a safe seat. But change can happen.

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