Giulia Jones has unfinished business she wishes to conclude in October.
As the first non-sitting Canberra Liberals' candidate to go public on a tilt at this year's territory election, the Gungahlin mother-of-four has shown that the trauma of her desperately close loss last time has had no lasting affect.
All six of the party's incumbent members will stand again this year, Liberals HQ confirmed yesterday, and nominations have opened for other contenders to throw their hats into the ring.
The ACT Greens' preselection process is also underway, with the crossbench party closing nominations last week and hoping to have its ticket finalised by early next month. But the party is being characteristically coy on its plans. Labor had its 17 candidates finalised in early November.
The Liberals will not close the books to contenders until March 9 and will hold a ballot of its members two weeks later.
But Ms Jones, after contesting a territory election in 2008 and a federal poll two years later, should have won enough respect from local Liberals to give her a better chance than most.
The 31-year-old said she had been a little bit unlucky in 2008, when a chaotic effort by other right-of-centre candidates in Molonglo left her starved of the preferences she needed to get her over the line.
''There were factors at play, which in other elections would have given me a seat,'' Ms Jones said. ''But that's all right, the point is that if you can't live with the outcomes of democracy, then you shouldn't be running.''
The former Tony Abbott staffer said that voters should not expect much difference in her campaigning style: get up early and work hard.
''It's amazing what can happen when someone is very determined, when they get into the shops first in the morning and set up and stay in there all day, and people do respect that,'' she said.
As for the tone of her campaign, don't expect too much difference between Ms Jones and her political mentor, Zed Seselja.
''In so many ways, ACT elections are about roads, rates and rubbish, the things that impact people every day but [are] not very glamorous,'' she said.
Meanwhile, the ACT Greens are playing their preselection hand close to their chests.
With pundits predicting a struggle for the third party to hold on to to its four seats, the Greens must decide whether to field a larger ticket or concentrate its resources defending the seats of its sitting members.
All four incumbents will run again, but the party will not even reveal if anyone else will bother to contest the preselection.
Nominations closed on January 30, but party convenor Simon Copland would not say how many candidates had put their name forward and said that the party had not yet decided on how many candidates it would field on October 18.
Greens candidates must submit to an interview with a panel of senior local party members before pre-selections.
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