The ACT Greens have placed values at the centre of their campaign to take the territory's second Senate spot, as lead candidate Christina Hobbs claimed Canberra was more unified than Sydney.
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Former federal Greens leader Christine Milne joined the party's Senate launch in Civic on Saturday, attacking key rival Zed Seselja as "extreme" and from the "Tony Abbott-end of the Liberal Party".
Ms Hobbs, 33, an economist and former aid worker who still does some consulting to the United Nations, told a crowd of about 160 supporters her experience working in Sydney had helped her define what was different about Canberra.
"People asked, 'which school did you go to, how wealthy is your family, how connected are they?' – we just didn't ask that question in Canberra, because we grew up together, went to the same really high quality public schools or relatively affordable private schools, we played in the same parks and went to the same swimming pools," she said.
"We're happy to pay taxes so someone can attend emergency centres at hospital and get good care, happy to pay taxes to go to good public schools, even if I never have children or the children are grown up."
She said the party had a "really fantastic" chance of taking the Senate spot from the first-term Liberal after a drawn-out preference count in 2013.
"Zed Seselja represents the opposite of what most Canberrans support," she said.
"He has campaigned against action on global warming, against marriage equality and against the laws that protect our community from racial discrimination."
Ms Milne said she expected a shift from 2013, when she led the Greens to a disappointing result nationally.
"Now that Canberrans have had a look [at] what Zed Seselja has delivered with Tony Abbott, I think you're going to see a very different response," she said.
The Liberals won 34,060 more first preference Senate votes than the Greens in 2013, but narrowly missed the one-third quota, meaning preferences were distributed which brought the Greens' Simon Sheikh closer to taking the seat.
ACT Greens MLA Shane Rattenbury said the Gallagher effect would be noticeable.
"Katy Gallagher will be re-elected and she will win handsomely, and with overflow votes, when those preferences go to the Greens, those margins can change very suddenly," he said.
"Those who voted Green at the last ACT election have seen our policies and promises become part of the government's platform, so voters can have real confidence that what we say is what they get when it comes to Greens representation."
The Greens had a 3.65 percentage point fall in their ACT Senate vote last election, with Labor suffering a greater fall of 6.4 points.
The party launched a policy on Saturday to raise the refugee intake from the current 13,750 to 50,000 annually.
