News / State Politics
Greens opt for Pulford to contest state election
Former Mayor hopes to continue legacy of Tim Read
Mark Phillips
MERRI-BEK Councillor Adam Pulford will seek to keep the seat of Brunswick in Green hands after being chosen as the party’s candidate for the state election this November.
Pulford, 36, was announced as the party’s candidate on Friday following the decision of incumbent MP Tim Read to retire later this year for health reasons.
Pulford won a three-way pre-selection contest over fellow councillors Ella Svensson and Jay Iwasaki.
He will continue on the council until the election campaign proper begins in Spring, when he will take a leave of absence.
Pulford has been a Merri-bek councillor since 2020 and was Mayor in 2023-24. He was first elected to the northern ward before moving to Brunswick East and winning the Warrk Warrk ward with 57.1% of the primary vote in 2023.
In December, he was suspended for a fortnight after an adverse misconduct finding.
Originally from Darwin via Adelaide, he has lived in Merri-bek for most of the past 15 years and currently rents in Brunswick East with his husband.
His day job is as press secretary for the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria. He ran for the federal seat of Wills in 2019 and has worked as an adviser for former Greens federal leaders Adam Bandt and Richard De Natale.
The Greens have a comfortable margin in Brunswick of 13.7%. Read first won the seat from Labor in 2018 and increased the gap at the 2022 election.
“It’s going to be a big campaign,” Pulford said at a media conference outside Jewell Station on Friday morning.
“I’m ready for it, I’ve got the energy.
“It’s going to be fun, but we’re not going to take anything for granted … I know we’ve got our work cut out for us, reaching as many people in our community, listening to them, having conversations with them about the issues that matter to them.
“I’m up for the job, and I can’t wait to get out there and have these conversations with members of our community.”
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Greens leader Ellen Sandell said Pulford was “everything that is fantastic about Brunswick”.
“Tim Read has been such a beloved, popular and effective local member here in Brunswick, and I know that Adam is absolutely the right person to continue on Tim’s legacy and to keep up that fight for the issues that people of Brunswick care about on the ground here in Brunswick, but also the bigger issues that represent the people of Brunswick and their values,” she said.
Read, 63, had been set to run to again this year but was diagnosed with cancer in October last year.
Read reduced his amount of public events and meetings after he began treatment for skin cancer last year but shortly before the commencement of Parliament in January, he announced that he would be retiring to concentrate on his health.
He has dedicated his last year in Parliament to securing the long-term future of VicHealth, which suffered funding cuts in this year’s State Budget.
Read said Pulford had been a great ally as a councillor on issues such as more frequent trains on the Upfield line and traffic congestion in Sydney Road.
“I couldn’t imagine a better person to be handing the baton to than Adam Pulford,” he said.
He added that housing affordability was as big a concern in Brunswick as anywhere in Melbourne and as a renter Pulford would be able to bring his own lived experience to teh issue.
Pulford’s pre-selection means the Greens now have their team in place for both electorates covering the Brunswick and Coburg areas. Angelica Panopoulos, another former Greens Mayor of Merri-bek, is their candidate for Pascoe Vale, where she will seek to unseat Labor’s Anthony Cianflone.
Labor is yet to announce its candidate for Brunswick.
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