Albury’s Chris Sobey will have another shot at unseating Ms Ley, but concedes she will have few resources from head office to improve on the 3.4 per cent of the vote she attracted in the 2007 election.

The Greens fielded a Wagga-based candidate, Peter Carruthers, in the 2010 federal election followed by a Sydney-based hopeful, Colin Hesse, in the state poll a year later for the seat of Albury.

The party has a dwindling membership in the Farrer electorate, but Mrs Sobey said the issues she would fight for remained important.

Climate change and its impact on water and food security in an electorate largely dependant on the Murray-Darling Basin system.

“How will the little towns go that are dotted along the Murray River?” she said.

“There’s some big questions and I believe this changing climate is going to have a huge effect.”

Mrs Sobey said Ms Ley had a stranglehold on the electorate, but Greens supporters wanted a choice to improve Senate representation.

“It irked me that we had to bring in an outsider,” she said.

“But they were kind enough to do it and they did a good job.

“I am not running them down.

“They want me to do it because they want to get a Greens senator in.

“There are people out there who do want to vote Green.”

She also stood in the 2001 federal election when Ms Ley was first elected to Parliament.

Mrs Sobey also represented the Greens in the 2007 NSW poll and got 7.27 per cent which tripled the result from the election in 2003.

The other confirmed starters for Farrer are Narelle Davis (Rise Up), Ken Trewin (Bob Katter), Gavin Hickey (Labor) and Ron Emmerton (Palmer United).

Ms Ley holds the seat with a margin of more than 14 per cent, but takes nothing for granted.

“Perhaps more than any other election I’ve been involved in, people I talk with want their faith in good government restored,” she said.

“When Labor won office under Kevin Rudd in 2007, I felt the Coalition had left the economy and the nation in reasonably good shape.

“Are we better off, is regional Australia better off, after six years of Labor and the Greens?

“I’m not sure many think they are.”