The final count was announced at Thursday’s declaration of the poll in Wangaratta, which Ms McGowan accepted “with a great deal of humility and confidence”.

Her past month has been spent looking for new workers because the meeting with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull after the election resulted in two extra staff members for all cross-bench MPs “to help us with the pressure that’s going to be on us regarding legislation”.

One of the first issues will be the Coalition’s federal plebiscite on marriage equality.

Ms McGowan will support the plebiscite, but said change was inevitable.

“I don’t want to divide and split - I’m supportive of marriage equality and I want it to happen as soon as it can,” she said.

“We can actually work to say this is a journey, that in some stage in Australian history we are going to have marriage equality.

“We actually have to work together to do that and to make sure we are our best selves, but also respectful in the discussion we have because there’s a huge opportunity to not be respectful.”

The Indi MP said she was focused on key policy areas of renewable energy, transport, jobs, arts and manufacturing.

“There’s a really clear agenda now for for to get out there and work for Indi,” she said.

“I know it’s going to take leadership, but I feel really confident - not only in my ability to work with my community - but, as the election process demonstrated, there is enormous community support for that agenda.”

Indi candidates Marty Corboy from the Nationals and Eric Kerr from Labor also attended the event to congratulate Ms McGowan and declare their parties would be ready to campaign again in three years.

Australian Electoral Commission divisional returning officer Jenny Essex said the declaration of the poll took a month after the election to complete to ensure counting and distribution of preference was correct, which was a standard process.

She said there was no repeat of poor behaviour between party supporters of the 2013 campaign.

“The party workers were actually quite reasonable this election, there were no posters on any of the buildings,” she said.

“We’ve had quite a few significant, internal changes in this election, from an AEC perspective, all to make it more strict and more controlling in terms of ballot papers since the 2013 WA Senate recount.”

Retired Tawonga South farmer and ​Senate candidate Allan Mull finished with 256 votes.