Moreland City Council Ratnam first stood for and was elected to the
City of Moreland (now
City of Merri-bek) Council for
South Ward in
2012. In 2015 she was elected by councillors as the first Greens mayor of Moreland for 2016 in a 6 to 5 vote with Independent Councillor Helen Davidson and
Socialist Alliance Councillor Sue Bolton supporting her bid for the mayor. and by the Indian community in Australia, and in Tamil culture. In her time on the council, Ratnam was instrumental in removing official council references to
Australia Day, saying “this is a gesture of respect and an important step in healing”. Ratnam resigned from the council on 11 October 2017 prior to entering state parliament. (left) and Greens candidate for
Batman Alex Bhathal (right).
2016 federal election Ahead of the
2016 federal election the Greens preselected Ratnam to stand in the
Division of Wills, where the sitting
Labor MP
Kelvin Thomson was retiring. She renounced her British citizenship in March 2016 in order to be able to stand for election.
State politics Ratnam filled the vacant
Legislative Council seat of former
Victorian Greens leader
Greg Barber, who announced his retirement from politics on 28 September 2017. On 12 October 2017, prior to having officially filled Barber's seat, Ratnam was appointed as
leader of the Victorian Greens, becoming the first woman to lead the party at a state level. She was officially sworn in as a member of the Legislative Council on 19 October 2017. Ratnam was re-elected in the Northern Metropolitan region at the
2018 state election, though her four party colleagues failed to win back their seats and she became the only Greens member of the Legislative Council.
Tenure During her time in state politics, Ratnam has established parliamentary inquiries into the growing threat of
far-right extremism (2022), the biodiversity extinction crisis (2019), and the waste and recycling crisis (2019). According to
The Age, between November 2018 and November 2021, Ratnam voted with the Andrews Government's position 62.4% of the time, the fourth-most of any Legislative Council crossbencher. In 2023, Ratnam threatened to block a proposal by the Labor Party in Victoria to increase housing supply unless half of all new developments were either affordable housing or public housing. At the time, South Australia required that 15% of all new development were affordable housing, of which 5% were for the highest-need groups. Later that month, Ratnam was pre-selected as the Greens candidate for Wills. She resigned as state party leader on 23 April 2024, and then from the Victorian Legislative Council on 8 November 2024. She lost the election to Labor's Peter Khalil. ==Academic research==