David Risstrom

David Eric Risstrom is an Australian barrister and politician. He was a City of Melbourne councillor from 1999 until 2004, when he resigned to contest the 2004 federal election as the lead Senate candidate for the Australian Greens in Victoria, but was unsuccessful in controversial circumstances as a result of group voting ticket preferences by the Australian Labor Party which favoured the socially conservative Family First Party. He later served as president of Friends of the ABC pressure group.
Risstrom has educated at Wesley College Melbourne, the University of Melbourne (B.A.) and the Australian National University (B.Sc., LL.B.) before beginning his practice as a barrister.
In 1999, Risstrom became the first member of the Australian Greens Victoria to be elected to public office in Victoria when he was elected to Melbourne City Council with 9% of the primary vote, in a proportional representation electoral system. He was re-elected in 2001.
In 2004, Risstrom resigned from Melbourne City Council to contest the 2004 Australian federal election as the Victorian Greens candidate for the Australian Senate. He was unsuccessful when the Australian Labor Party supplied preferences through group voting tickets to the Family First Party and their lead candidate Steve Fielding above Risstrom. This was considered controversial given the significant political differences between the social democratic Australian Labor Party and the right wing social conservative Family First Party, and that the Greens had over 200,000 more primary votes than Family First.
Risstrom nominated for pre-selection to contest the 2007 Australian federal election as the Victorian Greens' candidate for the Australian Senate but did not succeed in winning the party's internal ballot for the lead candidate position.
Risstrom was selected as the Greens candidate for the federal seat of Cooper, previously named Batman, in the 2019 Australian federal election. Favoured by the previous perennial Greens candidate Alex Bhathal, Risstrom was subjected to internal scrutiny on eligibility resulting from the dual citizenship crisis in the Australian parliament, and emerged from power struggles within the party. The announcement was made by the Victorian senator Janet Rice several months before the 2019 federal election. The current member for Batman is the ex-president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Ged Kearney who is a vocal member of Labor's Left faction.

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