Ryan told the crowd the campaign, which focuses heavily on the environment, now had 1500 volunteers, had knocked on 10,000 doors and made 3000 phone calls.
Ryan said there were now 2000 properties in the seat displaying one of her signs.
“One in 50 homes in Kooyong has a sign up for this campaign,” Ryan said. “I know everyone in Australia is sick of the word unprecedented, but that is unprecedented.”
Ryan predicted the battle for Kooyong over the next six weeks “will be long and fierce”.
She said the seat was winnable, “but it’s going to be really, really close. Kooyong is not going to fall to an independent; it is going to rise to an independent”.
Some of the loudest applause at the event was reserved for Ryan’s comments on transparency in government.
“For far too long, too much money has been wasted on backroom deals, and we have seen the cost to our economy and our environment,” Ryan said.
She pointed to money wasted “on roads and dams that we don’t need to keep Barnaby Joyce happy. It has to stop, and it will not stop if the current government is re-elected on May 21”.
Former independent MP Cathy McGowan, who took the seat of Indi from Liberal Sophie Mirabella in 2013 and then retained it at the 2016 election, spoke at the launch.
She encouraged Ryan’s supporters to campaign relentlessly to get her the votes she needed to win.
McGowan asked supporters to consider holding a barbecue over Easter and, at the gathering, encourage friends and young voters to think about who they would support.
She noted that people may be going away for Easter, and questioned whether Ryan’s supporters might reconsider.
“Would a weekend invested at home in Kooyong with some strategic networking be more influential than heading off to the Mornington Peninsula?” she asked.
McGowan encouraged volunteers to wear their teal T-shirts everywhere so that voters remembered on election day.
“Wear out the T-shirts so that by the end of May they are in tatters,” she said.