Cr Armstrong, who is also Ararat Rural City Council’s deputy mayor, said the experience she gained from her first campaign, which she ran with the Nationals, would only push her to fight harder at local government level.

“I have zero regrets. I’ve learned so much and it’s been a really enriching experience for me in terms of gaining a deeper understanding of the dynamics at play in the political sphere,” she said. “I think it has given me a greater depth that I’ll be able to bring back to council.”

Cr Armstrong’s campaign platforms remain primary issues for her at local level.

“It’s reinforced the priorities. I live half-an-hour away from town and I’m reliant on fairly sub-standard services to maintain a connection in both my personal and my work life, so our dependence on roads is absolutely enormous,” she said.

“Those things that we are really focusing on in local government run very closely in parallel with the policy platform that the National Party had over the period, looking at roads and rail, connectivity and energy and all of those issues of decentralisation which are massive for us in the Ararat Rural City Council.

“We need to ensure as community leaders that we’re doing our very best to advocate for employment, housing, health care and education opportunities locally.”

Water security is another issue that Cr Armstrong said holds a “key opportunity” for the region’s future.  

While Cr Armstrong said it was too early to say definitively, she hadn’t “shut the gate” on plans to run again in four years’ time.

Until then, she will be watching with interest the impact of preference deals play out in the upper house.

“I hope there is going to be debate about the issue in Parliament that could lead to electoral reform,” she said.

“I think there is a good reason why the federal government and other states in Australia have discarded the system that Victoria has retained, and that’s a bipartisan view as far as I’m concerned. We want to have a healthy democracy in our state and I think voters enter the polling booth with a degree of trust that their vote is going to be an expression of their will, but it doesn’t turn out that way.”