Seeing a Family First candidate nodding along furiously in agreement with a Greens candidate is not something you would expect at an ACT election forum.
But then again this is not your typical candidate forum.
The people attending this forum are not so much concerned with candidates policies rather it's about who the candidate is as a person.
The Canberra Alliance for Participatory Democracy has held five of these forums across each electorate over the past week.
Convener Peter Tait said who the person was is an important part of good government.
"One of the elements of good government is having good representatives and one of the things that's important about good representatives is who the person is," Dr Tait said.
"This is a mechanism for voters and constituents to find out about who their candidates are as people beyond the policies their parties and groups might be promising."
About two dozen people went to the forum at the Tuggeranong Community Centre on Sunday afternoon.
The aforementioned moment of unity between Family First candidate Bruce Gartshore and Greens candidate and sitting MLA Laura Nuttall occurred when Ms Nuttall was discussing the importance of community engagement.
At the forum candidates are asked to answer five questions, including about their qualifications and experience, their leadership experience, how they would engage the community, how they would prioritise community interests over party and donor interests and how they would report back to the community.
Candidates have four minutes to answer these questions. None of the eight candidates at the Brindabella forum were able to answer their questions in the allotted time.
The room is set up with chairs in a large semi-circle. The chairs have the names of each of the candidates. Any candidate who does not attend has a chair making it very clear who did not show up.
There were eight candidates at the Brindabella forum and 16 empty chairs.
All three Independents for Canberra candidates attended as did the two Family First candidates. Two of the three Greens candidates attended. Only one Labor candidate, Brendan Forde, attended and there were no Liberal candidates.
Dr Tait said about one-third of all candidates attended the forums across all electorates. He said only one or two Liberals had attended.
Family First was the only party to have had all their representatives attend, excluding Elizabeth Kikkert whose candidacy was announced after the Ginninderra forum.
"It's been refreshing to see candidates come along to present themselves to voters as people rather than proponents of their party or groups' policy platform," he said.
"The educational aspect to our work in this election has been to raise a different way for candidates to think about electioneering and for voters to think about voting; that voting is not only on party lines or on policy issues but also to think about what personal skills and attributes candidates demonstrate to give us confidence that they can do their job for the public good."
While the candidates across the parties have some very different policy views there was an agreement politicians needed to do more to engage the community.
At the Brindabella forum, There was an acknowledgement that Tuggeranong can be isolated due to all politicians offices being in Civic and MLAs needed to ensure they were being seen within the local community.
Following the four-minute spiels, audience members are then invited to ask some questions. After all the questions are asked the candidates have two minutes to respond. They can choose what questions they respond to.
When the questions part of the forum starts some can't help but turn a little political.
One audience member directs her question to those in the established parties. A self-described leftie, she said she had been left disenfranchised by Labor and the Greens over recent months and wanted to know what they would do to change this.
Others are curious as to how the Independents for Canberra party would actually work if they held any crossbench power.
Candidates mostly do a good job at keeping policies out of their responses besides a tense moment at the end when Family First candidate Merle Graham spoke out against abortions. Some in the crowd made their displeasure known.
But making the community more involved with the political process is the ultimate aim for the Canberra Alliance for Participatory Democracy.
