Since entering parliament, Ryan has advocated for a range of issues, and proposed a private member's bill to improve integrity in government.

[14] She was one of a number of centrist[15] Teal independents who campaigned to unseat moderate Liberal Party MPs on the basis of a lack of action on climate change among other policies.

[19][20] Ryan has stated she never attended any party meetings and quit Labor in 2010 due to dissatisfaction with their policies regarding climate change.

[21][22] Voices of Kooyong, an organisation former politics academic Ann Capling established, backed Ryan's campaign, which was reported to have 1,500 volunteers and more than 2,000 donors as of April 2022.

[28] On 5 May, Ryan and Frydenberg participated in a televised debate hosted by Sky News in front of a live audience at Hawthorn Town Hall.

[32] In response, Ryan announced she would be taking Special Minister of State Ben Morton to the Federal Court of Australia to argue telephone voting should be allowed for all COVID-positive voters.

[33] When polls closed on the day of the election, 21 May, Ryan was initially convinced she had no chance of victory, thinking Frydenberg was "a bridge too far" to defeat.

Three hours later, Australian Broadcasting Corporation's (ABC) election expert Antony Green stated Frydenberg would not get more than 43% of the two-candidate vote.

[45][46] In January 2023, Rugg resigned as Ryan's chief of staff and a court application was lodged alleging a breach of Fair Work Australia's (FWA) general protections.

[47][46][48] Rugg stated she had been forced to work excessive hours and that Ryan had justified this by saying she wished to be prime minister one day.

[61] In August 2023, Ryan signed a complaint the Cancer Council of Western Australia (WA) submitted to the Alcoholic Beverages Advertising Code panel (ABAC).

[63] Ryan has called for the release of Julian Assange, an Australian citizen who was being held in HM Prison Belmarsh in London, UK, while appealing a US extradition order to face charges there.

In September 2023, Ryan travelled to Washington, D.C., as part of a cross-party parliamentary delegation, which also included Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce, to lobby US politicians for their government to cease its campaign to extradite Assange.

[64][65] Stage three tax cuts, the final tranche of personal income-tax reforms legislated by the former Coalition government, were due to take effect in July 2024.

In October 2023, Ryan, along with crossbenchers Senator David Pocock and MP Dai Le, stated she opposed the stage-three cuts[66][67][68] which would mostly benefit middle-to high-income earners.

[70] In October 2023, Ryan stated her opposition to an electric vehicle tax, such as the one that had been introduced in Victoria, as a distance-based charge to recoup lost government revenue from petrol excise.

[73] During the campaign, Ryan criticised comments made by opposition leader Peter Dutton, who claimed there was a "skew" towards the Yes side in the counting of referendum votes.

[74] On 13 October 2023, following Palestinian terrorist group Hamas's attack against Israel, Ryan attended a pro-Israel rally in Caulfield, Melbourne.

[76] The Greens proposed an amendment to the resolution, adding a statement that said Parliament also condemned "war crimes perpetrated by the State of Israel, including the bombing of Palestinian civilians", which Ryan voted against.

[78] In response, the principal of a Jewish school in the electorate of Kooyong published an open letter criticising Ryan for not mentioning Israeli suffering in her statements.

[79] In November 2023, Ryan called for a "mandatory compensation scheme" for passengers whose flights are cancelled without warning, and stated Australian airlines were behaving as a "mafia of the skies".

[81] The Human Rights Law Centre praised the bill and called it "the most ambitious proposal to regulate lobbying put before federal parliament in decades".

[83] In January 2024, Ryan, along with other teals, opposed the Victorian state government's plans for the construction of a wind farm in the port of Hastings over concerns of damage to wetlands.

[84] Ryan has been a prominent advocate for changes to the HECS-HELP scheme, the loan program for Australian higher education students.

[87][88] Ryan's statements have been supported by fellow teal independents Zoe Daniel, Zali Steggall and Kylea Tink.

[85] In response, on 18 April, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese stated that the HECS system would be made "simpler and fairer" by measures in the May budget.