UPDATE (29/11/08): For inside dope on progressive counting, Ben Raue of The Tally Room will feed through results provided by his contacts in the Greens. Andrew Landeryou at VexNews might be good for news from the other side of the fence. The Poll Bludger Investigations Unit is also at work in comments.
Local government is the proverbial bridge too far as far as my own commentary is concerned, but here by popular demand is a thread for reader discussion of the imminent Victorian council elections. I gather that most of these are held by post with a deadline of Friday, November 28 for receipt of ballots, but a few holdouts (Banyule, Brimbank, Greater Dandenong, Glen Eira, Hobsons Bay, Knox, Moreland, Port Phillip and my old home of Yarra) do it the old-fashioned way the following day (see the Victorian Electoral Commission for more detail).
Not sure how much success I’ll have with this, but it’s a worth a try. Readers who know or care about a particular local government contest are invited to write a brief, non-partisan overview in comments. If it meets my specifications I will give it a run up here, while keeping an ongoing invitation to other commenters to suggest additions or amendments. To get the ball rolling, I’ll start with everything I can tell you about the race for the lord mayoralty.
Melbourne City Council: After serving two four-year terms as lord mayor, John So is not seeking a third. The candidates to watch appear to be former state Liberal leader Robert Doyle; Adam Bandt, the Greens candidate who came within swinging distance of Lindsay Tanner in the seat of Melbourne at last year’s federal election; current councillor Catherine Ng; Will Fowles, who I’m told is from the Labor Left; Peter McMullin, former Geelong mayor and Labor election candidate linked to the party’s Right faction (although his running mate is the none too Labor-friendly Tim Wilson, director of the Institute of Public Affairs’ free trade unit); and Gary Morgan of Roy Morgan Research fame. The latter has helpfully furnished us with his very own opinion poll, which shows Doyle well ahead of Bandt on first preferences with Ng in third place. Second preferences are apparently set to produce a close race for second between Bandt, Ng and Morgan, with none posing a threat to Doyle. Bandt appears not to have done well out of preference recommendations, including those of candidates linked to Labor.
Darebin City Council: Three wards electing three councillors. Hat tip to Martin B and Caroline Church for the following.
Rucker ward: There are two Labor candidates, two Greens (Trent McCarthy and Helen Brown) and five others, only one of whom has much of an independent local profile – Darren Lewin-Hill. The ward is the stronghold of the Labor Unity sub-faction associated with state MPs Theo Theophanous and Nazih Elasmar, and is not being contested by the rival sub-faction of Michael Leighton and Robin Scott, the former and current members for Preston. At corresponding booths in the 2007 federal election, Labor polled 49 per cent of the primary vote, the Greens 31 per cent and Liberal 16 per cent. If those numbers are reflective of this vote, the result should be straightforward: one Labor and one Greens candidate will be comfortably elected, with the third seat going to the other Labor candidate or, less likely, Lewin-Hill if he can gather enough Labor preferences and votes from Liberals.
Cazaly ward: There are 17 candidates, nine of whom identify as Labor members (4 Unity, 4 Socialist Left, one unaligned), plus one Greens, one “conservative independent” (allegedly a former Labor member with a decidedly non-conservative activist history) and six other independents. The Labor candidates include incumbents Vince Fontana, a former mayor and member of the Leighton-Scott faction, and Alison Donohue, who is also receiving Leighton-Scott preferences but is apparently not directly linked. Haphazard preference arrangements suggests their proliferation might be down not to dummy candidates, as one might suspect, but to poor party organisation. Donohue and two other candidates, Ben Morgan and Joe Cutri, seem to have fared the best of the nine on preferences. The corresponding federal booth results were Labor 60 per cent, Liberal 20 per cent and Greens 16 per cent, suggesting Greens candidate Mohammed El-leissy will have to rely on Labor fragmentation to get a look-in.
La Trobe ward: Even more candidates than Cazaly ward, with better organisation lending greater credence to suspicions of dummy candidates. No fewer than 16 candidates recommend some permutation of preferences for Gaetano Greco and Tim Laurence of the Labor Socialist Left, while five candidates recommend preferences for the Unity ticket of Stanley Chiang (another associated of Leighton and Scott) and Tania Sharkas. Also on the receiving end of most Socialist Left preference arranagements is Melissa Salata of the Theophanous-Elasmar sub-faction of Labor Unity, who is hostile to the Leighton-Scott sub-faction. That leaves only the Greens candidate, Sara Scally, and another who recommends a preference to her. The campaign between the Socialist Left and Unity has been bitter: Laurence took internal party action against Chiang (which was dismissed), and there were counter-claims that Laurence broke party rules with his material. The federal election booth numbers here were Labor 62 per cent, Liberal 23 per cent and Greens 8 per cent, suggesting the issue is likely to be how the three seats divide between Socialist Left and Unity.
Banyule City Council: Consists of seven wards in Melbourne’s inner north-east. Olympia ward: Incumbent Anthony Carbines is chief-of-staff to Education Minister Bronwyn Pike (and the son of upper house MP Elaine Carbines), and thus unquestionably aligned to Labor. Beale ward: Incumbent Wayne Phillips was the Liberal member for Eltham from 1992 to 2002, when he became one of dozens of victims of the first Brackslide. Ibbot ward: Incumbent Tom Melican is said to be an independent. Hawdon ward: Vacant ward being contested by two Labor members, Sandra MacNeil and Martin Appleby, along with an independent and a Green. Grimshaw ward: Labor incumbent Dean Sherriff is being contested by two fellow party members, Frank Beard and Jess Paul. Sherriff’s career on council was saved in April 2007 when a conviction for criminal damage was overturned on appeal, but he retains a conviction for assault relating to the same incident. Griffin ward: Incumbent Jenny Mulholland challenged by Steve Walpole, a Labor member, and Dora Bergman, a one-time running mate of Mulholland. Bakewell ward: A rematch between Liberal incumbent Peter McKenna and Labor member Michael Paul, following a very close result in 2005. Andrew Landeryou’s VexNews reports that Greens candidate Ian Kirk has raised eyebrows by giving McKenna his second preference. A Greens supporter in comments claims this was in response to Paul’s attitude in preference negotiations, but the Labor camp insists discussions were entirely cordial until Kirk advised he would preference McKenna on the grounds that he was a “serious candidate”.
Glen Eira City Council: Glen Eira has gone against the prevailing trend by changing from postal to attendance voting. This has apparently discouraged dummy candidates, resulting in 26 nominations compared with 61 in 2005. The council consists of three wards which each elect three councillors, with seven sitting councillors seeking re-election. The assessments that follow come direct from Winston in comments. Camden ward: Michael Lipshutz and Helen Whiteside are standing for re-election and appear to be working together with the backing of the Liberal Party – although neither are members. Other candidates include local businessman Frank Penhalluriack (who actually lives in Kew) and a residents group ticket headed by Peter Blight. Lipshutz is a prominent member of the Jewish community and with over one third of the ward Jewish should have no problems getting re-elected. Penhalluriack has number one position on the voting card which will help him. Lipshutz, Whiteside and Penhalluriack are spending big and will probably be elected. Rosstown ward: Nine candidates. Three sitting councillors standing: Margaret Esakoff, Steven Tang and Rob Spaulding. This is the only ward with a Greens candidate – Neil Pilling – who could be the wild card as he is getting some flow of preferences. Tucker ward: Ten candidates, two sitting councillors standing: Nick Staikos (Labor) and Henry Buch (Liberal). Buch may struggle as he only recently joined council on a countback after the resignation of former Mayor David Feldman. Fellow Liberal and former councillor Jamie Hyams has scored number one position and should be elected. The other candidate with a chance is Jim Magee, who lead the fight to save the local swimming pool and polled well in the 2005 election.
Kingston City Council: The council has been reformed from seven single-member wards to three three-member wards. Hat-tip to Deano in comments for the following. North ward: Incumbent councillors Greg Alabaster and Arthur Athanasopolous are likely to be returned, but the third is up for grabs. Contestants are Paul Peulich, son of Liberal MP Inga Peulich, and Liz Larking, a past councillor and former ALP member. Mara Hayler is running for the Greens. Central ward: No fewer than 21 candidates have nominated, included 73-year-old mayor Bill Nixon and councillor Rosemary West. Other candidates include past councillor Ron Brownless, said to have done well out of preference recommendations, and John Natoli, an independent running a “well-organised campaign”. Three candidates have Labor links, including former state upper house MP Noel Pullen. Geoff Heard is said to be a “dark horse” and a “greenie”, although the actual Greens candidate is Dean Andrew. South Ward: John Ronke, incumbent for the Braeside Park ward, is said to be certain to win one of the three seats. Twelve candidates are competing for the other two. They include Donna Bauer, said to have run a “big spending campaign”; Trever Shewan, a former councillor; Carlos Lopez, the candidate of the Greens; Jeremy Nash, a member of the ALP; and Peter Wertheimer, an RSL captain.
Port Phillip City Council: JH writes in comments: “Another interesting council will be Port Phillip with the Unchain crew looking a reasonable chance in Catani Ward (Serge Thomann has been getting lots of press) and MAV boss Dick Gross could have a fight on his hands to be re-elected in Junction Ward. Having said that, I’ve not seen HTVs for anyone, so I don’t know who’s giving what. The Greens are running in every ward bar Albert Park, which is uncontested.”.
Bendigo Shire Council: The Greens have an incumbent mayor here in David Jones, seeking re-election in Kangaroo Flat ward. Another Greens incumbent is former mayor Julie Rivendell of Eppalock ward. The council consists of nine single-member wards: I gather councillors have an annual vote to determine who hte mayor will be for the coming year. The Greens between them have held the position for three of the past four years. North West Plains ward councillor Kevin Gibbins was a Liberal candidate at the 2004 federal and 2006 state elections.
Mount Alexander Shire Council: Commenter Follow the Preferences has high hopes for the Greens here. The council consists of the three-member Castlemaine ward in the centre, which is surrounded by the single-member rural wards of Tarrengower, Calder, Coliban and Loddon. The Greens have one incumbent in Philip Schier of Castlemaine ward, with Jan Garood and Doug Ralph respectively contesting Coliban and Calder.
381 Comments
I don’t live in Melbourne any more and I haven’t spoken to anyone in the Victorian ALP about this, but I expect Labor would prefer Doyle to Bandt. Doyle is a fairly moderate conservative and left parliament full of bile towards the state Liberals, so his election would not be seen as a victory for Ted Baillieu. Bandt on the other hand would use the Lord Mayoralty to build a base to challenge Labor in inner Melbourne at both state and federal levels. It’s a bit sad that the electoral politics of inner Melbourne and Sydney pit Labor and the Greens against each other, but that’s the fact of the matter. Labor has to defend its seats in these areas against the Greens, and if preferencing Doyle helps to do that, then that’s what will happen.
It is incorrect to describe Glen Eira as a holdout for having attendance voting because it has been introduced for this election (the council prior to the 2005 election decided on attendance voting but the decision was overturned after that council was sacked).
I have read attendance voting reduces stooge candidacy in urban councils.
The Melbourne City Council has been stacked with business votes by the City of Melbourne Act 2001.
The last person the state government wants in the Lord Mayor`s robes is Adam Bandt.
Adam if you want Labor and the Greens to stop fighting each other so intensely then you should support the introduction of PR in the lower houses.
Your statement about the electoral politics of inner Melbourne and Sydney has echoes of the whinge on television by Ms Pike after her narrow victory in 2006 where she said something like she was disappointed that the Greens had chosen to challenge Labor where progressive politics had been so strong for so long. Imagine the political storm if a Labor MLA in a Labor/Liberal marginal had complained about the Liberals challenging them.
Green gains are expected in these elections partly because more councils have multi-member wards (which all have PR (I have never got my head around how multi-member majority-preferential, which was the previous multi-member ward system (a good thing the Backs government removed it because it is undemocratic), works)).
The Greens have a perfect right to challenge Labor, and Labor has a perfect right to resist them.
I was not saying that you thought that that the Greens should not try and take seats off Labor but that there was a certain similarity in logic but your statement did not have the distinct undertone of wanting the seat still to be a safe Labor seat like she originally won preselection for.
Why do so many Candidates hide their political home!
It’s been a long-standing practice that the major parties don’t endorse candidates for local government elections, or else endorse them selectively. This is because of the abundant evidence that voters don’t like party politics in local council elections. The Liberals have never (as far as I can recall) run endorsed candidates for local government. You can bet that most of the independent councillors in middle-class areas are Liberal Party members. In Victoria Labor does so only in some of its heartland councils in the northern and western suburbs. So in the Lord Mayoral race there are two ALP members running but neither is an endorsed Labor candidate. In some councils there are “ALP supported” candidates running against each other – they are allowed to use the Labor logo but not to call themselves “endorsed Labor candidates.”
Members of a political party who do not have endorsements should have ‘endorsed (insert the name of their political party here)” written next to their name on the ballot paper.
I understand the tradition of the parties not endorsing someone but when I read the local rag and nearly everyone clames to be unaligned I feel cynical.
Dont know about you Tom, but if the government doesn’t want Adam as Lord Mayor, it seems to be a good reason to vote for him. Aside from his policies. And since Melbourne has been close to electing theGreens at local state and federal levels, his policies seem ok.
Is a shame the Morgan poll is such an obvious crock. We don’t know how people are travelling.
Then again, it’s only Mayor of Melbourne.
I think the finding that Doyle is leading is likely to be correct. There is a big non-resident business vote in the CBD and they will all go for Doyle. East Melbourne also votes Liberal. Bandt and the two Labor candidates will split the suburban vote. I don’t know what Ng’s base is – maybe some of the Chinese business community.
Is anyone here from Booroondara? I want to know how to find out about the candidates.
I agree with Adam. Doyle is the only figure in the race with serious profile, and he’s probably a moderate enough figure that he’ll get significant crossover support. I’d think Bandt and Ng would be next, but I’m a little bit surprised Singer isn’t doing better than he is, as So’s deputy.
In any case, that poll makes a lot more sense than the Centrebet results, which currently have McMullin leading ahead of the kooky right-wing guy, and look a bit like someone’s been dropping acid…
Tom @ 3
Whilst attendance elections may lessen the amount of stooges running, it certainly doesn’t stamp it out as has been evidenced in Moreland:
http://www.vec.vic.gov.au/MorelandCandidates.html
Adam @ 12
Whilst you may be correct in Fowles sharing the residential vote with Bandt, I’d suggest that McMullin is much more likely to share the business vote with Doyle, which is why those to are close to equal favourites according to Sportingbet (I’m not aware of a Centrebet market that Rebecca speaks of):
http://www.sportingbet.com.au/uipub/sport.aspx?l1id=34&l2id=1021325&l3id=1021326
JH, how do you know any or all of those candidates are “stooges”? In a multi-ethnic area like Moreland, running a “ticket” of candidates (a Greek, a Turk, a Lebanese, etc), who cross-preference each other so that one of them gets elected, seems a perfectly reasonable tactic. It’s no great secret and I don’t see anything wrong with it.
Boroondarra candidates are here:
http://www.vec.vic.gov.au/BoroondaraHome.html
The poll should be virtually disregarded for a number of reasons. Firstly, 30% haven’t made up their minds. Secondly, how did Morgan end up with 18% of the preferences from a tiny proportion of the primary vote?
And that doesn’t even make sense. He’d be getting excluded fairly early on so none of those preferences would be coming to him anyway.
Doyle would be good because he is a moderate politician and does have a semi-high profile compared with other candidates and a profile does mean something in these races…just look at Boris over in London.
I dont think the Greens honestly have a shot.
It is between Doyle and some of the other non-political groups.
I think Doyle will win big with residents living especially near or along St. Kilda Road…lots of voters there he should pick up and im one of them.
Colac Otway has former Liberal staffer Simon Price running perhaps to set up a run for Corangamite in 2010. The Green-endorsed candidate has a controversial record on the Council. have endorsed Warrnambool has 2 ALP members unendorsed and an endorsed Green running.
Hi Geoff – can you or anyone else tell me who this Greens candidate is, and why he or she is controversial. I’ll then have enough for an entry on Colac Otway in my post, although more detail would be helpful. I assume we’re talking about a separate election for the mayoralty here? Also, can you tell me anything more about Warrnambool? I take it your last sentence didn’t come out right.
I’m working on a new version of Cassandra, my preferential voting calculator, and I fired it up for a test spin with the Gary Morgan poll.
Using the 2nd preferences to pad up their votes (as per the poll) the result was Catherine Ng elected on Gary Morgan preferences. However, as some people have noted, there’s something fishing about the 2nd preference question on that poll. I think to show Morgan himself is still in the race (although I don’t think he is at all!)
Distributing the 30% unknown vote roughly proportionally between the top 6 candidates (eg Doyle 37%, Green 24%, Ng 15%, Singer 7%, Morgan 5%, Columb 4%), the result was also Catherine Ng elected, but this time on Green preferences.
But who knows what this version of Cassandra is doing under the hood at the moment!
2nd (probably better) scenario results:
* C Melbourne Grow
Rundown:
* At this point, no candidates had quota, so started eliminating
* Eliminated Shifting the Burden
* Eliminated Melbourne Supercity. World
* Eliminated Residents Equity
* Eliminated McMullin-Wilson For Melbourne’s Future
* Eliminated Passion for Melbourne
* Eliminated Fowles A Fresh Vision
* Eliminated Team Melbourne
* Eliminated Morgan Clarke Our City
* Eliminated The Greens
* Elected C Melbourne Grow from quota
—
1st Scenario Results:
* C Melbourne Grow elected.
Rundown:
* Eliminated Shifting the Burden
* Eliminated Melbourne Supercity. World
* Eliminated Residents Equity
* Eliminated Passion for Melbourne
* Eliminated Fowles A Fresh Vision
* Eliminated Team Melbourne
* Eliminated McMullin-Wilson For Melbourne’s Future
* Eliminated The Greens
* Eliminated Morgan Clarke Our City
* Elected C Melbourne Grow from quota
Hi William,
According to the Victorian Greens site, the candidate for Colac Otway is Stephen Hart. No mention of this candidate having been on council before. To some people ANY Green candidate is controversial! Hart is not listed as being a current councillor on Colac Otway Shire.
Hmm, although now that I look at it, Morgan hangs in there to quite late in both scenarios
While I’m clearly not impartial, I don’t think the Morgan poll for Lord Mayor is rubbish in terms of its assessment of first preferences, at the time it was taken. The second preference line Morgan tried to run was, in my view a little odd. However, the candidates who are spending six figure sums (Singer, McMullin, Ng, Doyle, Morgan, Fowles) subsequently filled our letterboxes with stuff (McMullin’s taking the low road to the top job, which cost an extra $100,000 or more). We’re in the race though, in spite of being outspent many times over. It seems McMullin thinks the race is between him, us and Ng. If he felt Morgan, Singer or Doyle were in the race, he’d have smeared them too. Doyle’s been very low profile; apart from a piece of paper in the mail, and a billboard or two, there’s been nothing. The only person to knock on my door was someone for Will Fowles (who perhaps didn’t notice the green triangles in the window).
Most of the votes would be in the post by now. All we get to do is wait. For those who think betting markets are more accurate than polls, I respectfully disagree.
Yarra’s going to be interesting. We’re in with a chance at four of nine, and will almost certainly get three. What will be interesting will be to see whether Cr Jolly is returned. If he’s not, then I think Cr Farrar will be returned along with Amanda Stone.
Moreland’s stooge city this time around. Word is Labor’s flooded the place with candidates to try to retain control of the council. I’m not convinced that’s going to help (without commenting on the ethics of such a course of action). Preference leaks are almost inevitable when you put up that many people.
He’s either the last excluded or the second last, in both your scenarios. That seems a little odd for someone with 5% of the primary.
Stephen Hart (http://www.stephenhart.id.au/about.html) was on council from 02-04, and has a golden slogan (almost as good as Zed’s from the ACT). He only just missed out last time in 04, and with the new unsubdivided council is much better placed to make a return.
The Greens candidate for Warrnambool is Lisa Owen.
Both have links going to their sites from http://www.vic.greens.org.au/vote-green/2008/
Hmm, well, here’s more information for the second scenario.
Elimated Shifting the Burden
Preferences: 100.0% flows to The Greens,
Elimated Melbourne Supercity. World
Preferences: 100.0% flows to Fowles A Fresh Vision,
Elimated Residents Equity
Preferences: 100.0% flows to Team Melbourne,
Elimated McMullin-Wilson For Melbourne’s Future
Preferences: 100.0% flows to Fowles A Fresh Vision,
Elimated Passion for Melbourne
Preferences: 100.0% flows to Morgan Clarke Our City,
Elimated Fowles A Fresh Vision
Preferences: 40.82% flows to Activate Melbourne, 16.33% flows to The Greens, 42.86% flows to Morgan Clarke Our City,
Elimated Team Melbourne
Preferences: 10.26% flows to Activate Melbourne, 89.74% flows to C Melbourne Grow,
Elimated Morgan Clarke Our City
Preferences: 54.95% flows to The Greens, 45.05% flows to C Melbourne Grow,
Elimated The Greens
Preferences: 19.24% flows to Activate Melbourne, 80.76% flows to C Melbourne Grow,
C Melbourne Grow elected.
Hmm, anyone else notice Activate Melbourne (the Doyle ticket) is not being eliminated in these test runs? Damn it Cassandra! You’ve lied to me again! Still, I feel confident saying that Morgan and Ng have done well out of preferences, and Singer (Team Melbourne) haven’t done so well.
Is elimate a half world between elevation and elimination. Do these candidates hover in a nether world of uncertainty forever.
haha never share half-finished software with people. It’s never just the bugs, it’s also the spelling mistakes!
In a few scenarios I’ve generated, Singer actually wins. That Shelley Roberts is preferencing him high up gives him the edge over Ng – if Singer + Roberts is more than Ng, and there is a very good chance that that will be the case, then Singer will collect Ng’s preferences, overtake Doyle and when Doyle or McMullin are excluded, might be home.
Further to that point, it has to be said that this race will likely be much more like the 2001 election than the 2004 election, that is, that the primary votes will go SPLAT with many candidates scoring in that 10% to 14% range. Any slight nuanced changes in primary vote estimates can generate wildly different preferencing scenarios.
For example:
1. Under the right conditions, Fowles can comfortably win (through having him pick up Crawford, Morgan, McMullin and finally Bandt – but this requires Singer beating Ng and Fowles + Crawford beating McMullin).
2. Under the right conditions, Singer can comfortably win (through having him pick up Roberts, Ng and Doyle in that order, from which position he can theoretically beat any of Fowles, Bandt or McMullin).
3. Under any of many scenarios, Ng can comfortably win.
4. Under the right conditions, Bandt can scrape through (provided at least 40% of McMullin’s primary voters use his mailed HTV card rather than the VEC-lodged HTV card* – in this scenario I have Bandt, Doyle and McMullin finishing in the last three, with McMullin’s exclusion getting Bandt over the line. This scenario also required Ng to be excluded before Singer).
5. McMullin and Doyle can both comfortably win too, but they’ll need a decent primary vote, as they both have very awkward preference deals.
Moral of the story: anything could happen, and the election will be decided by preference deals more so than the ideology of individual voters. Note that that’s not a whinge (disclaimer: I’m a Green), just a realistic observation that the vast majority of the 98,000 electors of Melbourne City Council have not researched the ideological slant or political allegiance of all eleven candidates, or exactly who their preferences might be helping to elect. Hell, if people don’t do it in Federal elections, they’re not going to do it in Local elections.
The final point I’d like to make is that Sportingbet’s assertion that Nick Columb is third most likely to win is TOTALLY NUTS.
* Where I mentioned in the above post that McMullin has two HTV cards, this is what I was referring to:
Preference backdown
Herald Sun, November 7th 2008
By Ian Royall
MELBOURNE mayoral candidate Peter McMullin has made an embarrassing back down over a preference deal for this month’s city election.
Mr McMullin was earlier this week accused of reneging on a preference swap deal with rival Nick Columb. But Mr McMullin said yesterday he would honour the original agreement.
His how-to-vote cards will give Mr Columb’s Passion for Melbourne ticket his third preference.
…
Under the latest deal, Robert Doyle will drop from third preference on Mr McMullen’s ticket to 10th.
That is:
Under the VEC-lodged HTV card (which is in the booklets that arrive with ballot papers), McMullin is directing his preferences as follows:
1. McMullin
2. Fowles
3. Doyle
4. Singer
5. Ng
6. Crawford
7. Columb
8. Roberts
9. Bandt
10. Morgan
11. Toscano
But in the HTV that he sent out seperately, that arrived in letterboxes last week, McMullin is recommending:
1. McMullin
2. Fowles
3. Columb
4. Singer
5. Ng
6. Roberts
7. Crawford
8. Bandt
9. Toscano
10. Doyle
11. Morgan
Obviously, this will mean very different outcomes depending on how many of McMullin’s primary voters follow which card.
For the record, the lower list is what was originally negotiated, and the upper list is what was submitted after a (literally) last-minute change by some factional hacks on McMullin’s team.
Oh, and Adam @ 16 – FYI:
http://www.theage.com.au/national/upheaval-likely-as-vote-approaches-20081116-6841.html?page=-1
In Moreland, the ALP-dominated council last week voted to send a letter to the state president of the Victorian ALP expressing council’s regret that ALP-supported candidates were using “stooges” or dummy candidates.
Dummy candidates are often candidates claiming to be “independent”, but in reality their sole purpose is to funnel votes to other candidates.
JH, I don’t have any local knowlwedge of that area but no doubt it’s just a bit of factional shadow boxing. They’ll all exchange preferences and live happily ever after.
Are Docklands residents still part of melbourne council? There was talk for a long time that Docklands would split from Melbourne City and become its own council. Did this ever happen?
If Docklands residents can vote in MCC, that would also be a pretty good area for Doyle.
Some of the regional areas are interesting, In Mount Alexander (Castlemaine) there is a strong Green v Developer campaign. This is an area that voted 25% in the senate for the Greens and has some of the best booths in the country. Presently 1 Green councillor expect 3 more to join him and for there to be a Green Mayor in this council. Further up the Highway we have a current Green Mayor in Bendigo being supported by 4 other endorsed Greens and again a split of different interest groups and political affiliations. Country and regional areas are a good example of why the established ‘don’t run endorsed candidates’ mantra is outdated. In one of the wards in Bendigo one of the councillors seeking re-election has stood in the last Federal campaign as a Liberal, then the last State against a ALP minister, again as the endorsed Liberal, now claiming to be an independant, does not do much for the credibility.
Historically the conservatives have run this not politics in local government. Remember that only ratepayers got the vote until Kennett.
MDMConnell, Docklands wasn’t part of the City of Melbourne yet last election. This election it is, and there’s no push for it to form its own LGA.
Docklands residents might also return high votes for the Morgan and Fowles tickets, on the councillor tickets at least, due to candidates on those teams living in the suburb.
follow the preferences @ 38
The Greens are actually only running 3 candidates in Mount Alexander, including the incumbent Philip Schier, so it will be difficult for them to have 3 more join him. And just to follow what you said about Bendigo, in the last 4 years, 3 of them have seen a Greens mayor (Julie Rivendell once and David Jones twice).
Also, I believe Ballarat may have a (at least one, anyway) similar “Liberal” candidate who has been the endorsed Lib for a couple of elections, and is now campaigning on an “independent – keep party politics out of local government” theme.
All this talk reminds of one of the greatest Australian television shows ever produced – Grass Roots.
If you haven’t seen, get the DVD and watch it now.
I WISH Melbourne City Council elections were as simple as those in Arcadia Waters!
Simple!!!
It took a whole few episodes worth of back room negotiations to elect a Mayor and Deputy Mayor.
I stand by my comment!
Trying to get eleven Mayoral candidates’ preference negotiators to come to any sort of agreement is like herding cats.
A pox on preference negotiations.
Preference negotiations are Australia’s unique contribution to world psephology. Whole dissertations have been written about our preferences negotiations. They are the duck-billed platypus, the spiny anteater of psephology.
Adam wrote:
> East Melbourne also votes Liberal.
I don’t say you’re incorrect, as I haven’t done a comprehensive survey myself, but As an East Melbourner who generally votes Green and know quite a few others of similar leanings, I’m curious to know where your information comes from.
Here are the 2006 booth results for Melbourne district with East Melbourne being one of two booths where the Libs came first in primary vote.
http://www.vec.vic.gov.au/state2006FPVbyVotingCentreMelbourneDistrict.html
The poster who formerly lived in Melbourne pontificates:
Is this based on research from the the Weimar Republic or later?
And treated in the same way by the ecology free zone that is the ALP: ie. with contempt.
Vide the behaviour of the ALP in Blacktown’s Fifth Ward at the recent LGA elections. The conclusion that can be drawn from that little episode is that any candidate doing a deal with the ALP would be advised to wait till they see the HTV being handed out at booths on polling day before agreeing to any preference deal.
it’s easy to criticise party politics in local govt, but in Warrnambool we have candidates mostly with identikit policy statements: proactive, engaged, listens to community etc. etc. although some are particularly concerned about one car park. Democracy is weakened when nobody knows what candidates stand for
Re politics in local government, there is tonnes of evidence that if you run for council and say I’m an endorsed ‘Blah” that you will get a fairly good return.
Where is the evidence that the majority don’t want people to be honest.
SNIP: Off-topic comment deleted – The Management.
Melbourne City Council, front runner and celebrity candidate, Robert Doyle failed to front up to the Press Council’s grill the candidates’ breakfast.
Doyle’s absence and lack of commitment to the City election has been a notable talking point throughout the campaign. By not tuning up to meetings and public events Robert Doyle has avoided public scrutiny and questioning over his leadership and policies for Melbourne. The level of contempt shown by Robert Doyle seriously undermines confidence in the the direct election of Lord mayor.
Robert Doyle has been a silent puppet candidate with his Deputy candidate, Susan Riley, pulling the strings. Susan Riley was John So’s former Deputy Lord Mayor before being dumped by John So in favour of Gary Singer.
He has thumbed his nose at the people of Melbourne and expects to be elected Lord Mayor on the strength of his name alone. Robert Doyle’s lack of participation and minimial activity in the campaign does nothing to support his billboard campaign slogan “Activate Melbourne”.
The Victorian Electoral Commission to is set to deny proper and effective scrutiny of the Municipal ballot – setting the scene for a repeat of the mistakes made in conduct of the 2006 State Election.
The Victorian Electoral Commission intends on using a computerised counting system to count single-member electorates and in the process will deny opportunity for the proper and detailed scrutiny of the ballot which in turn brings the electoral system into disrepute.
There is no justification for a the use of a computerised count for single-member electorates or the City of Melbourne ‘Lord Mayor’ Leadership Team.
In multi-member electorates a computerised count can assist in the filling of casual vacancies but there is no advantage in conducting a computerised count for single-member elections. Any savings in time comes at the expense of the scrutiny of the ballot. We could very much see a repeat of the mistakes made by the Victorian Electoral Commission during the 2006 State Election.
Unlike the State Election the Victorian Electoral Commission will not pre-sort ballot papers into primary votes before subjecting the ballots to a computerised data-entry count.
The process adopted by the Victorian Electoral Commission is akin to the three shells and a pea used by con artists. A ball is placed and hidden under a shell and then the shells are rotated and mixed-up and the punter has to guess which shell the pea is under.
Ballot papers will be randomly collated and batched before preferences are transcribed and data-entered into a computer. Whilst scrutineers will have the opportunity to observe the data-entry process they will not be able to effectively observe all ballot papers.
The quality of the count would be better if single-member electorates where counted manually as it provides more opportunity for the proper scrutiny of the ballot. By pre-sorting the ballot papers into primary votes scrutineers can follow the count and focus their attention on the votes that count. The randomisation of the data-entry process prevents the proper scrutiny of the ballot.
The Victorian Electoral Commission does not use a system of double entry validation, instead they use what is referred to as random sampling quality checking, This system has a number of short comings which is unacceptable where the results of the election are likely to be close. Radom sapmpliying is fine in a manufatoring process where strict contyrol is not required but it bwould be unaceptable for a bank to use a random sampling process in teh conting of money. It is also unacceptable in the counting of votes.
The time and resources required to undertake a computerised count for single-member electorates is the same, if not more, then a manual counting process. More important is that the quality of the count and the scrutiny of the ballot is significantly reduced as a result of a computerised count.
The use of a computerised counting system for single-member elections is a case of Boys with Toys.
The Victorian Electoral Commission has spent millions of dollars duplicating resources and developing a computerised counting system. having spent allthis money dupolicating systems atht are already used by the Australian Electoral Commison the VEC consider it is necessary to use the computersied counting software even though the results and savings in the process are minimal if not worst.
A computerised counting system should not be used for single member electorates.
Where a computerised count is undertaken, ballot papers should be pre-sorted into primary votes before being transcribed and data-entered into a computerised counting system.
Sportingbet Australia have made a surprising change in the odds on offer for the outcome of the Lord Mayors Race, just as the Melbourne leader publishes a story on the Sportingbet’s “A” list candidates.
Prior to today Sportingbet had Peter McMullin (3.25), Robert Doyle (3.5) and Catherine Ng (3.8) listed as the favourites to win the Melbourne Spring Carnival closing event.
For reasons unknown the “A” list of candidates has changed overnight. Racing identity, Nick Columb (4.2 up from 11.0) has come from behind and overtaken Catherine Ng (5.0 down from 3.8) who has lost ground. Robert Doyle remains steady on 3.5 with Peter McMullin (3.4 down from 3.25) dropping slightly in his lead as the gap narrows.
The reason for this change of odds is unexplained as are the positioning in the betting table.
Could Nick Columb and his mates down at the track know something we don’t?
Another conspiracy by the VEC, then?
There are three main candidates for the Lord Mayor and depending on their vote and the flower to the council tickets the results of the Council (7 member) electionaremore or less known. I would not work off Morgans dodgy poll. He has double counted the stats to make himself look good.
The three main contenders for Lord Mayor are Doyle, Ng and McMullin. Column is an interesting bet but he has no coverage. Overall the city of more or less divided, 30% Labor 30% Liberal 20 S0-ites and 20% Green independents. I will not go into detail of the anticipated count at this time other then to say that the Greens will get elected. 65% of punters choice their candidates and follow the HTV in the published book. Doyle’s campaign is the key to the outcome. he is expected to pick up a significant number of inverse donkey votes. (Votes where people preference their chosen candidate then a then preference through from top to bottom those remaining.)
John So never won the popular vote but he did pick but a significant drift in preferences. The Greens had 9% last election and they only pick up 1.5% from the newly added area of Kensington (In the Senate Election the Greens won 25% of the Kensington vote) and yes you may say that Local Government is not the Senate this has been taken into consideration . And those that reject the notion of party Politics in Local Government (The keep politics out of Politics con) The Greens have not poled too well and their preference deals are not in their favour. Catherine NG is best placed in terns of picking up preferences and coming up the middle. Catherin Ng is in fact a “sleeping Tory” who has promised to used Town Hall in her campaign of Opposition to the State Government
The State Government may yet regret the day that left Minister Bob Cameron opted for a direct election model.
Cassandra
If you have Casandra up and running then maybe you can use it for the 7 councillor positions. 95% of punters will vote above the line. The City of Melbourne being the only municipality with the flawed senate counting system. Add to that the other flaws in the way the VEC calculates the Surplus transfer and distributes exclusions the results will prove most interesting. Not just in Melbourne but in many other Municipalities that will for the first time use a proportional voting system. It would be interesting to also include Moreland which will be decided by the single 5 member ward. The rest are going to be more or less a rude awaking for some municipalities as they will find that they have to share dinners seats at the table with “outsiders” for the first time. Stonington could also be interesting to watch if not at the election in the year ahead.
Postal Vote closed Early
The other issue that has not had any real consideration is that most municipalities are using a postal voting system. The ballot will close on Friday November 28 at 6:00PM. How many people will rock up on the Saturday expecting to cast an absentee vote we will never know. It would have been more inclusive had the postal ballot closed on the Money following the “Election day” as opposed to 24 hours earlier.
I will not be surprised if the state Government comes under fire for what is a very poorly considered and executed election. But then Christmas and apathy will always dampen any disgruntled punters.
MDM Connell @ 8:28 pm #57
it is not a conspiracy more like a stuff up and plain incompetence and wasted resources. The VEC uses a random sampling quality control method in its counting system. This is find for manufacturing process but you would not see a bank adopt it. by contrast the AEC uses a double entry verification quality control. The letters is much more accurate and with a recount the error rates are very small.
It is impossible to properly scrutinise a data-entry counting system where the ballot papers are randomly batched. The VEC should be required to presort the ballot papers into primary votes (as is the case in Federal and State elections) prior to data entry. There is no benefit in using a computers data-entry counting system for single member electorates (That includes the City of Melbourne Leadership-team ballot)
Some reference was made earlier to Boroondara. The election in Boroondara will be by single councillor wards, thanks to a campaign orchestrated by Diane Anderson, Jeff Kennett, Mary Drost and Ken Coghill. Fairfax local newspapers see the latter as its authority on local government. He’s not, and he lives in the nineteenth century. The four people mentioned campaigned to get the VEC to adopt single councillor wards, and they were unfortunately successful.
Boroondara has ten single councillor wards. Only in one ward, Solway, does any ALP candidate have a chance, and the Libs are allowing this to happen.
There are less candidates this time than last time. A local blog, http://www.boroondaravotereform.blogspot.com has exposed the activities of former Labor Speaker in the Legislative Assembly Ken Coghill and is now supporting Kroger candidates in the Liberal Party, whoever these are.
Dummy candidates exist, but they are not making themselves obvious.
What a pity Jeff Kennett didn’t run for Melbourne Lord Mayor? Rumour has it the exposure on the blog http://www.boroondaravotereform.blogspot.com of Kennett’s intention to make ALP Higgins activist Diane Anderson his campaign manager forced him to withdraw. Also the boroondara blog claimed Diane Anderson was the force behind both Kennett and Boroondara activist Mary Drost (Mary has been a contributor to Diane’s Higgins News, despite the fact that she’s a very conservative Lib).
Making Diane your campaign manager is a stupid move Jeff, and I’m pleased you saw the light.
Also the most recent item on the boroondara blog urges voters in council elections to refuse to support ALP candidates and their dummies, and to support Kroger faction candidates, presumably when they identify themselves and I’ve yet to find any.
Funny that. Robert Doyle used to contribute to the blog that no longer exists the Melbourne media claimed was controlled by former ALP state secretary Erik Locke (who I think is a very decent man) all his press releases so lazy journos would pick them up, and sometimes they did. On the Locke blog last time Doyle urged voters to reject ALP candidates and their dummies. Seems one of his supporters is using identical language on the boroondara blog!
With all respect Dr Ken Coghill, who was speaker of the Victorian parliament is very much an authority on local government. Diane Anderson is not. The ALP’s push for single member electorates in so called ALP safe seats is obvious seeking to maintain the political advantage. The VEC when it came up with its patchwork quilt of electoral representation models tended to favour single member constituencies in ALP dominated areas. (I fail to see why Hobson Bay was not a 3 x 3 ward council yet stonington was – they both should have adopted a three x three model. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that Steve Bracks was the local member in Williamstown – A some claim the VEC is independent). The patchwork approach to local government reform in Victoria has little to desire. Nillumbik council should have also been a 3 x 3 model as opposed to the nine single member wards. Those municipalities like Moreland where there are differing number of representatives in each ward will produce the worst outcome. Each ward/electorate should have been equal in quota percentage as well as number of constituents. Whilst wards give the perception of a community of interest the fact is that the council votes as a whole on all issues and so called community of interest are not necessarily based around geographic neighbourhoods.
Banyule has an election too. Seems there is something strange in the water out there.
http://www.vexnews.com/news/1541/plants-has-the-greens-party-been-infiltrated-by-a-shrewd-northern-suburbs-liberal-machine/
Sorry mean to say that the Greens will get NOT be eleted in the above post
Democracy@work @ 58
“John So never won the popular vote but he did pick but a significant drift in preferences.”
Say what? In 2004 he got over 19,000 first preferences from about 49,000 votes. Greens came second with just over 4,000. Sounds like he won the popular vote to me.
Glen Eira Council is interesting as it has changed from postal to attendance voting (probably the only council to do this).
In 2005 (with postal voting) there were 61 candidates across 3 wards – each electing 3 councillors. It was well known that at least half the 2005 candidates were dummies – and by dummies I mean they nominated but did no campaigning and almost all directed their preferences to a particular group of candidates aligned with the Liberal Party.
This election there are 26 candidates. It appears that the change to attendance voting has discouraged candidates from running dummies – as to pass on preferences they would need to campaign and produce how-to-vote cards.
One exception seems to be Nellie Khoroshima who has been a serial dummy candidate – standing in the previous 2 elections in different wards.
Also of interest is the candidature of Frank Penhalluriack, the rebel hardware store owner who spent time in gaol in the 70’s for opening on Sundays. Frank has had a number of planning applications turned down by council recently and was made to remove illegally built structures on his business property. He doesn’t actually live in the municipality – and had previously sponsored the discredited Mayor Peter Goudge (who didn’t live in the area either). Perhaps he’s hoping for better treatment if he gets elected.
There is a reasonable chance of getting 3 Green councillors at this election in Glen Eira (3 wards x 3 seats).
The Green pre-poll vote will be higher that the Green vote on election day because of the pre-poll booth coverage.
That would be very difficult Tom @ 67 a there is only a Green candidate standing in one ward.
You are right but if they were standing candidates then they might win one of three in each ward.
Winston John did not win over 50% of the vote and as such he did not win the popular vote. Thanks god our elctoralsyustem is not first past the post. teh direct election system has failed to deliver good governance. The Greens received 9% primary in 2004. They were never going to be elected. If you so confident in Green brand power then I wuggest you log on to Sportingbet who are also offering good odds. I have done some extensive modelling of the elctroate and I am copnfident that teh greens will not come close to winning the seat. There are three main contenders for the lord mayor as I have stated above. With one week to still go in the ballot, I would be pleased to share with you some of teh profiling analysius but it will have to wait a little longer. but it is not hard to do,. Start by looking at the 2005 results and make a comparison/correctuion based on the State Election and Senate results and you have the base in which to then build on. I willgoive you one hint..Whislt the state and senate elction are good indicators they do not represent the electorate. You really need to go back and look more closely at the 2004 results, If you nknow the electorate you then need to redistibute John So’s and James Long vote. HAVE FUN. I LOOK FORWARD TO YOUR ANALYSIS. IF YOU CARE TO PROVIDE SOME PERCENTAGES WE CAN TEST YOUR SKILL AND TELL YOU THE OUTCOME OF THE SEVEN COUNCILORS
Winston… Since when has it been a requirement to live in the electorate. That is a nice cheapshot but it has no real bearing on a persons ability to represent their electorate.
Here is the 2004 City of Melbourne LM results Try and reallocate the vote to todays candidate list. I would be interetsed in your assessment backed by by some had facts and stats.
Candidates”.”Team”.”1st Pref Votes”.”“
“LM 2004”.”“.”“.”“
“POROCHOWSKY, Christian (Lord Mayor)”.”YOUTH FOR AUSTRALIA”.”777”.”1.43%”
“MORGAN, Gary (Lord Mayor)”.”MELBOURNE CIVIC GROUP – THE CITY’S FUTURE”.”3545”.”6.52%”
“DI NATALE, Richard (Lord Mayor)”.”THE GREENS – FOR A LIVING CITY”.”4187”.”7.71%”
“LONG, James (Lord Mayor)”.”ADVANCE MELBOURNE”.”2680”.”4.93%”
“LEE, Wellington (Lord Mayor)”.”TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY”.”742”.”1.37%”
“VULIN, Milo (Lord Mayor)”.”MELBOURNE ARTS FASHION DESIGN INNOVATION”.”240”.”0.44%”
“BARRY, Matthew (Lord Mayor)”.”RESIDENTS FIRST:-STOP THE RATES RIPOFF”.”1312”.”2.41%”
“CHAMBERLIN, Kevin Francis (Lord Mayor)”.”KEVIN CHAMBERLIN FOR MELBOURNE”.”3552”.”6.54%”
“COLLINS, Neil Desmond (Lord Mayor)”.”GROWING MELBOURNE”.”656”.”1.21%”
“COLLINS, Raymond (Lord Mayor)”.”ACTIVE. LOCAL. PROGRESSIVE.”.”1550”.”2.85%”
“FINN, Joan (Lord Mayor)”.”MELBOURNE FOR PEOPLE”.”246”.”0.45%”
“WATSON, Allan James (Lord Mayor)”.”RESPONSIBLE RATEPAYERS”.”505”.”0.93%”
“MORRISON, Peter (Lord Mayor)”.”MELBOURNE: OPEN FOR BUSINESS”.”253”.”0.47%”
“COOPER, John (Lord Mayor)”.”MELBOURNE FIRST”.”974”.”1.79%”
“STOOKE, Warren (Lord Mayor)”.”MELBOURNE AT WORK”.”531”.”0.98%”
“PERRY, Pamela (Lord Mayor)”.”SAVE OUR STREETS”.”240”.”0.44%”
“HUGHES, James (Lord Mayor)”.”GREENING MELBOURNE”.”343”.”0.63%”
“McGEE, Steven (Lord Mayor)”.”!ST@ND UP 4 MELBOURNE!”.”503”.”0.93%”
“TAI, Melissa (Lord Mayor)”.”MELBOURNE NIGHTLIFE”.”480”.”0.88%”
“SO, John (Lord Mayor)”.”MELBOURNE LIVING”.”19114”.”35.17%”
“NEWTON-BROWN, Clem (Lord Mayor)”.”SERVING MELBOURNE”.”2911”.”5.36%”
Now break it down and distribute the vote to this years list
Fowles Ng Singer Doyle Morgan Columb Greens
You can include the others if your wish. I expect they represent no more then 5% of the overall vote and they will not preference in one directon. Oh I also think the informal vote and non partipation rate will be higher this year. The real issue out there is the ‘economy stupid.
Sorry the list left off McMullin
Should read McMullin Fowles Ng Singer Doyle Morgan Columb Greens
Go to it profilers … Allocate a percenatge to each of the above candidates using on the 2004 results as a starting point.
Caroline Church@61
I think what really sucked the wind out of Kennett’s mayoral sails was his ill-advised sledging of the gay community (which while not large enough in Melbourne to get a person elected, is probably large enough to sink someone). It occurred right at the formative time for his mayoral run and probably subtly shifted the landscape just enough to force him out.
I’ve added sketchy overviews of Mount Alexander, Bendigo, Banyule and Glen Eira, based on what I’ve been told by readers. Would be delighted if any informed local observers could fill in some of the gaps. Would obviously like to hear on other councils as well – surely there’s some good Labor-versus-Greens biffo going on in the inner-city?
Adam, that “VexNews” article is a piece of crap. As is VexNews.
I still don’t know if it’s an Onion-esque satire or supposed to be taken seriously. Either way, it’s not remotely funny and full of unsubstantiated crap.
This bit in particular:
“The suggestion that upper house MP Greg Barber might have sanctioned the establishment of a Blue-Green “Aqua” faction of Greens Party pro-development low-tax conservatives was vigorously denied by the source.”
Will be laughed at by anyone who has any idea of how The Greens work.
Also ridiculous is the notion that keeping rates at current levels, tackling vandalism, engaging with local businesses and improving planning regulations and laws are some anti-Greens policies.
FAR OUT.
Why do I keep calling you Adam?
This is getting a bit weird.
*William.
So it’s not the case that “Greens candidate Ian Kirk has raised eyebrows by giving McKenna his second preference”?
William the Greens are more or less resigned to the fact that they will not win the Lord Mayor. They will win one seat in the City of melbourne and that’s all. In Yarra two to three. At best they poll 25% on average 9%. There is some concern and backlash against the Greens on the economic agreement and it is hard at this stage to know if the economic down turn is focusing voters attention. I suspect it will.
Oz,
The Greens have preferenced a Liberal pro development hack who is an up front “Climate Change’ denialist. Would have thought that was core business for Greens supporters.
Obviously not.
The age did a beat up on Google.
The Age newspaper published yesterday a free campaign plug for Catherine Ng who has falsely claimed that her opponents had initiated a google cyber attack against her site.
Catherine Ng’s claims are another example of the false and misleading statements of wrong doing that is being pumped out by her campaign director Ian Hanke – The Liberal Party “Spin doctor” who promoted the “Children Overboard” lie used to win votes for John Howard in 2004.
The Age, keen to promote Catherine Ng and cash in on the false and misleading statements, demonstrated an alarming lack of professionalism and bias in its reporting. If you look closely at the Google screen shot shown in the Age article you will notice on the right had side (slightly obscured) an ad placed by Gary Singer. The Age had deliberatly sought to crop that out from the photo.
Catherin Ng’s spin masters tired to make our and imply that there was some of hanke panky going on in cyberspace. The only Hanke panky is coming from Catherine Ng herself. So desperate is Catherine Ng to seek headlines and attrack media attention to her campaign that she has stooped to making false claims. There is nothing wrong or underhanded in a person buying advertising space on the Internet. in fact is is very much apart of the free market economy and a open democratic society.
Gary Singer, Catherine Ng’s running mate, admitted that he also had brought Google advertising space to promote for his campaign.
It should also be noted that both Ng and Singer also have placed ads using Google keywords.
Honesty overboard
Contrary to the statements published in the Age article hotlinks to Catherine Ng and Gary Singer’s web sites appear more regularly then they do for Peter McMullin who has been the target of envy, dirty ticks and lies by the Singer and Ng camps.
A simple Google search on the keyword “Lord Mayor” shows that all three candidates appear in the Google hot links page, proving that the statements made by both Ng and Singer that their ads only appear when you do a Google on their names are false.
False statements or deliberate lie published in The Age dirty tricks campaign?:
William. It is true that Ian Kirk has preferenced Peter McKenna 2nd. However this did not come about because of policy. Peter was preferenced above the serious ALP candidate (Michael Paul) for one simple reason. When Ian was asked by Michael where his preferences would go, he said he would talk to the branch. Michael immediately became angry and abusive because he wasn’t automatically getting preferenced over Peter. I dont know why the branch decided to put Peter and Michael 2nd and 3rd, but thats not the point. Michael verbally abused Ian. We made the decision that verbal assault is wrong and thus Michael was punished. Yes, it may have been the wrong thing to do ideologically, but it was the right thing to do morally.
Fair enough. Nothing says “I find you morally repugnant” like a third placement out of eight.
That depends on who the other 5 are, William.
None of the other 5 tried to talk to Ian about preferences. And the 3 that weren’t ALP apparently didn’t talk to anyone. So it seemed fairly obvious that they werent very serious.
Based on reresentation at pre-poll booths, and preferences, I’ved made a guess of the front-runners.
IBBOT
Tom Melican is independent. Respected by ALP, Libs and Greens alike for this. Will win.
GRIFFIN
Jenny Mulholland needs to win on primaries, as the best she does in preferences is 4th out of 6 from the Greens.
Its essentially a race between Stephen Walpole(ALP), Jenny, and Dean Griffin(Green) who is getting 2nd or 3rd from most. Jenny is giving her 2nd to Dean, so I think he is in. Its the Greens strongest area and Jenny has plenty of support.
BEALE
Wayne Phillips has it won. Only 2 against him and isgetting preferences from one of them.
OLYMPIA
Anthony Carbines will probably get back, but its hard to say because I’ve only seen 2 of the other 4 HTV’s. Both are putting Anthony last and swapping preferences.
HAWDON
This is a strange one. 3 have said they are ALP, with another preferencing as if she was. Someone who says he is a Lib, but the Lib helpers are handing out for the Independent instead. (Including the local branch president. The Green is getting preferences from the Lib and the Independent. Sandra and Martin(ALP) are the front runners preference wise, but the Green beat Martin last time, so he cant be counted out.
BAKEWELL
Of the tickets I’ve seen, Michael Paul has one going his way, Peter McKenna has 2. The Greens aren’t in this one. I have heard that one of the candidates without a card is running to support Michael. It’s his daughters friend supposedly.
GRIMSHAW
Lots of stories here. First 3 of 9 without cards. 3 ALP members, and the rest seem to be minor players without much of a chance. Frank Beard and Dean Sherriff are best positioned.
Frank has gone against party rules(something about preferencing fellow ALP above others) by putting Dean last. Now someone handing out for Frank has been threatened and has called the police for help. Frank faces possible expulsion from the party and Dean has reportably had to be restrained from physically attacking Frank multiple times. I see it as a probable win for Frank Beard.
Dave,
Magner did not out poll Appleby last time.
http://www.vec.vic.gov.au/BanyuleResult2005.html#5
Just to correct Dave – the Green running in Griffin Ward is Dean Winkle, not Dean Griffin.
Another interesting council will be Port Phillip with the Unchain crew looking a reasonable chance in Catani Ward (Serge Thomann has been getting lots of press) and MAV boss Dick Gross could have a fight on his hands to be re-elected in Junction Ward. Having said that, I’ve not seen HTVs for anyone, so I don’t know who’s giving what. The Greens are running in every ward bar Albert Park, which is uncontested.
Dave,
Appleby beat magner, fact, and the fact that the greens did not preferance appleby clearly points to a green/liberal alliance in Banyule no other explenation required. but please add your version
William, I would have thought the fact that someone with a conviction for assault was running again and considered a favourite would raise more eyebrows than any Green preference decision.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,21593669-2862,00.html
Not just a technical assault either, with two very young children showered with broken glass, and completely unprovoked as well.
NOTE: This does not refer to Michael Paul, as I assumed when first reading it – The Management.
I would love to know what’s going on in Moreland and I live there!! We have 11 candidates standing for 3 positions in South Ward and I only know that 2 are Greens because they’re sitting Councillors. The rest seem to be ALP or Socialist Alliance but no one is prepared to say who they are backed by. Is this embarrassment or are they hiding something? Whatever happened to hoisting your name to the flagpole and standing on your principles?
Dave, where are you
OK, my mistake on the 2005 result.
Damian put Appleby above the Lib. That sort of nullifies your entire arguament.
And as for where I was, I was having a life.
Oz @ 77. I didn’t post a link to Vex News. I posted a link to the VEC (http:.www.vec.vic.gov.au)
I presume therefore that Moreland Mushroom is your real name?
The victorian Electoral Commission is set to repeat some of the mistakes they made in 2006. Bill Laing, Melbourne City Council’s Returning Office has to date refused calls for a manual count of the lord Mayors election. There is no justification for a computerised data-entry count. A number of candidates in the election have supported the call for the count to be open and transparent.
If the computer count is to proceed then the VEC should do a presort of the ballot papers prior to batching them ready for data-entry.
Whilst there is nothing in the legislation that requires a presorting of the ballot, other then the requirement and obligation to ensure that the election is open and transparent, there is nothing that prevents the VEC from initiating a presort of the ballot papers into primary vote as is the case in senate elections.
The election of Lord Mayor of Melbourne is expected to be close and the reporting of ballot papers would significantly assist in the orderly scrutiny of the ballot.
The Victorian State Parliament in its report on the Conduct of the 2006 State election had recommended that ballot papers be presorted prior to data entry. The VEC’s refusal to comply with requests to date is further evidence of the inability of the VEC’s inability to self regulate the conduct of the count.
Extract of the Victorian Parliament Electoral Matters Committe report on the 2006 election
Effective, timely and transparent scrutiny of elections is a cornerstone of democratic government. In paper based voting systems, transparency is typically managed by having “observers and scrutineers present at different stages of the voting and counting processes”.
Ms Williams [Deputy Electoral Commissioner] suggested the VEC did not “pre-sort the ballot papers into first preferences”. EMC member the Honourable Christine Campbell MP expressed concern that this did not occur:
Ms Campbell—What you were also going to, instead of having as you have described there “a batch” checked, that before the result was keyed into the computer that if, for argument’s sake, there were 100 batches of 50 first preference for Liz, then someone had the ability to quickly check randomly a number of those batches to check they were all number 1 Liz.
Ms Williams—No, they are not sorted. They are all mixed. The advantage, we do not pre-sort the ballot papers into first preferences. We do not do that.
Ms Campbell—I thought you had me on side, but you have me worried again.
The EMC recognises that the batching of ballot papers is a necessary practice during Legislative Council election counts. The EMC therefore supports the VEC continuing to batch ballot papers at future Legislative Council elections.
Nevertheless, the EMC holds the view that current batching procedures could be improved. Specifically, the EMC would like to see the VEC improve verification procedures for batches.
While the EMC is mindful that scrutineers are precluded from physically inspecting or handling batches, the EMC recommends that pre-sorting of ballot papers into batches of first preferences would improve the scrutineering of Legislative Council counts.
Recommendation 9.4:
The Victorian Electoral Commission considers pre-sorting ballot papers into batches of first preferences for Legislative Council counts.
…
Scrutiny of electronic election counts
The EMC received general comments from stakeholders about scrutiny arrangements during electronic election counts. Anthony van der Craats commented that one potential benefit of a manual counting system is that “scrutineers and individuals involved in the election can physically watch the transfer of ballot papers and have multiple opportunities to observe the allocation of preferences as they move throughout the manual counting cycle. With a computerised counting system a different approach is required”.
In addition, the Australian Greens (Victoria) expressed a view that the count needs to be both transparent and seen to be transparent”.
Alison Clarke, Australian Greens’ (Victoria) Party Co-ordinator, elaborated further:
It is more difficult to scrutinise electronic votes than it is by hand vote, a paper count. Also because of that the perception of transparency can be reduced. We are not 100 per cent convinced that the benefits of electronic voting outweigh the drawbacks, that you lose some transparency, obviously there is some efficiency but whether that trade-off is worthwhile.
With less then one week to go, as of Friday November 21, the VEC has received back for the City of Melbourne in the post 23844 envelopes. This is less then 25% of the number of voters on the roll.
Voting closes on Friday November 28 at 6:00PM Ballot papers must be received by the Retuning Officer priot to this date and time
Bill Lang
Level 6, Council House
200 Little Collins Street
Melbourne VIC 3000
Phone: (03) 9639 0046
My apologies to Michael Paul if anyone reading my piece but not clicking on the link thought he was the one who committed the assault. Nevertheless, he is a factional ally of Dean Sherriff and it is rather amazing that people can be making such a fuss about a preference decision while backing a man in a different ward who has been convicted of such serious crimes, and has PRECAUTIONARY LEGAL SNIP – The Management.
Dave,
Look again, magner has preferanced the inderpandant lib, my argument stil is as strong as ever!!
feral by nature as well, if you had any knowledge of banyule, you would be aware of who’s who in the zoo, bur with comments like sherriff and paul it clearly shows you are lacking infomation to correctly comment on these matters
I’m confused holdthehorses. Are you denying that Sherriff did what he was convicted of doing, or do you think that this is not an issue relevant to his suitability to be a councillor?
Feral,
a factional ally of Dean Sherriff? backing a man in a different ward ? these comments show you clearly don’t know banyule, Sherriff should have been thrown off council the moment he plead guilty, this is one area that shows the law is an ass. To link sherriff and paul is just stupid, ill informed and proberbly does not deserve the time on i am spending on it
The VEC has awesomely decided to use OCR in a few councils. Luckily it’s not MCC, otherwise MelbCity would be on board to host the second ever “Tully Tally Rally” (I assume he’s still in charge?)
OCR?
Optical Character Recognition.
William,
Can you provide a summary of how this OCR voting system works?
The VEC said this in a parliamentary inquiry submission:
Thank-you.
I presume that the council election in New Zealand that used this was Wellington because of the population and the use of preferences (only some NZ councils use STV others use block voting).
holdthehorses, you seem to hate the Greens and Libs. Are you from the ALP? Are you even in Banyule? Steven Briffa, at the time Damian was doing preferences, was not know to be associated with the Libs at all. In fact I only have your word that he is. Whatever the case, he is a good candidate with good community policies. Whether he changes remains to be seen. I’m also wondering, if he is associated with the Libs, why are the ALP volenteers handing out for him? And the Liberals aren’t?
Anyway, if Steven Briffa is an independent Liberal, why has he preferenced the Greens above the Liberal?
SNIP: Defamatory comment deleted – The Management.
There is a Tony Briffa who was a Greens candidate. Maybe they are related.
Dave, dave, dave,
The preferance deal is with the greens to defeat appleby the only real candidate in the ward with out the green preferance briffa has nothing, this is a slim chance to get over the line, the ALP volenteers are not handing out for him since i have been there. I don’t hate any one, i prefer open politics, simple.
On community policies, what are his? no one has even sighted one. He did not even show up at meet the candidates night held by the weekly! was this his way of dodging the real questions some wanted to ask and Damien knew quite well briffa is associated with the libs.
Oh? So where are you handing out? I’ve been at Greensborough. How on earth do you know what Damian knew?
Appleby is not the only real candidate. Sandra also has a real chance. Of course the preference deal is to keep Appleby out, Damian wants to win. That the entire point of an election.
Dave,
You have just answered your own question, the preferance deal was made between the greens and libs and yes the object is to win an election but is this about personal
politics or party politics.
you seem to think briffa is a good candidate? tell me a bit about him so i might figure out just who he is?
William Scanning technology is most likely better and more accurate then data-entry transcription. But unless there is a preliminary sorting of the ballot papers that same problems associated with scrutiny of the ballot exist as they do with the manual data-entry process. Is it is a question of saving money and time or accuracy o=in the count. if we want to save money then the best solution is to abolish the duplication between the state and federal electoral office. One independent electoral commission responsible for all public elections. The costs of duplicating the services provided in duplication runs into millions of dollars. The City of Melbourne election this year is considerable greater then the 2004 election. In 2004 the VEC had to provide its town office space, this year the City of Melbourne has thrown in free use of its vacant space in COuncil House 1, 200 Collins Street. This has given the Victorian Electoral Commission an estimated added bonus of around $100,000. in 2005 the VEC charged the City of Melbourne over $200,000 for what they claimed was software development. Software that was readily available and already in place by the OC. The VEC never provided any details as to exactly what the money paid by the City of Melbourne was actually spent on. The City of Melbourne just paid the bill without question and without securing any proprietary ownership of the software developed. Software that the State Government and other City Councils benefited from without cost. The software had not been fully certified and as we discovered it did not meet basic expectation in ensuring that the number of ballots records match the number of ballot papers issued. No checking and no verification which is a requirement under the local government act. IN addition,unlike the other electoral commissions the Victorian Electoral Commission does not comply has not been certified to meet the industry established ISO standards.
The Victorian Electoral Commission has demonstrated its lack of professionalism and on more then one occasion its inability to self-regulate and provide an open and transparent electoral . Its refusal to ensure that ballot papers are presorted into primary votes, as recommended by the State Parliament only undermines further the confidence in its administration. The electronic voting system put in place are very much subject to fraud and misconduct.
Evidence coming from the USA and the mistakes made in the 2006 State election technology clearly indicates that we can not and must be lulled into a false sense of security, bamboozled by technology or technocrats
The fact that the VEC was unwilling to provide a copy of the preference-data files, going so far as deliberately lying and misleading the parliament by falsely claiming that the information was no longer available is of considerable concern and does nothing to instill public confidence in their administration let alone embrace the adoption of new technologies that further limit public scrutiny
Hold the Horses,
There was an article in the local paper about six weeks ago that Briffa was a Liberal in Independants clothing. Magner expressed outrage because he had arranged printing at Briffa’s business and was concerned about “secret squirrel” stuff I suppose.
Briffa is the President of the Greensborough Traders Assoc and is a close personal friend of McKenna. Briffa does not live in the Municipality although his business is located there.
Any claim that the Greens did not know about Briffa prior to the preference deal is rubbish.
GG,
Thats the rumour i have heard too, I was wanting to see if anyone else had picked up the same info, thanks for that. I would be interested Dave, if you had the same type of info as well?
Doesn’t Biffa come from Hobson bay? A very colorful and interesting carector.If its the same Biffa then yes the Greens new very much this persons background. No excuses there.
not listed in the white pages, but has a printing shop in para rd, hobson bay may be a bit far to travel? but you never know
No, I did not have that info. I dont get the paper.
Dave,
“Steven Briffa, at the time Damian was doing preferences, was not know to be associated with the Libs at all”. That’s your statement and you are wrong again.
You are the one that keeps making all the assertions and you are batting zero so far. Or are they calculated lies from the disgraced Democrats to white out their shocking sell out of principle on the preference deals in Bakewell and Hawdon.
Dave,
Handing out in Hawdon ward and you don’t get the Diamond valley or heidelberg leader and the weekly? so strange? are you an import to help out those that live outside of the ward?
Tony Briffa is running once again, but he’s a Hobsons Bay Community First candidate, not a Greens candidate:
http://www.communityfirst.org.au/candidates.htm
I have no idea if he’s related to Steven Briffa.
jh,
thanks, could be a conspiricy (ha, ha) two of the one surnames, one agenda (getting Elected) long bow:) Oh just heard APPLEBY had all of his Election Corflutes stolen from with-in the Hawdon ward, he has been given a plate No, from a friend who saw a silver colored car remove it from their front yard.
I live on a back road where it isn’t delivered. Well, it is occasionally.
Dave,
Thanks for honesty?
More canciate’s for the city of melbourne Lord Mayors election have supported the call for a manual count or tech presorting of ballot papers into primary votes prior to the data-entry of preferences. The Victorian Local Government Act the VEC is required to presort ballot papers under a manual count. They have some discression with a computerised count. In the absence of a presorted data-entry process scrutineers are denied the opportunity to properly scrutinise the ballot and the counting process.
A letter of complaint has been forward to the minister and the Victorian Electoral Matters Committee (EMC) .
The EMC in revising the stuff ups of the 2007 State Election has recommended that the VEC presort ballot papers into primary votes prior to data-entry. The VEC refusal has seriously undermined confidence in the conduct of the election count.
The list of City of Melbourne candidates includes:
Nick Columb
Gary Morgan
Shelly Roberts
Fiona Snedden
Brian Shanahan
Peter Clarke
Peter McMullin
Will Fowles
We believe the Greens also support this proposal but have not yet received confirmation of this fact.
Given that the Greens were polling 25-30% primaries in most of the corresponding booths in the Federal election, I’ll be amazed if they don’t pick up one of the positions in the Rucker ward in Darebin. Which is good – I don’t think the ALP’s stranglehold on Darebin has produced a particularly vibrant standard of councillor.
Contra William’s suggestion, I think Adam Bandt has done as well from preferences as one could expect.
He was never going to get much from the business candidates, and the ALP candidates were going to swap with each other.
So getting Morgan’s (and less signficantly Crawford’s) preferences ahead of Doyle or McMullin has to be a bonus.
Tell me more about Darebin, Martin, if you’ve time or inclination: enough for me to add a brief overview in the post.
Let’s see if I can get this quoting thing going. MelbCity @ 127 says:
The EMC in revising the stuff ups of the 2007 State Election has recommended that the VEC presort ballot papers into primary votes prior to data-entry. The VEC refusal has seriously undermined confidence in the conduct of the election count.
If the Victorian EMC is revising a stuff up of the 2007 State Election, it’s that they ran one at all. Unless you’re talking about the Williamstown and Albert Park by-elections.
William, the interesting thing in Darebin – which under review has gone from single-member wards to 3×3 multi-member wards and hence the Greens in with a good chance of electing at least 1 councillor – is that the ALP have gone nuts with stooge/dummy candidates (cue Adam’s protests of innocence) in the two Northern Wards (Cazaly and Latrobe) but not the most Southern Ward (Rucker, which Martin B correctly predicts is the Greens best chance).
http://vec.vic.gov.au/darebincandidatestatements.html
Darebin is also where Marlene Kairouz, the current State MP for Kororoit (and involved in the nasty preselection fight against Natalie Suleyman), was from before taking her place in the Vic State Parliament.
The Greens are running 4 candidates – 2 in Rucker and 1 each in Cazaly and Latrobe. I believe that up until now, Labor Unity have held every ward, but someone else will have to confirm/deny that (along with whether or not the ALP are endorsing candidates or not this time around).
City Of Kingston: hte icty has gone from 7 single member wards to 3 wards of 3 councillors. With nearly 120,000 voters Kingston has one the highest electors per councillor ratios in Victoria at over 13,000 electors.
north ward: Incumbent councillors Greg Alabaster and Arthur Athanasopolous are in the box seat to hold on whilst the third is a real toss up. Paul Peulich, Liberal M.P. Inga’s son, is running a well funded campaign and has a good flow of preferences. Former councillor and ex-ALP Liz Larking is also also runnig and may take votes away from Greg. Interesting is Larking is preferencing labour’s hopes in well done the bottom.
Central Ward: 21 candidates means a very open field. lord mayor 73 year old Bill Nixon and councillor Rosemary West running again. Past councillor Ron “the Silver Fox” Brownlees has a good array of 2nd preferences organised and independent John Natoli is putting out a well organised campaign. 3 labourites are runnnig headed by former state upper house MP Noel Pullen should do well whilst local greeny Geoff Heard is the dark horse.
South Ward: Aspendale Garden’s John Ronke will get up and then it’s a toss up for the other 12 candidates. Donna Bauer’s big spending campaign should do well. From the left field it could be former councillor Trever Shewan, Caroline O’Donnell or the Green’s Carlos Lope. labours Jeremy Nash has been very unimpressive and RSL captain Peter Wertheimer is the smokey
Great stuff, Deano – thanks for that.
While the manual count of the mayoral race is bad it is not the biggest problem for democracy in the City of Melbourne because of the business votes (2 votes per business, one vote per resident) under the City of Melbourne Act 2001 (which also exempts it from electoral representation reviews) which is outright election rigging.
jh @ 132 Sorry should read 2006..
Attached below is a copy of correspondence sent to the City of Melbourne VIC Returning Officer, Bill Lang.
SNIP: Allegation deleted – The Management.
VEC denies opportunity for proper scrutiny of the Lord Mayor ballot
Another Candidate calls for a manual or more open and transparent count
Another candidate has written to the VEC requesting a manual count and or presorting of the ballot papers prior to computer data-entry of preference votes.
Any savings in time by not presorting the ballot into primary votes(Which is debatable) come at the expense of the scrutiny of the electronic ballot denying candidates the right to an open and transparent count.
I trust that the Greens are true to their word and will support the call for a manual count or presorting of the ballot papers prior to data-entry.
– Copy of open letter to Bill Lang –
To: “Bill Lang”
Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2008 1:39 PM
Subject: Count of Lord Mayoral vote
Bill,
After consultation with Shelley Roberts we would like to support a manual count of the Lord Mayoral vote. We believe that this will enable a more open and transparent process than the proposed computer only count. We can understand the usefulness of a computer system in the more complex councillor ballot (but even here the presorting, checking and manual count of primary votes would be appropriate). We believe that the straight forward preferential nature of the simpler Lord Mayoral ballot (the same as state and federal lower house ballots) lends itself to a manual\ count with easier scrutineering. If it is your decision to proceed with a computerised count,we would request that the ballots be at least sorted, checked and counted according to primary vote prior to any data entry.
Nothing in this request should be taken to reflect on or infer in any way
a want of confidence in you and your dedicated staff, rather we have a preference for a simple manual count which would avoid any inadvertent mistakes during data processing and allow scrutineers to undertake their role in the more tried and true fashion.
Yours sincerely,
Garth Head
on behalf of Shelley Roberts.
Candidate for Lord Mayor City of Melbourne
Tom I agree. The Stater Government should have subjected the City of Melbourne to a proper representation review (Preferably without VEC involvement) The main reason it did not is because John So, Catherine Ng, Garry Singer, Carl Getter and David Wilson voted against calling for a review (Three times) Now they are facing election they are saying they will support a review. Why did not support an open public review before the election?
In case people are wondering Why John So decided to not seek a third term? The answer is simple. He and his wife could not stand working with Catherine Ng. Those close to town hall know that relations between John So and Catherine Ng were non existent. They hardly spoke to each other. The Chinese vote represents around 13% of the electorate. A quick walk around China town and you will see posters for mainly Peter McMullin and some Catherine Ng on display. John So was a shoe in for third term but his decison was decided on the fact he could not work with Catherine Ng.
John So has supported both Peter McMullin and Gary Singer going so far as helping door knock the electorate on behalf of Peter McMullin. He has not supported Catherine Ng campaign once in her campiagn. Peter McMUllin and Kevein Louey;s (John So’s Chief of staff) candidacy has been widely canvased in the Chinese community press. Catherine Ng is expected to receive at best 40-50% of the 13% Chinese vote plus a small percentage of residnet votes Putting her on around 11% of the overall vote, a far cry from the 30-40% of the vote that John So had attracted in 2001 and 2004.
Catherine Ng should out poll Gary Singer and may collect most of Singers anticipated 5-7% of the vote (Singer is expected to be the fouth Candidate depending on Morgan and Columb’s support (Neithter of which he will pick up) Ng needs to eventually out poll the Greens and the combined vote of Peter McMullin and Will Fowles to be in a position to collect Green preferences. If Catherine can climb through the middle her next hope is to outpoll and collect preferences from Robert Doyle (Estimated at around 18-22%). Its not impossible but it is tight at about three junction points. This campaign has not been fort in the daily media, but has been more of a campaign played out by direct community networking. Come Saturday we will know more http://melbournecitycouncil.blogspot.com
William carfe to explain the snip… A bit of bias editiing…
As I’ve explained to you before, I’m not going to allow you to make defamatory statements about public officials, and I’m not going to spend one second of my time investigating whether they’re accurate or not. Do it on your own site.
As of close of businsess today the VEC has recorded 38209 votes out of 97,000 for the City of Melbourne up 5100 from yesterday which saw 9,000 votes delivered over the week end with three days to go before the Friday 6:00PM deadline. (We hope votes do not go missing as was the case in the Western metro count where the total number of votes droped from 399964 to 399486 between count A and Count B overnight. – Changing the overall result – still not fully explained) We requested information on the number of Postal and prepoll votes issued and received back prior to the State Election but our request for this information was refused and never provided. Tanksfullly the VEC is now providing this data as it should have back in 2006
SNIP: Complaint about moderation deleted. See Article 8 of comment moderation guidelines.
SNIP: Comment that completely ignores my two very straightforward preceding statements deleted. I’ll state them one last time. I’m not going to allow you to make defamatory statements about public officials, and I’m not going to spend one second of my time investigating whether they’re accurate or not. See Article 8 of comment moderation guidelines.
You do not have to. I am happy to produce the evidence whixh is all outlined in Hansard.
Which I would then need to read, which I’m not going to do.
SNIP: Last warning before I ban you, permanently this time. Get over it and move on. Failing that, read and get into your head Article 8 of comment moderation guidelines – The Management.
Ok Moving on. As I stated earlier there is three crucial junction points in the City of Melbourne Lord Mayor Count two in the middle and one near the end. The three main contenders are Robert Doyle, Catherine Ng and Peter McMullin. The fold up plays a crucial role in the outcome, which is why the process of counting the vote is crucial and will need to be scrutinized carefully. I am sure this is the case in all computerised counts. Remember this will be the first time that many councils will experience the computer count and most will be bamboozled by the lack of openness and inability to scrutinise a data-entry count. Without a preliminary sorting of the ballot papers and access to the data files it is impossible to properly scrutinise a computer count. No even William could do it effectively. I intend to live blog the count which is expected to take more then two days to count. Chances are if it is as close as expected there will be a recount. The outcome of the Lord Mayors count should also provide a clear indication as to the outcome of the Council Seven election. The following are assured of a seat Kevin Louey, Carl Jetter, Jennifer Kanis, Cathy Oke. There are three seats in contention. The outcome of the remaining three positions depends on the level of support of Robert Doyles and Peter McMullins lower house ticket. If Brian Shanahan, who is an ALP member running on Catherine Ng skirt tails, does not get over 8% then Te last three could go to Peter Clarke who is reasonable secure in crossing the line, Ken Ong has an outside chance if he can get above 8%. Again depending on McMullins or Doyle’s lower house ticket support Snedden or a number two form McMullin (Outside chance of a second doyle) can be the surprise win. All other candidates that are below number 2 (McMullin and Doyle excepted) are just dummies candidates nominated to feed preferences to the main candidates. On Thursday I hope to present our assessment of where we see the campaign. Assuming I am not banned for trying to expose problems that have been identified in the way the vote is counted.
I am looking forward to hearing more on other Councils. Nillumbik should prove to be interesting. This is a Municipality that dropped a multi member ward system and adopted a nine single member wards as opposed to three x three.
I have to say I’ve not been in this game long enough to remember what Nillumbik was 2-3 elections ago, but last time it was still single-member wards:
http://www.vec.vic.gov.au/nillumbikhome.html
Actually, 2002 was the same:
http://www.vec.vic.gov.au/NillumbikResult2002.html
Assuming that the reviews happen every second election, that would mean that it’d be almost 10 years at least before it was possible that Nillumbik could have had multi-member wards.
Sorry, I should know better than to correct MelbCity every time he’s inaccurate. Please return to normal programming now…
You can not make up stories about Banyule. The reality is far stranger than anyones’ imagination.
http://diamond-valley-leader.whereilive.com.au/news/story/mp-admits-calling-local-councillor-a-bitch-denies-trying-to-run-over-her-so/
jh
“Sorry, I should know better than to correct MelbCity every time he’s inaccurate. Please return to normal programming now…”
Agree , problam is MelbCity has “agenda’s” and uses ‘public’ blog sites to attack public officials ABC and VEC etc , rather than Thread subject only Danger to th site is therefore self evident
GG Amigo
enjoyed th description of th link itself , we don’t need fictional drama when reel reality of attempts to run over make dominate Council media
Ron,
But wait, there is even more…………..
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24708027-2862,00.html
jh. Nillumbik like the City of Melbourne at the time had a hybrid system (three single wards plus five Municipal wide -I think)) Both the City of Melbourne and Nillumbik experiments were major failures. When it was reformed it did not undergo a representation review. They adopted a nine single member ward system. Back in the days when it was the Shire of Eltham use to be 4 wards each electing three members (But not under proportional representation. Contrary to your limited understanding of how the elections works I think the way the election is administered is very much on topic. The same as it was the case back in 206 when the the VEC stuffed up the count. The reason and cause of the stuff up was a lack of due diligence and the refusal of the VEC to ensure that the election was open and transparent. the same issue apply to the Local Government elections. As we are moving into the age of electronic computer count we face new challenges and threats to our electoral system. I suggest you start taking a closer look at how it actually works.
D@W,
Enough is an enough, move on to something more interesting than dribbling history to those who care less about it, we are three days out from an election that will change some council’s for the worst, concentrate on the matters at hand, the important one’s
The Main issue confronting the City of Melbourne is the direct election of Lord Mayor. It does not deliver good governance and places the focus on the farce of the Lord Mayor race and not policy or good governance. The Direct election system was introduced by Rob Cameron (Left Minister after a closed door departmental review – submissions made to the review were never made public and it is difficult to know who if anyone supported the proposal to have direct elections – most certainly made a submission in opposition to direct elections as I believe and still do believe that the Mayor/Chairperson should be elected from and by the elected council). I do not see the problem facing the City of Melbourne as being the undivided multi-member single electorate. Whilst I am happy to see a ward system (3 x 3) I would not want to see a return to a single member ward system. But the pressure is on to do just that as a means of stopping the Greens from gaining representation on the Council. I think Melbourne should be bigger in size (Should take in the state seats of Richmond, Prahran, Albert Park and Melbourne) the number of the Councillors should be 15 (5 x 3 or 21 (7 x3) Back in the days when the city of Melbourne had 21 Councillors it was a dynamic Council – but the 3 member wards at the time were elected by an exhaustive preferential system that involved a reiterative single member count. Maybe you do not remember such a system.
Electoral reform is very much part of this campaign. It is very much on the agenda of all candidates. The City of melbourne should have been subjected to a representational review as every other Municipality is required to undertake a review every second term of office. Th City of Melbourne tried to call for a review (3 times) but it was voted down on each occasions by John So, Garry Singer, Catherine Ng, Garry Singer, Carl Jetter and David Wilson. Had they supported it the State Government would have been forced into initiating a review prior to this election. Now we have a circus of clowns. The issue as I have stated is not the elected council but more to do with the Direct election of Lord Mayor. Any review must take the Lord Mayor’s election into account (It is a joke) and hopefully would also consider the bigger issue of a Greater Melbourne. The irony of it all is that it was not labor that was calling for a Greater Melbourne and review of the electoral system but Peter Clarke,a Senior Liberal Party member.
For the record those Councillors that supported a electroal review of the City of Melbourne electoral system included Brian Shanahan, Peter Clrak,Foina Snedden and Green’s Councillor Frazer Brindley. It was voted down on two occasions by the casting vote of the Chairperson.
Lets also not forget that this is the first state wide municpal election under the new electoral systems that are in place. Every Municipality with the exception of Nillumbik and the City of Melbourne has undergone a representation review in the last two years. This will be in many cases the first time some Councils have used Proportional representation or been elected under the new electoral system. In the past Victoria had a three year annual rotation single member ward system. The dynamics of the new system is very much different to that of the past.
William you might like to add to the list Stonington. It has also under gone a change in its electoral system and will now be represented by three wards each electing three members of council. Stonington was the bastion of Liberal conservatism. It takes in the old City of Prahran and Malvern and has one of the most diverse inner city communities. You have Toorak/Malvern with some of the most expensive inner city real-estate in Australia multi million dollar mansions and you also have Prahran/Windsor with vast public housing blocks. Many of the old guard have bowed out. Chris Ghan long time serving Labor Councillor is not contesting his seat having spent over a quarter of a century on Council First as City of Prahran and then later under Stonington. Stonington opposed along with Hobson bay opposed multi member wards supporting a single member ward system.Unlike Hobson bay which also included the former Premier Steve Bracks seat of Williamstown, Stonington ended up with a three by three model and not the nine single member wards they wanted. To this date it is unknown on what basis the VEC commission reviewing municipal representation choose the systems in place. Stonington along with Hobson Bay is also a city to watch.
Ok, more on Darebin.
Rucker ward, where I live does seem quite straightforward. There are two ALP candidates, two Greens candidates and five others, only one of whom has much of an independent local profile – Darren Lewin-Hill. At corresponding booths in the 2007 Federal election, the ALP polled 49% of the primary vote, Greens 31% and Liberals 16%. If those numbers are reflective of this vote then the result should be straightforward: one ALP and one Green candidate will be comfortably elected, with the third seat going to the other ALP candidate or, less likely, Lewin-Hill if he can gather enough of the ALP vote and if enough Liberal voters opt for him.
Cazaly Ward is a dogs breakfast. There are 17 candidates 9 of whom identify as ALP members (4 Unity, 4 SL, one unaligned), plus one Greens, one “conservative independent” (allegedly a former ALP member with a decidedly non-conservative activist history) and six other independents. I don’t think it’s accurate to describe all of the ALP candidates as dummy candidates. If they are its really badly organised, because there is no real consistency in the preference recommendations, not even within the SL and Unity ‘blocs’. They are all over the place, although Ben Morgan and current councillor and former mayor Vince Fontana seem to have done slightly better. There are quite a number of ex-councillors amongst the ALP candidates and someone with longer and more extensive local knowledge than I have would need to say if anyone of them have particularly good profiles. The corresponding Federal booth numbers are ALP 60% Greens 16% Libs 20%. On those numbers you’ld expect the Greens to struggle to get a spot, but the fragmentation of the ALP vote can only help. I’ve got no idea really, but I would guess that the Greens candidate, Fontana and one other ALP candidate will be elected. (Fontana’s brush with the licensing commission didn’t stop his reeelction in 2004 so it would seem to be a non-issue now; Unity member Alison Donohue has also been subjected to faecal-sheeting concerning her former record as a councillor.)
In La Trobe ward there are even more candidates – 23 – but they are far better organized, so the claim of dummy tickets may have validity. A whopping 16 candidates recommend some permutation of preferences for the ALP SL ‘ticket’ of Gaetano Greco, Tim Laurence and Melissa Salata, while 5 candidates recommend preferences for the Unity ticket of Stanley Chiang and Tania Sharkas. That leaves only the Greens candidate and one other who recommends a preference for her. The campaign between SL and Unity has been bitter here, with Laurence taking internal ALP action against Chiang (which was dismissed) and counter claims that Laurence has broken party rules with his material. The 2007 booth numbers here are ALP 62% Greens 8% Libs 23% so with more organisation in the ALP vote and such a low base vote, the Greens wouldn’t seem to have much chance. Unless Liberal supporters vote as a bloc for the Greens or some other candidate, which seems unlikely, then 3 ALP candidates would seem assured here. I have no idea what the local support is like, so I guess 2 SL 1 Unity?
Back there, jh said
I believe that is correct. Before the 2004 election, the SL had one councillor, then mayor Rae Perry. However Perry was defeated by Unity candidate Stephen Tsitas at the 2004 election (which meant that Perry was unable to take up her role as newly-elected VLGA President, although she later acheived appointment as VLGA CEO.) There were rumours Perry was going to stand again this time, but sadly that was ended when she was involved in a serious motorbike accident in September, along with partner Damian Kingsbury.
The ALP isn’t formally endorsing any candidates in Darebin. As a result ALP candidates are supposed to be “ALP supported” but must not use the ALPs name or logo on their election material. This is the basis for the action against Laurence, although he ius not the only one – Diana Asmar’s material also features the logo although I don’t know if there has been any complaints made against her.
One clarification to the above, I don’t believe that Melissa Salata is actually a member of the SL faction, but she is clearly grouping with them in the preference recommendations.
The VLGA is a scam. The sooner Council’s pull out of it the better.
For what it’s worth here’s a summary of Glen Eira.
Glen Eira has 3 wards each electing 3 councillors
Glen Era Council recently made the decision to change from postal to attendance voting. This was unexpected as under the postal system, dummy candidates contributed to the election of several councillors in 2005.
This change has seen nominations drop from 61 in 2005 to 26. 7 of the 9 councillors are standing for re-election.
Camden Ward: 7 candidates. Michael Lipshutz and Helen Whiteside are standing for re-election and appear to be working together with the backing of the Liberal Party – although neither are members. Other candidates include local businessman Frank Penhalluriack (who actually lives in Kew) and a residents group ticket headed by Peter Blight. Lipshutz is a prominent member of the Jewish community and with over one third of the ward Jewish should have no problems getting re-elected. Penhalluriack has no. 1 position on the voting card which will help him. Lipshutz, Whiteside and Penhalluriack are spending big and will probably be elected.
Rosstown ward : 9 candidates. 3 sitting councillors standing – Margaret Esakoff, Steven Tang and Rob Spaulding. This is the only ward with a Greens candidate – Neil Pilling- who could be the wild card as he is getting some flow of preferences.
Tucker ward: 10 candidates. 2 sitting councillors standing – Nick Staikos (Labor) and Henry Buch (Liberal). Buch may struggle as he only recently joined council on a countback after the resignation of former Mayor David Feldman. Fellow Liberal and former councillor Jamie Hyams has scored no. 1 position and should be elected. The other candidate with a chance is Jim Magee, who lead the fight to save the local swimming pool and polled well in the 2005 election.
SNIP: Pointless comment written by stupid person with false perception of how interesting he is deleted – The Management.
I’m very sorry to hear about Rae Perry being in an accident, even if we were not always on the same side. How bad is it Martin?
Big thanks, Winston and Martin, I’ve now knocked together entries in the post based on your comments.
I will be helping hand out HTV cards for one candidate in (the people’s republic of) Moreland on Saturday. I hadn’t been paying much attention to that battle, but judging from what I can tell there’s 20(!) candidates in North East ward … of which 7-9 are dummy candidates for one political party in particular!
Are there wacky winner takes all councils in Victoria like Botany in Sydney?
The Melbourne Greens have come on board and Officially supported the campaign to ensure that the counting of the ballot will be open and transparent and that scrutineers will not be denied the opportunity to properly scrutinise the electronic count.
We welcome the Greens official support even though it is unofficial. We only hope that Bill Lang also excepts the need for the count to be open and transparent.
Under the terms of the Local Government Act ballot papers MUST be presorted into bundles of primary votes as part of a manual count. The problem is that the VEC has the right to vary the procedure any way they see fit under a computerised count. Descension in the absence of regulations.
The Victorian parliament in reviewing the 2006 State Election recommended that ballot papers be presorted prior to batching and data-entry. We support the Parliament’s recommendation and note that there is nothing that prevents the Returning Officer from undertaking a pre-sorting of ballot papers prior to the data-entry process.
It is a question of self regulation and honesty. The Victorian Electoral Commission has an obligation to ensure that the election count is conducted in an open and transparent manner in order to maintain public confidence. The count must be seen and be above board. (The same policy should also apply to the Below-the-line votes in the Council election)
The Offical Unoffical responce to our concerns
The Greens have made an unofficial request to Mr Lang [VEC Returning Officer for teh city of Melbourne] that the VEC bundle the primary votes of the leadership ticket candidates before the data-entry stage. I have reason to believe that Mr Lang will seriously consider doing this despite being under no obligation to do so.
As we are only two days before ‘election day’, but already some months after the contracts for this election were agreed on, we consider it inappropriate to support any calls for an injunction.
We are happy for you to indicate on your blog (without copying any part of this email) that The Greens give in-principle support to the bundling of primary votes of the leadership ticket only.
Best regards,
Rohan
The single-member wards are winner takes all (Banyule, Boroondarra and others).
The multi-member electorates are proportional (a good reform by the Labor government). Before the Local Government act was changed in 2003 the multi-member wards were winner takes all exhaustive preferential voting (and I believe before Kennet`s reforms the councils were elected by thirds each year).
Democracy@work what do you have against the VLGA? I would have thought it was Tully free.
Er, haven’t you done exactly that?
I’m going to dob you in.
I have a slight correction to what I wrote above.
I said that Diana Asmar was using the ALP logo in her election material. Today I scrutinised it closely. In fact she has the southern cross stars from the logo, plus the words (very small) “member of Victorian” (very large) “Labor” in the red square.
So technically she has not used the logo, just two graphic devices that are very, very similar to the logo. Whether using the word “Labor” is tantamount to using the name of the Australian Labor Party is more arguable, but again she is clearly trying to stretch the rules as far as possible.
In Darebin there are some shenanigans going on, as usual. There are eight Labor Unity members of the outgoing council. There was nine but Marlene Kairouz was elected to the Legislative Assembly at the Kororoit by-election and her place was not filled on the Council after her resignation. Personalites and sub-factions determine Darebin ALP political power rather than the factions themselves. Both Michael Leighton, the former MLA for Preston, Robin Scott, the present MLA for Preston, upper house member and until recently a Brumby government Minister Theo Theophanous, and upper house-member Nazih Elasmar are the local powerbrokers. All are good branch-stackers, a complimentary term in the ALP. All run a good organisation at the local level.
Fontana, Kelly, Kairouz, Chiang, Kundevski and Stephenson belong to the Leighton-Scott sub-faction of Labor Unity. Kairouz is no longer on Council. Kelly and Stephenson are not seeking re-election.
Asmar, Salata and Tsitas belong to the Theophanous-Elasmar sub-faction of Labor Unity.
Martin B is incorrect in including Salata with the Left. She is a member of Labor Unity. She was once a close friend of Banyule Councillor Dean Sherriff, an enemy of the Leighton-Scott sub-faction. The confusion probably arose because she is not getting preferences from Labor Unity members aligned with the Leighton-Scott sub-faction and has had to deal with the Left.
A key left candidate is Gaetano Greco, a former roadie for an Elvis impersonator.
Greco once took Salata to the Municipal Electoral Tribunal with support then from the Leighton-Scott sub-faction. Times have changed and all is now forgiven.
The Leighton-Scott bailiwick is Preston, and the it is the two northern wards where the contest is dirtiest. The Theophanous-Elasmar organisation are relatively clean fighters in in the southern Rucker ward, and Leighton-Scott have agreed to keep out of this ward. The main opposition to the ALP in Rucker ward is the Greens, who will certainly win one spot of the three up for election. Darren Lewin-Hill is the best of the Independents, but he will struggle.
An interesting sidelight of this contest is the campaign against Alison Donohue, former Darebin Councillor and arch enemy of Michael Leighton, the former MLA for Preston, although she is a member of Labor Unity. A dirt sheet complains about Donohue’s former performance on Council, but has little to commend it as Donohue was not on Council at the time claimed by the dirt sheet. The person authorising the dirt sheet has denied knowledge of its contents, so it is obvious its production is fraudulent. Donohue this time is getting preferences from the Leighton-Scott sub-faction, but this may be under instructions from Fiona Richardson, MLA for Northcote and wife of ALP State Secretary Steve Newnham. Richardson wants to reduce sub-factional brawling, and distances herself, sensibly, from all of the local party warlords.
The Left is now largely irrelevant in internal Darebin ALP politics except for the fact that non-endorsements mean it has a chance of picking up a spot on the Council. Richardson prefers to see ALP members elected to Darebin Council rather than Greens councillors, as her own seat was threatened by a strong Greens campaign in 2006.
At the previous Council election in Darebin one candidate admitted membership of the Liberal Party. His vote was minimal, but that is probably a reflection of the fact that Liberal organisation in Darebin is negligible. Nick Kotsiras, the able Liberal MLA for Bulleen, is the husband of former Northcote councillor Angela Kotsiras, and no doubt helped her electorally, but it was easier for the Liberals to campaign in smaller wards. One candidate this time is a known Liberal Party voter, and his preferences are helping Leighton-Scott. A former Liberal candidate for Preston in a previous election actually appeared in election literature for Diana Asmar praising her ability as a councillor, and there is nothing wrong with this. It is a pity the Liberal Party has such poor organisation in Melbourne’s Labor heartland. It is the reason for much of the poor infrastructure. The Liberals in government don’t care about a Labor heartland. Labor doesn’t care because it wins anyway.
Ok time to disclose the predictions.
Nothing much has changed from the initial fold up assessment as determined by the negotiated preference deal. 60%of voters will follow the recommended TV card the remaining 40% will not differ too dramitically and given that it is a two way swap for all intensive purposes you can apply an initial analysis of 100% ticket flows. That leaves the big question of magnitude. There are only two possible candidates that can win the Lord Mayor race. Catherine Ng and Peter McMullin.
The Greens are not a contender and Will Fowles is expected to poll less then the Greens and will top up Peter McMullin. The Greens we estimate on 13-15% (They received 9% in 2004 and the Kensington area has added 1 – 1,5% to their vote 14% is generous but not enough to remain in the race. The catch point if Fowles out polls the Greens (not expected). We estimate Fowles to be on 10-12%
Gary Singer 6-9% Catherine Ng 8-12%, Morgan 8-11% Column 6-9%.
The unknown is Doyle. He is expected to get anywhere between 15 to 22% McMullin needs 18-22% primary to be in the race. The groupings Morgan and Column (14 to 18%) Singer and Ng (12 to 20%) Fowles and McMullin 26-30%. Catherine Ng picks up the Green vote (The Greens have preference Catherine Ng, who has close connections to Ted Baillieu, as part of a State preference swap) This will place Ng above Robert Doyle but Doyles vote will split on distribution flowing to McMullin/Wilson team and to Ng 50/50, producing a Ng versus McMullin fight to the end with the outcome within 1-2%. We will know whether our assumptions will hold on Saturday.
Unfortunately in spite the Greens support and their “unofficial” plea – Melbourne City Council’sVEC Returning Office, Bill Lang, has refused to undertake a preliminary sorting of the ballot papers, acting on instructions [QUOTE] “from above”. Which indicates that the returning officer is not really in charge. The decision of the VEC to not undertake a preliminary primary vote distribution flies in the face of the Parliament’s recommendation and demonstrates the inability and unwillingness of the VEC to self-regulate its affairs. As a result the VEC has prevented an open and transparent count. The count will now be hidden behind the the vale of technology and scrutineers denied the right to closely monitor the count. SHAMEFUL
If it is tight, as expected (Within 1.5%), then a recount will be required.
The VEC claim that it will take them 15 seconds to data-entry each vote (This does not include time required for batching and administration of the count). There will be 18 data-entry operators. That’s 12 hours ( 18 x 12) to count 56000 votes. (Expect it to take much longer then that. – It would have been quicker to count manually).
To date, with one day to go, the VEC has received 51176 envelopes back.
Oz 171 This is not my blog but yes I think it is a bit whimpy of the Greens to make an unofficial request and then try and hide it. There is nothing confidential in its content and well people need to know the extent of contempt shown by the VEC for an open and transparent count.the only groups not calling for a preliminary sort is Catherine Ng, Gary Singer and Robert Doyle. They were the same groups that refused to call the City for Melbourne to be subjected to a open review of its representational model. We can only hope they do not get elected – Even though the Greens have preference Catherine Ng which could see her cross the line starting form a low vote base.
Peter McMullin and Tim Wilson have presented their credentials to Melbourne’s business community. McMullin-Wilson team is without doubt the most experienced and professional team in the Lord Mayor’s race offering Melbourne strong leadership and fiscal management.
Tim Wilson, who is a senior consultant at the pro-enterprise think tank “the Institute of Public Affairs” and a senior member of the Liberal Party, has sent out a personal letter to try and shore up the business vote in hope of securing 4,000votes that otherwise would have gone by default to Robert Doyle.
Robert Doyle has run the most lacklustre campaign of all the main contenders. showing contempt and disengagement from the political process. Doyle is relying on the recognition factor. In the process he has undermined and divided the liberal conservative vote that would have normally been allocated to the likes of Peter Clarke (Gary Morgan) Fiona Snedden (Nick Columb). Doyle appears to be coasting,not taking the elction or the electorate seriously. He is expect to help top up Catherine Ng, who is being backed by Ted Baillieu, in what is shaping to be a close contest with two main players, Catherine Ng and Peter McMullin.
Robert Doyle’s disengagement in the campaign has eroded his initial vote pull expectation. There are some people who think that Doyle may bottom out and receive as low as 12% of the vote. Expectations are that he will attract around 18-20% but that this level of support will not flow on to his Council Ticket which is headed by Carl “jet set” Jetter.
The McMullin Wilson letter should give McMullin that extra edge in his campaign. Voting closed at 6:00PM Friday November 28.
A lot of comments have been made on Vexnews about Michael Freshwater, claimed to be One Nation candidate for the Council of East Gippsland. In his candidate statement Mr Freshwater, a former councillor who was defeated last time, claims he is not a member of any political party.
Mr Freshwater has an important claim to be remembered forever in the history of Victorian politics, yet few people want to know about it. He was One Nation candidate for the Legislative Assembly seat of Gippsland East in 1999, and his preferences were responsible for the election of the Bracks government. Repeat, Steve Bracks, of Lebanese descent, became Premier only because of preferences from the candidate of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, one Michael Freshwater.
Freshwater preferenced Independent Craig Ingram, and those 1000 or so preferences put Ingram above the ALP candidate. Ingram won with the original 1000 prefences from One Nation plus the preferences from the ALP. Had Freshwater preferenced the National sitting member Ingram’s preferences would have been distributed first, and enough of his preferences plus those from Freshwater would have re-elected the sitting National. Ingram went on to support Bracks in the chamber over the incumbent Premier Jeff Kennett.
Landeryou on Vexnews claims that Jenny Mikakos and Gavin Jennings, both MLCs from the ALP Socialist Left, are supporters of Michael Freshwater in his current campaign and ought to be expelled from the ALP. As Freshwater now claims to not be a member of any political party Mikakos and Jennings are not breaking any party rule by supporting him. They are not very politically astute, but they are not committing a hanging offence.
There has also been criticism of Jennings on Vexnews as the Minister for the EPA Stasi. This would not normally be relevant to a local campaign but several candidates in Boroondara have latched on to it.
The EPA operates a dob-in system by which anyone can dob in a motorist throwing cigarette butts out of their car. The East German secret police, the Stasi, operated using informers in much the same way as the Victorian EPA. The Minister for the EPA is called the Minister for the EPA Stasi on the Landeryou blog, and he clearly is. If Freshwater has any brains he will distance himself from Jennings, whose lack of control over his Environment Protection Authority is an absolute disgrace.
A recent documented case involved a fraudulent dob in, and the refusal of the EPA to apologise after withdrawing an infringment notice, is being used against candidates known to be sympathetic to the ALP in the current round of local government elections, for example on the Boroondara Vote Reform blog that is now supporting Krogerite candidates in that municipality, whoever these are.
Vexnews of Andrew Landeryou has got it right in its condemnation of Jennings and his EPA Stasi. To repeat Michael Freshwater is politically stupid in accepting support from Jennings, as claimed in Vexnews.
Steve Bracks, of Lebanese descent, became Premier only because of preferences from the candidate of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, one Michael Freshwater.
Freshwater preferenced Independent Craig Ingram.
What has Steve Bracks ancestry got to do with anything here and I guess you can also attribute the Greens preferences to securing a win for Catherine Ng, Wife of Ted Baillieu advisor, if she wins on Saturday’s count. Sure she claims she is independent when we all know she is not. The fact is the only political party endorsing candidates in Melbourne is the Greens. McMullin-Wilson is, for the first time,a cross ALP-Liberal Ticket which most certainly is independent yet associated from both the Liberal party and the the ALP. Ng has Brian Shanahan running as her lead candidate. Brian,(ALP outsider who is very much on the nose within the ALP), may find he does not collect the same vote shown to his chosen liberal leader Catherine Ng as the vote is not expected to flow down from the leadership ticket to the council ticket in the same proportion. Brian is the sacrificial lamb. In what was seen as payback for the Greens preferencing Ng he has preferenced the Greens in the Council ticket ahead of other ALP members. For those not in the know it was Brian Shanahan that tried unsuccessfully to have the ALP officially endorse candidates. Had they done so he would have lost out in the preselection process. He is not a draw-card and only managed to get elected last time by pig tailing on the back of James Long’s 2004 attempt to win the Lord Mayor’s election by running a host of dummy candidates with the support of Kate Redwood. Kate Redwood also supported Catherine Ng back in 2004 in in return Catherine Ng offered Kate a lucrative contract on the City of Melbourne Library board appreciation for her support.problem was the Local Government Act prohibited ex councillors from being employed by the City of Melbourne. The City Council then made a substantial behind closed doors compensation payment to Redwood for having to cancel her illegal employment contract with under the terms of the Local Government Act was null in void.
This election is the first major local government election where the disclosure of campaign funding and expenditure has to be made. It will be interesting to monitor Catherine Ng returns as it is understood that a number of major development companies who had received preferential treatment in the consideration of their planning applications whilst Ng was chairman of the planning committee.
Hi Caroline
thanks for the extra info.
Yes, you’ll see that I clarified that point in a subsequent post. It is clear that she has dealt with the SL – she recommends preferences for Greco and Laurence, they recommend preferences for her, and thirteen other candidates (mostly SL identified) group the three together at the top of their preferences.
As far as I know, all police forces use informers. I never heard of any police force that did not use informers. Choosing to compare the EPA’s use of informers to the Stasi in particular strikes me as bias.
The contest between multiple ‘Labor’ candidates in Darebin is interesting. It recalls the founding Country Party policy of multiple endorsement where pre-selection was barred and any member could run at elections and the current Tasmanian practice.
This all sounds so student union like.
When will people grow up.
It’s interesting that the three wards have three completely different contests: one orderly; one well organised interfactional stoogefest; and one free-for-all.
Spring Carnival Closing Event
Punters bets close 6:00PM today
An additional 10,000 votes arrived in the mail today.
Punters have until 6:00 PM to place their bets. Sportingbet Australia is offering 5:1 on Catherine Ng. Catherine is the favourite to win the race with Peter McMullin (3.5:1)expected to be the other contender left standing as the horses cross the finish line.
The race guide promises an existing bout and most punters will be hanging to their tickets until the end, with at least three conjunction points where the outcome of the race can be decided.
See the Race Guide anticipated fold up
Further on Cazaly Ward. I suggested above that Fontana and Morgan looked best placed on the preferences. Actually Joe Cutri probably is, and Alison Donohue as well placed as Morgan ahead of Fontana.
Cutri has himself, and 5 others recommending a preference for him ahead of Fontana, Morgan, Donohue or the Greens.
Donohue and Morgan between them have a total of four recommending a preference for them ahead of the others listed, two going Donohue, Morgan, two going Morgan, Donohue.
Fontana has two recommending a preference for him ahead of the others listed.
The Green candidate, El-Leissy has himself and three others recommending a preference for him ahead of the others listed.
The caveat on such messy preferences is that it all depends who you choose as the serious candidates eg thrree of Cutri’s have Kiriakidis before Cutri, and two of El-Leissy’s have Govan before El-Leissy. OTOH if Fontana is out, then one of his goes to Morgan, and one to El-Leissy.
J-D objects to comparisons between the EPA and the Stasi, claiming that all police forces use informers. The comparison is valid. The EPA does operate like the Stasi. An informer makes a complaint to the EPA, the EPA then issues an infringement notice, and the person named on the infringement notice must either pay a fine, elect to go to court, or apply to have the infringement notice withdrawn by making a statutory declaration to the EPA. The EPA frequently will not withdraw an infringement notice, and in this circumstance many people will pay a fine rather than attend court. The EPA complaint mechanism is sometimes called community policing. Community dob-in is a more appropriate term. If the Victoria Police operated like this there would be a public outcry.
A prominent writer on political matters was the victim of a fraudulent infringement notice, and this received some publicity in the Sunday Age. His mistake was not electing to go to court, as he freely admits. The EPA withdrew the infringement notice but would not apologise.
Michael Freshwater in East Gippsland should distance himself from the Minister for the EPA Stasi, Gavin Jennings, or he will commit electoral suicide.
The EPA fines are subject to a real court and are for a legitimate purpose (punishing those who litter not suspected non-communists). The person who reports the littering has to agree to give evidence in court for the report to be processed.
http://www.epa.vic.gov.au/litter/docs/litter_form.pdf
I’ve revised by Darebin entry based on recent comments from Caroline Church and Martin B – thanks for these.
Caroline Church @ 186
Yes, I do, and all the more strenuously following your response, which clearly shows that you have no valid justification for your position. You haven’t even attempted to deny that the use of informers is common to all police forces, for a start. So let’s see what else you’ve got.
Reiterating your assertion does not give it any more merit than it had in the first place.
And this is like the Stasi how exactly? Did the Stasi issue infringement notices? If the Stasi had something against you did you have the options of paying a fine, going to court, or applying for a review? I think not. People in the GDR were not so lucky, I’m afraid.
So in fact what you have done is say ‘The EPA does operate like the Stasi’ and then go on to show, in detail, how the EPA does not operate like the Stasi.
Oh, epic fail! The Victoria Police does in fact operate in exactly the same way! The Victoria Police issues infringement notices and the people who receive them have the choices of paying a fine, applying for a review, or going to court. Check it out on their website if you don’t believe me.
And I suppose you’re going to tell us that no other police force or law enforcement or regulatory agency in the world in history has ever wrongly penalised anybody–except for the solitary instances of the EPA and the Stasi. Again, I think not.
I have better things to do with my time than argue with J-D.
The political writer mentioned received an infringement notice in the mail fining him on the basis of a report from an unknown member of the community stating that he had thrown a cigarette butt out of the window of his car.
The political writer does not smoke.
At the time of the alleged offence the political writer had bought a pair of glasses in Northcote, some distance from the place where the alleged offence occurred, and had a credit card receipt to prove it.
The political writer had to spend time making a statutory declaration and the EPA withdrew the infringement notice.
They did not apologise.
Many members of the community make complaints which are false. The police will not investigate as they see the matter as trivial. The EPA are concerned with revenue. They will probably not go to court if they are challenged, as they stand to lose heavily if they are unsuccessful. They are not concerned with investigating false allegations.
It a member of the community who does the dobbing. Not the police. In court it is necessary for the prosecution to prove its case. Not so with the EPA.
The EPA are a Stasi operation, whatever J-D says.
Whatever your complaints are about a regulatory authority acting on the basis of statutory declarations from the public – and I have no doubt a case can be mounted – it does no credit to your argument to trivialise the crimes of the Stasi in that way. The Stasi tortured and shot people. The EPA, for all their faults, does not.
Speaking of brute-force and intimidation, it appears a few of the Labor Right lackeys are getting tetchy about the MCC results.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/threat-guards-for-melbourne-lord-mayor-vote-20081128-6mw1.html
MelbCity, you’re famous. I’d suggest going down to Stonnington and scrutineering there to see something slightly more undemocratic.
This one is even better:
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24720208-2862,00.html
My favourite bit is “Mr van der Craats has not been appointed as a scrutineer by me and has nothing to do with my campaign.”
NOTE: This comment has been heavily edited to make it less ridiculous – The Management.
The EPA does not act on the basis of statutory declarations from the public. A dobber does not make a statutory declaration in reporting to the EPA. It is the alleged offender who must make a statutory declaration.
You say that the EPA doesn’t torture or shoot people. They might not shoot people, but I’m not sure it was the Stasi who shot people leaving East Germany. It was another branch of the people’s police. East Germany was not like Nazi Germany and did not execute for most crimes … SNIP
This has veered way off-topic, but you should check the legislation: the form submitted by a complainant is, by law, a statutory declaration, and false complaints are thereby subject to appropriate provisions of the Evidence Act.
While I disagree with you Martin B on this issue it is not what the EPA Stasi legislation says but the way it is enforced. There is no case of a fraudulent dobber in Victoria ever being taken to court. That is the real issue.
This matter is now closed and I suggest you use Vexnews Martin B as Andrew Landeryou has an interest in this topic and, unlike you, he is sympathetic to my claims. I thank the anonymous person on Vexnews for his or her support.
Local government counting has commenced, except in the five municipalities with attendance voting. Glen Eira has introduced attendance voting to reduce dummy candidates. It is nonsense to say it has worked. Proportional representation reduces dummy candidates, for the aim of a candidate is to obtain a quota. Candidates under proportional representation (all except single member wards) should ensure they have at least one running mate. A running mate is not a dummy. Vacancies are filled by a countback and if the place of a councillor becomes vacant the running mate is likely to fill the place of the vacated councillor.
This is sensible. To give an extreme example, and that is Boroondara, a leafy suburb in which no member of the ALP claiming to be such would win any ward. If the VEC had introduced proportional representation (a campaign orchestrated by the then CEO Peter Johnstone and supported by Jeff Kennett and, sadly, former ALP Legislative Assembly Speaker Ken Coghill) the ALP might win one place in the ward that includes the low income Asburton area. If that place became vacant a by election for one vacancy in the whole of the ward would result in a victory for a Liberal supporting councillor. In a countback the ALP would most likely retain its representation.
The Boroondara Council has a number of overt Liberals running for most of its ten single member wards. The ALP has a chance in only one ward, Solway, which covers the Asburton area. No ALP member is running as such but Kevin Chow, an ALP member, is likely to win. The previous councillor in the area who is not re-contesting, Mary Haliklia-Byrnes, is a member of the ALP also.
The same logic would apply in other municipalities but I will give as an example Darebin where the position is reversed. Darebin from today will have three three-member wards. The Greens will almost certainly win one spot in Rucker ward. If the elected Green resigned another Green, his running mate, would almost certainly win on a countback. If a by election were held to fill the vacancy from the ALP would certainly win and the Greens would possibly lose their representation on Darebin Council.
I hope I have made this clear. A dummy candidate is a stooge candidate and exists only to funnel preferences to a preferred candidate. The ALP is very good at doing this in single member wards and the Liberals have done it too. There are two examples in single member wards in Boroondara where certain Liberals have run as many as six dummies. A running mate is a genuine candidate who, if unsuccessful, is prepared to serve should the place of the successful allied candidate becomes vacant. A dummy candidate is not there to win. Some do but that’s another story. A running mate or allied candidate is not there to funnel votes but as a part of a multi member ward group.
That said there are dummy candidates in multi member wards, and in Moreland and one ward in Darebin this is the case. It is more difficult to establilsh who is or might be a dummy in a multi member ward, but running dummies in such wards is senseless as the aim, as I said above, is to achieve a quota and it is better for candidates to aim to get a quota rather than rely on dummies.
Caroline Church @ 196
I disagree with your assessment. The subjective and specious argument of “Dummy” candidates applies to both multiple member and single member electorates. As to who is to decide who is a dummy candidate or not is very very dubious. Apart form that it is any persons democratic right to nominate for election to public office. We do not have a system like that in Iran where candidates are vetted by a select panel of jurists or media.
I would argue for example that the Greens in Melbourne who ran a full ticket that the candidates at number 2 or higher in their preference list are all dummy candidates, non of which will get elected. Are they dummies? Added to the ballot paper so as to give the impression that the Greens had a team. The same argument applies top all other parties/groups. OK Melbourne is the only municipality that has above-the line Senate style voting. But there is an argument that all candidates running for Melbourne are dummies.
I assume that the same may apply for all other municipalities.
I would also add that I think the criteria used by the VEC in determining which municipalities had multi-member wards and which had single member wards was dubious to say the least. There is no consistent logic in their assessment.
Why did Hudson Bay have single member wards and Stonnington multi-member? Was it purely the fact that Steve Bracks was the local member at the time?
You also need to remember that prior to the Bracks Government reforms municipalities in Victoria had 3 member wards BUT the method of elections was a reiterative exhaustive preferential count. Where the same voters elected all three members of Council. In come cases one third were elected annually (1 per ward per year). The main drawback and argument for multi-member wards is the size of the ward and the costs involved in running a campaign to have someone elected. In contrast there is little to suggest or argue that local geographic interest rate a community of interest.In the final outcome the decision of a council are made as a whole and not on a electorate basis. That being the case should not the the council be elected as a whole?
I should hope so. You should have better things to do with your time than defend the indefensible. You have, after all, no substantive response to the points I made.
Presumably because you have no legitimate response to the points made against you. I’m perfectly happy to leave it at that.
Just in case anybody else has been confused about the essential logical point by your irrelevancies, it is this: in order to show that the EPA is like the Stasi, it is insufficient to demonstrate that there is something wrong with the way the EPA operates. For all I know, your criticisms of the EPA are completely legitimate, but that isn’t the point. If you had said ‘the way the EPA operates is monstrous and the legislation ought to be changed’ I would never have dreamed of arguing with you. It’s only the comparison with the Stasi which I contested, and this is the point which you have completely failed even to attempt to justify.
The City of Melbourne count is labouriously proceeding as the numerous electoral offials proceed to deflap and open ballot paper envelopes. We are told that there are all up around 61300 envelopes received. The VEC could not provide an accurate figure as such we are left with an approximation only.
In the absence of a preliminary sorting of ballot papers as is the case in a Federal Election it is virtually impossible to properly scrutinise the ballot, The VEC rejected the recommendations made the the State Parliament that ballot papers be resorted into primary votes prior to data-entry. So it is now left to a random sampling process.
Whilst it is still too early to give an accurate trend indications are that Robert Doyle is receiving 20% of the vote sampled to date. In a surprise, yet welcomed outcome, Gary Singer from Team Melbourne is doing better then expected and could outpoll his running mate Catherine Ng. The combined vote of Singer and Ng, who preference each other, would be greater the the Greens. This could prove interesting as Shelly Roberts also tops up Singers vote before being distributed to McMullin. Singer could retain the vote and out poll McMullin. If this trend holds then we could see Gary Singer take Catherine Ng place rising above the chorus and becoming the lead vocal. His main competition would be Robert Doyle. Doyle’s campaign was noted for his absence from the campaign, relying purley on the name recognition factor.
Now I am not a Doyle backpacker, you understand, I think he would be a distater for Melbourne (Mainly due to his choice of deputy lord mayor and his lead candidate in the Council ballot)
Again the information available is too patchy and too few to determine the outcome overall. The count is not open and transparent, But we will keep you posted as results and trends become more clear.
Thank you J-D for agreeing with me that there is something wrong with the government agency debate over which is now closed. I disagree that I have no legitimate response but all the points on the matter that needed to be made have been made. There is no need to get personal. Let’s leave it at that.
I think we should go back to local government elections. In particular Michael Freshwater in East Gippsland, who according to Vexnews is being supported by a person I referred to earlier, but I do not wish to go back to arguing with J-D and Martin B anymore as, to repeat, I have made all the points I think needed to be made. I suggest J-D and Martin B go to Vexnews or Slanderyou2 if they wish to argue any more, but not on here.
Did anyone else watch the Stateline item on the local council elections last night?
The Liberal local government spokesperson said among other things that local elections should be party politics free and non-political.
Doyle was anti-Municipal party politics too
Those Liberals don`t like overt party disclosure.
Bring on mandatory disclosure of membership of political parties on the ballot paper (preceded by the word “unindorsed” if unindorsed).
The “keep politics out of politics” is another specious agrument. In the same way arguments that a candidate should live in the electorate. It sounds good but should play no role in deteremining who should and who should not be able to stand for public office. That decison as to who is elected to represent should not be left to the restrictive opinion of legilsators. The need to concentrat on ensuring the system is open and transparent not a closed shop.
City of Melbourme: Reports at hand indicate that Doyle is increasing his lead could reach 23%. Some think the Greens could be in the hunt for two members on Council but out of the count for the Lord Mayor. McMullin does not seem to have registered with the voters and may only see one member elected to Council.
I just got back from handing out HTV cards. It was ridiculous. There were over 20 people handing out HTVs at a fairly quiet polling place. A person would approach and a mob of 3 people deep would descend, thrusting pits of paper at this person.
A booklet of HTVs should be placed in each voting booth. That way you only need half a dozen HTVs per candidate per polling place, instead of thousands. We would save millions of tonnes of paper and also make the process less traumatic!
The funniest moments were:
1. An elderly man who started laughing at the amount of HTVs he was being given, just really cackling, so much so that everyone started laughing.
2. This is the people’s republic of Moreland (inner Melbourne), with 10 ALP candidates, a few greens and some independents. No Liberals. But there was one regular looking woman, not wearing pearls or should pads or anything, just wandering from card-holder to card-holder going “Liberal? Liberal? Is there a Liberal candidate”. I felt a bit sorry for her actually, it must be tough when you have no-one to vote for or are smack bang in the middle of “the enemy’s heartland”.
Party membership branding is fine but how do you classify those that have a direct and close relationship with a political party but are not actually a member. Catherine Ng for example. Whats next you will have to disclose your Religion, sexual preference or HIV status? There is a big difference between being a member of a political party then being endorsed. The only party endorsing candidates in Melbourne is the Greens. McMullins ticket has both Liberal and ALP members? I do not think McMullin’s campaign did a good enough job selling this fact. It was a bold and interesting idea. I think we will not see a repeat of this in future elections. It will be back to left versus right politics. Hopefully the State Government will recognise their mistake and abolish direct elections of Lord Mayor but I would not hold my breath that they will embark on any meaningful electoral reform for the City of Melbourne. If they wanted reform they would have initiated it well before now. The Genie is out of the bottle and it will be hard to put it back.
coconaut: Where have you been. That is mild compared to a State and Federal election. The voter turnout overall has been very low in comparison to state and Federal elections. The electorate has not really been engaged. They have turned off and who can blame them. Local Government is in the end about Rates Roads and Rubbish
I don’t understand you Melbournians.
Doyle’s expected to win, and probably will, but apparently no one knows what he stands for and he hasn’t been in the public eye during the campaign. So it’s all because he was Opposition leader for some point in time.
That’s just stupid. We Sydneysiders actually think about who the vote for. If Debnam or Brogden ran for the Lord Mayoralty they’d be laughed out of town.
I volunteer at the state and federal elections and I can say there were easily double the amount of people handing out HTVs today. I guess there were way more candidates too, but it was markedly worse. It was pretty muhc overwhelming for most of the voters approaching.
Oz@206 – hah, businesses in Melbourne council election get 2 votes (residents get 1) (and so business contributes about 60% of the vote). All you need is business connections (like the State Libs) and you’re almost home and hosed…
How do you mean?
By the way, when are results being released?
Melbourne Update. The race for the Lord Mayor’s Robes and Chains will be a contest between Robert Doyle and whoever.. Most likely Gary Singer in which case Doyle would need a significant drift in preferences to cross the line as every other candidate’s HTV card preferences Gary Singer ahead of Doyle. If Singer has in fact`outpolled Catherine Ng he should pick up the Green’s preferences and in theory is shaping up to be the lead candidate. It is still close at the conjunction point
You are misrepresenting me. I did not agree with you. Since I have no knowledge of the subject, I can no more agree than I can disagree.
It doesn’t look closed to me. I don’t know what makes you think it’s closed.
I agree with you that it’s better not to get personal, and up to this point I don’t think either of us had. But I personally resent being misrepresented.
Oz I agree know one really knows what Doyle stands for. The media let him off the hook and did not hold him to account for his policies. the McMullin-Wilson team is without any doubt the most professional balanced team. (Best of a bad lot in my view) But direct elections of the Ring Master does not mean the circus performance will be good. Businesses contribute more then 60% of the Council’s revenue. If Doyle does cross the line other then his commitment to a tunnel and Opening Swanston Street he can not be criticised for failing to full-fill his policies. Correction to my above Comment: McMullin had a split ticket one published in the book and one sent out in the mail. The Book placed Doyle a head of Singer the mailout had Singer before Doyle. If the drift in preferences can see the Greens out poll the combined vote of Singer and Ng then the Greens will move ahead strangely enough picking up book preferences from Columbia and Morgan. It is that close at the conjunction point. In the absence of a primary vote throw we are working off very vague estimates of random sampling
Be a pretty incredible result if The Greens win.
If they win, and Labor still had WA then The Greens and the Liberals would have been on a level footing in terms of executive positions.
That would’ve been a fun time.
Regarding Peter McMullin, I don’t know that much about him, but Tim Wilson makes me ill.
I agree that keeping politics out of local elections is a ludicrous impossibility but there is a certain merit in the idea that candidates should live in the seat in which they stand because it means that they have common experiences with the people they are trying to represent. The state Labor party is particularly rife with those standing for and “representing” electorates they do not live in.
In the City of Melbourne residents get one vote while businesses get two (or more under certain circumstances). For example Singtel will get 20 ballot papers each worth two votes.
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2008/776/40031
Looks like some non-Melbourne City Council results have started to come in according to Ben Raue…
http://tallyroom.wordpress.com/2008/11/29/liveblogging-victorian-councils/
Mid day update – More data. The original estimate is back on track. in a reversal of fortune Catherine Ng has out polled Singer. McMullin is on 18% the Greens 13-14%
My original estimates are looking good. However Doyle is at the top end on around 25%
Go Doyle! Imagine how far in front he’d be if he actually campaigned….
He’s probably only going to win because he didn’t actually tell anyone what he was all about.
Yes but nobody else really campaigned and those that did went negative…hardly anybody votes on policy its all on their name and who they are…for better or worse they know Doyle I dunno who anybody else is running except maybe the guy running for the Greens…
Doyle will be a darn sight better than So though…
Falling back to our original estimate made on Thursday. Catherine Ng looks like climbing the pack. The fold up at the end is Doyle 26% McMullin 29 Ng 45% (This includes the Greens Preference
Doyle goes out and Ng is elected. This is based on the book preference value. As we thought there is three close points in the outcome.
Question what percentage of the Green vote will not follow the ticket and flow to McMullin ahead of Ng. What percentage of Morgan will break ticket?
0
Hahaha.
Morgan voters are too dumb.
Gary Singers Scrutineers put Singer and On neck to neck with both sitting on around 10.65% This is the first conjunction point and if it is this close then Singer is looking like overtaking Ng again. Singer should pick up votes from Shelly Roberts which will see he overtake Catherine Ng early in the count. All scrutineers are lost in the count and do not know which way is north as the fog sets in. Had the VEC undertaken a preliminary primary vote we would have been in a better position to know the topography. If it is tight at the bottom end we can expect a recount to dicide who will be the challenger Ng or Singer. The direction and magnitude of the drift is unkown. There are other potential close conjucntions and the meter is bouncing around the change on the barometer..
Singers Scouts prefs.
ACTIVATE MELBOURNE 26.26%
C MELBOURNE GROW – CATHERINE NG 10.68%
SHIFTING THE BURDEN 1.66%
PASSION FOR MELBOURNE 4.62%
THE GREENS 15.01%
MELBOURNE SUPERCITY. WORLD 1.60%
RESIDENTS EQUITY – AFFORDABLE RESIDENT RATES 1.70%
TEAM MELBOURNE 10.65%
FOWLES A FRESH VISION 8.73%
McMULLIN-WILSON FOR MELBOURNE’S FUTURE 11.21%
MORGAN CLARKE – OUR CITY – YOUR COUNCIL 7.88%
Comment on Slanderyou2 that scrutineers in Boroondara have confirmed a massive vote for Liberal Party candidates.
Possibly so. Remember Boroondara is the Liberal Party heartland and the only declared Labor Party candidate, Marg Darcy, doesn’t stand a chance. Labor might win in Solway ward, which covers the housing commission estate in Alamein, but everywhere else it will be a jewel in the Liberal crown.
There is something out of wack here because figures coming from the Columb scouts show McMullin on 17.5-18% Singer has McMullin on 11.2%.. This descepancy significant. the stats comming forom Catherin Ng scouts show a 106% count…
ACTIVATE MELBOURNE 27.8
C MELBOURNE GROW – CATHERINE NG 14.4
SHIFTING THE BURDEN 1.7
PASSION FOR MELBOURNE 4.3
THE GREENS 14
MELBOURNE SUPERCITY. WORLD 1.7
RESIDENTS EQUITY – AFFORDABLE RESIDENT RATES 1
TEAM MELBOURNE 10.4
FOWLES A FRESH VISION 7
McMULLIN-WILSON FOR MELBOURNE’S FUTURE 17.3
MORGAN CLARKE – OUR CITY – YOUR COUNCIL 7
Total 106.6
Greeens have lost in two single wards in Mount Alexander. The local conservatives have learnt how to rig the system, as they did in most Australian upper houses before pr and the ALP did in Queensland and the LCL did in South Australia.
Theoretically it only needs about 33 per cent of the vote to control Mount Alexander Council. The Castlemaine ward is elected by pr. The three rural wards are single member. If conservatives win the three rural wards with 51 per cent and get one quota, 25 per cent, in the three councillor ward they get a majority of councillors with a very low percentage of the total vote. It is not democratic and I hope the Greens will do something about it. The ALP won’t and neither will the Libs or the Nats.
Caroline Church @ 225:
Do you know who the candidates represent in Solway Ward? I could only really work out David Edwards as Liberal, and I think Justin McKernan is Indpt, but what about Diane Preston and Kevin Chow?
Justin McKernan is Independent running on an anti-Freeway noise campaign. He didn’t show preference recommendations in his literature. Edwards preferenced Chow. He didn’t do much work. Chow and Preston would not answer a question as to political allegiances in the Progress Leader. Chow is a member of the ALP. Preston’s politics are unknown. McKernan, Chow and Preston letterboxed the ward. Edwards did not. The Liberals did not campaign in the ward, but unofficially some members of the Kennett faction supported McKernan. They are sensible in this. It is better to have one enemy from outside rather than enemies from your own camp. The Boroondara Council has clear divisions between Kennett and Kroger Liberals, plus genuine independents. Wegman (although he attacked the ALP in the press) Mayor Ross and Kreutz appear to be genuine independents.
Chow will win Solway. Liberal Healey and Independents Wegman and Ross appear to have been returned. Former Mayor Voce, who lost last time to Healey, appears to have been defeated this time also but the contest in that ward is very tight.
McMullin team say that Singer and Ng are neck and neck but they have gone underground which indicates that they are in trouble. Tim Wilson has reported that McMullin is on around 15%-16%.
how come Ng can win with a primary vote of 10% wtf?
We need FPP don’t we, Glen.
Tom the first and best said the opposition spokesperson is a Lib. Jeanette Powell, the MLA for Shepparton, is a member of the National Party. She takes the view political parties should not be relevant in local government.
I hope I am not misrepresenting her in this. I’m not going to bother specifically with J-D but if I did misrepresent him I apologise. If he wants to continue this topic he should use Slanderyou2 or Vexnews and I’ll be glad to debate him there. Not here.
Jeanette’s views are typical of the National Party, which opposed proportional representation in local government because too many pinko schoolteachers might get elected to local councils.
The fact is the ALP rarely contests local government outside of metropolitan Melbourne. They are sensible in this. Proportional representation results in less party politics in local government rather than more.
It’s called preferential voting, Glen. We’ve only had it for 90 years. Get with the program.
So its ok for someone to win on 10% primary vote and someone on 27+% primary vote to lose?
If that is the preference of the majority of voters, of course. Glen, preferential voting is YOUR party’s invention and it is still YOUR party’s policy, so get over it.
no i won’t
Well I suggest you take it up with Mr Turnbull and stop whinging about it here. It’s very tiresome, like someone complaining about this new-fangled jazz music all the time.
Victor Perton on Facebook is advocating first past the post voting. Arthur Calwell advocated it when the DLP was strong. Arthur Calwell would have been Prime Minister but for preferential voting in 1961, so he said, but people vote different ways under different voting systems. In the UK tactical voting is practised, where people will not vote for a conservative when they want the Liberal Democrat to defeat Labour.
I support pr in multi member constituencies, and the alternative vote (as other countries call what we call preferential voting).
Preferential voting is really a misstatement as preferences are cast also in pr elections in Australia.
Thanks for that, Caroline! You seem to have a lot of sources.
Does anyone have any actual news about the elections? The VEC website has nothing. Ben Raue has had nothing new for an hour.
Channel 9 said Doyle was ahead…but not by any figures or preferences…
Adam,
I can give you some prelim data from Melbourne City Council. With 2/3 atl vote in (ie., a touch under 40,000 votes received):
Fowles, 9.80%
Morgan, 9.15%
Forde, 1.37%
Greens, 18.63%
Team Melbourne, 11.43%
McMillan/Wilson, 12.56%
Activate, 21.38%
Passion, 5.47%
C, 10.21%
Adam figuers are coming through here. Click on councils that have ticks.
http://www.vec.vic.gov.au/lgresults.html
What council is Doyle running for Glen?
Mayor of Melbourne
Apology accepted.
If the territory seats had had full voting rights in 1961 then there would have been a hung parliament and Labor may well have prevailed in that situation.
So possibly the decision made by Labor that kept them out for so long was giving the territory MPs a vote only on territory issues.
The NT got a seat in 1922, when it had an enrolment of 1,376 voters. The ACT got a seat in 1949, when it had an enrolment of 11,841. Neither really merited a voting member on their enrolments at that time. After 1949, when their populations began to grow, the Libs were in power, and wouldn’t give their MPs voting rights because they were both Labor members. In 1961 the NT had 12,131 voters and the ACT had 28,672. The two MPs weren’t given voting rights until after the CP won the NT seat in 1966.
Sorry the Northern Territory seat was added in 1922 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament_of_Australia) but adding an ACT seat would have been the perfect time to change the voting rights of the NT MP.
Assuming the figures in 224 are correct-ish, and that preference flows are reasonably as recommended (and I have no faith in either assumption) then the best sense I can make of it is:
If (in the 11th? exclusion) Morgan is excluded before Ng, then Ng is likely to win
else if (in the 12th? exclusion) Bandt is excluded before McMullin and Singer, then Singer is likely to win
else Doyle is likely to win.
So your scientific conclusion is that … anyone might win. That’s very helpful.
Also those figures were posted 5 hours ago. Does no-one have more recent figures?
The NT enrolment could have been increased by de-disenfranchising the Aborigines.
Very few NT Aborigines in 1922 were in sufficient contact with white society for the franchise to have meant anything to them. Their votes would have been cast for them by the station owners.
Sorry, the parenthetical statements should be 5th? and 7th? respectively, I think, but the rest still makes sense.
“anyone might win. That’s very helpful.”
Well, only one of the pro-business candidates, but given the gerrymander in operation that’s only marginally more helpful.
The third scenario would seem to have the most number of pathways, so seems most likely. It’s not at all improbable that Bandt could garner enough preferences along the way to finish something like 40-60 runner-up to Doyle, which would be a fantastic performance for the Greens, but of course it would suit most Bandt supporters’ preferences to have his vote distrubted earlier in the count to push Singer over the line.
It’s a paradox in preferential voting.
I was thinking more in 1948.
Ok. Back on line. time to reflect on days events.
How can someone win on 10% of the vote (Well it is 11% actually and it not clear of it is Singer or Ng on the hunt. It is close by all accounts which is why we believe there will be a recount. There is a huge unknown factor with the drift away from the book at around 40% or more we try and explain how the fold up might go.
The interesting close junctions are Singer/Ng virtually neck to neck at around 11%
The combined vote of Singer and Catherine Ng out polls the Greens in each case.
If Singer survives *** Morgan/Columb votes go to McMullin with drift from Morgan( now 27%) the Greens (now 19-20%) Doyle (29%) Singer 23%. Greens next eliminated bring Singer to the lead above Doyle and McMullin there is a close nexus between Doyle and McMullin exact value unknown due to drift to Doyle from Morgan But again it is close. With a McMullin/Doyle toss up Singer is best position to jump of the line either way
If Ng survives *** Morgan flows to Ng but with some leakage to both Doyle and McMullin. Ng is now on around 26-27% McMullin who is on around 25-26Doyle moves into the front at around 31% the Greens at 18% Greens are eliminated and the drift see McMullin at 33 Doyle 33% and Ng 34% It is potentially very close and the spilt can go either way Ng is in the best position as she collects most of the ticket vote and if she is ahead then the other is eliminated. So it is a question of how goes out and what value the drift is at this stage. No one is prepared to place bets at this stage. Some think it could be decided by a hand full of votes who is excluded and who is not. There is now two major junctions points Ng/Singer and the final three.
To add to the fraustration the VEC failed to undertake a preliminary distribution into primary votes. reason unknown. They did do a manual sort for the city Council above the line which is the same size and effort had they distributed the leadership primary vote and did a manual count we would know the result by 12 noon tomorrow.instead it will take a good 12-14 hours to complete the data-entry and chances are there will be a recount.
The Council has been decided on above the line preferences. The winners are (With Primary vote indicated) Quota 12.5%
Candidate
JETTER, Carl (21.5%)
OKE, Cathy (18.7%)
CLARKE, Peter (9.1%)
LOUEY, Kevin (12.0%)
ONG, Ken (11.4%)
SHANAHAN, Brian (9.9%)
KANIS, Jennifer (10.4%)
(1% diff unknown)
I hope I have my maths right. Again had the VEC undertaken a preliminary primary vote count as had been requested by most candidates the process and results would be much more clear and the process more transparent.
SNIP: No discussion of unverifiable actions by individual public officials allowed – The Management.
Time to reflect on days events.
Question: “How can someone win on 10% of the vote?”
Well it is 11% actually and it not clear if it is Singer or Ng on the hunt. It is close by all accounts which is why we believe there will be a recount. There is a huge unknown factor with the drift away from the book at around 40% or more we try and explain how the fold up might go.
The interesting close junctions are Singer/Ng virtually neck to neck at around 11%
The combined vote of Singer and Catherine Ng out polls the Greens in each case.
If Singer survives *** Morgan/Columb votes go to McMullin with drift from Morgan( now 27%) the Greens (now 19-20%) Doyle (29%) Singer 23%. Greens next eliminated bring Singer to the lead above Doyle and McMullin there is a close nexus between Doyle and McMullin exact value unknown due to drift to Doyle from Morgan But again it is close. With a McMullin/Doyle toss up Singer is best position to jump of the line either way
If Ng survives *** Morgan flows to Ng but with some leakage to both Doyle and McMullin. Ng is now on around 26-27% McMullin who is on around 25-26Doyle moves into the front at around 31% the Greens at 18% Greens are eliminated and the drift see McMullin at 33 Doyle 33% and Ng 34% It is potentially very close and the spilt can go either way Ng is in the best position as she collects most of the ticket vote and if she is ahead then the other is eliminated. So it is a question of how goes out and what value the drift is at this stage. No one is prepared to place bets at this stage. Some think it could be decided by a hand full of votes who is excluded and who is not. There is now two major junctions points Ng/Singer and the final three.
VEC Count under review
To add to the frustration the VEC failed to undertake a preliminary distribution into primary votes. reason unknown. They did do a manual sort for the city Council above the line which is the same size and effort had they distributed the leadership primary vote and did a manual count we would know the result by 12 noon tomorrow.instead it will take a good 12-14 hours to complete the data-entry and chances are there will be a recount.
The Council seven have been decided on above the line preferences.
The winners are (With Primary vote indicated) Quota 12.5%
Candidate (Primary %)
JETTER, Carl (21.5%)
OKE, Cathy (18.7%)
CLARKE, Peter (9.1%)
LOUEY, Kevin (12.0%)
ONG, Ken (11.4%)
SHANAHAN, Brian (9.9%)
KANIS, Jennifer (10.4%)
(1% diff unknown)
I hope I have my maths right.
Again had the VEC undertaken a preliminary primary vote count as had been requested by most candidates the process and results would be much more clear and the count more transparent.
SNIP: No discussion of unverifiable actions by individual public officials allowed. Take it somewhere else, please – The Management.
Apologies for comments that have been held up in moderation.
Want to read the missing trufthful comments go to http://Vexnews.com or http://Melbournecitycouncil.blogspot.com
Th data-entry of preferences is being held in a 10 x 15 met room with 18 data-entry personal crammed in and no room for scrutineers. It is hot and oxygen is in short supply. It is reported that many mistakes in the data entry are being made as a result. FIRst data-set should be avail;able around lunch time. Estimated time to data entry is 14 hours based on the VEC estimate of 15 sec per vote.
Just found this thread now. Good old PB on the case!
Just a general comment: anyone else from Darebin CC find the postal vote election scenario a bit of a downer? No community goes to polls social activity? No handing out HTVs, meet yer local party members action?
In sum: something of a bit of a step en-route to abolishing the whole tedious rigmarole of voting altogether? Havent we got time for democracy? Sorry its such a bother.
William -please remove the first post the least one is correct. The second was posted due to modertation trigger.
I do hope it’s something that doesn’t become more common.
If the Greens win the balance of power in the Legislative Assembly at the next state election then I think that one of their demands will be normalisation (de-rigging) of the Melbourne City Council. Other local government changes on that should be introduced include an increase for the maximum number of councillors from 12 to 15 (which would probably mean that several of the Melbourne councils with 7 councillors would be enlarged to 9 and those with a 2-2-3 combination would become 3×3) and mandating attendance voting at least where this would reduce stooge candidates.
With aprox. 12,000 votes counted in the Lord Mayor race, 8 hours with a further 45,000 to go (It would have been quicker to do a manual count) There will most likely be a recount of the ballot with three very close conjunction points indicated that we were right in our criticism of the way the count was being conducted. The aniticapted error rate is much higher then the possible variance in the count.
Tom WHY WAIT UNTIL 2010. I think the work should start tomorrow. And we need to seriopusly review the way that computerised election counts are conducted also. In a single member elctorate they are not required. BOYS WITH TOYS
I don’t want to hear any more endless whinging about how the VEC counts the votes. I want to hear some RESULTS.
Sorry six hours into the count and they have counted approx 20,000 one third of the way though. Manual count would have taken 7 to 8 hours not 18. Boys with toys
Bayside has just completed a computerised count. A victory for the local Kennett faction Liberals, although they will of course deny it. Kroger faction candidate Russell had a win in the southern ward, having been defeated by Kennett faction members previously in Bayside council contests using single councillor wards. Russell is not well liked, and is pro development, but he got up as he campaigned well.
He didn’t get a quota but he led on first preferences and his running mates (he had at least three) got him up. His presence on Bayside council is probably a good thing as the other councillors may unite against him. He would not have been elected under the former majority preferential system in multi councillor wards nor would he have won any single member ward. A Kennett faction moderate retiring councillor lost in the southern ward to a moderate independent with conservation interests. ALP members left Bayside alone, as they did in most wards in Boroondara. It’s the southern equivalent of Boroondara and its northern end includes Brighton with its million dollar plus real estate. Independent pro-conservationist candidates who are respectable did much better, and probably control almost half of the council.
It would be interesting to know if Simon Russell, just elected in Bayside, is related to Liberal apparatchik Richard Russell who wrote all sorts of comments on the anti-Baillieu blog before it was taken down. Richard Russell bragged about how the Liberals flooded the VEC with submissions for single member wards in Boroondara and Knox and were successful. Unfortunately Richard Russell is correct. Will Simon Russell go along the same path as Richard? Possibly not if he can count. Many Liberals, and also many ALP members, cannot.
Your problem, democracy@work, is that of the blogger who cried wolf. Because you tell us that EVERYTHING the AEC and the VEC do is either corrupt or incompetent or both, we can no longer take any of your allegations seriously, even when you are right, as you may well be sometimes.
In Bendigo both incumbent Greens have been defeated. A clear win to the Liberals with two former parliamentary candidates elected. The ALP in the area is disinterested in local government and the conservative victory this time might cause some reaction from Bob Cameron and Jacinta Allan, the two state members. The ALP almost only won one quota in the upper house region covering Bendigo, with two candidates, Candy Broad and Kaye Darveniza, who live in Melbourne. Might work in western Melbourne with a history of ALP MPs from posh suburbs but it won’t work in the bush.
The ALP in Bendigo should have supported proportional representation for the Greater Bendigo Council. The only alleged ALP sympathiser on Bendigo council, Rod Fyffe who got back unopposed, supports single wards and while this may help his re-election it is not good for the ALP in the area. PR would reduce conservative membership on the local council, it wouldn’t necessarily mean any ALP councillors as bush people don’t like overt political party councillors, but it would make it harder for Libs to use the council as a stepping stone for higher political office. Rod doesn’t see this but hopefully he can be made to change his mind. The Greens also need to get better organised. They lost all thanks to their mistake in not actively supporting PR.
Caroline, but it did work. Labor won two seats in Vic North, Vic East and Vic West, all with non-local candidates. I’m not defending those selections, I’m in favour of local candidates whenever possible, but you can’t argue that the voters rejected them. Very few votes knew or cared who their upper house candidates were – they just voted the pary ticket.
So the interesting point is still the 5th exclusion (after Roberts, Crawford, Toscano and Colomb).
If at that point Ng is ahead of either Singer or Morgan, then she will probably go on to sweep up everyones preferences and win.
However the current figures (with a third of the vote counted) put her slightly behind those two, assuming preferences flow as recommended. In that case the last three candidates will probably be Doyle, McMullin and Bandt, with Doyle ahead and the other two quite close.
If Bandt is excluded his preferences likely elect McMullin, while if McMullin is excluded his preferences certainly elect Doyle.
I can’t believe how slow the VEC is in releasing results.
However, according to my informants, in Glen Eira things seem to be turning out much as I suggested.
The sole Greens candidate, Neil Pilling, has got up in Rosstown ward and Margaret Esakoff and Steven Tang have been returned. Sitting Councillor Rob Spaulding missed out – refusing to do preference deals wouldn’t have helped him.
In Tucker ward Liberal Jamie Hyams returns to council (having been part of the council sacked in 2005). Labor’s Nick Staikos was re-elected and local activist Jim Magee has the third place. Sitting Liberal councillor Henry Buch missed out.
In Camden, local trader Frank Pehalluriack and sitting councillor Michael Lipshutz have been elected but the third place looks close and will depend on preference flows. The residents’ group ticket headed by Peter Blight leads sitting councillor Helen Whiteside on first preferences but she will receive preferences from all other candidates – so it depends on how much leakage flows to Blight.
Adam in Canberra unfortunately non-local candidates imposed on the suffering residents of rural areas by the ALP factional bosses got two up in each of the rural regions, as you correctly suggest.
I was perhaps a little loose with my words. Candy Broad, who was dumped after the election from the cabinet and is responsible for the system of representation reviews and showed little interest in local government, got the first spot because most ALP voters voted above the line. Sensible ones would have voted below the line for Marg Lewis from Castlemaine, a good local candidate who almost beat Damien Drum in 2002. Kaye Darveniza, a union official before her entry into parliament, only got in by a couple of thousand votes.
The factional deal did work, but it almost didn’t. If not it would have meant one ALP from the Northern region, with two Nats and two Libs.
The Bendigo paper ALP advertisement a day or so before the 2006 state election told a lie. It claimed its upper house ticket of three females, Broad, Darveniza and Lewis, was country raised and country focused. This is probably true of Lewis, but it wasn’t true of Melbourne residents Broad and Darveniza.
“Lie” is a strong word to use without checking one’s facts, Caroline.
Candy Broad was born in Perth but grew up on a sheep station in northern WA.
Kaye Darveniza was born in Mooroopna and went to school in Shepparton.
The VEC is half way though the Data entry.. It has taken them 10 hours to process 50% of the vote. They will not get through the job tonight and they estimate of 15 sec per ballot paper or 14 hours x 18 data entry time is BS. Again would have been much quicker to do manually
Early analisys with 27,000 votes counted indicates Robert Doyle is set to scpare home with ALP Peter McMullin comming in second place.
The elcton count is not finalised and the projected results are subject to final analysis. There are two very close conjuntions between Catheriun Ng and Gary Singer, Catherine Ng and the Greens with less the 100 votes difference between the the two. if teh Greens survive its a McMullin Doyle toss with Doyle winning.If Ng survies its still Doyle. Dpoyle looks unbeatable have caught all the drift.
Inverse doney vote or well known name. A recount is looking more and more less likely as the count progresses. The only chance of a surpise win is if Singer and out poll Ng but with a gap of 600 votes this is unlikely.
Adam BS, you obviously have no idea. Get back to trying helping David Feeney and stop defdining the undefensible.
I do think that those council reforms I mentioned should be done a.s.a.p. but I think that they will have to wait until the Greens have the balance of power in the Legislative Assembly (which may well not happen after the next election) because I do not see the current Labor government changing things (except maybe the 12 councillor limit to 15) unless the rigging of the City of Melbourne becomes an issue before the next state election in the District of Melbourne.
Adam “lie” may be a bit strong but misleading isn’t. Broad and Darveniza lived in Melbourne at the time of their preselection. How could they be country focused? Broad lives in Brunswick but claims her address as Macedon which is within commuting distance of Melbourne. Her region extends to Mildura. Darveniza rented a flat in Shepparton so she could claim she lived in her region on the ballot paper. As in Italy the place of residence of candidates is placed on Legislative Council ballot papers in Victoria. Good idea. Only most interloper candiates did as they were told by Andrew Landeryou on his old OC blog and at least rented a flat in their regions so they could claim to live there. I don’t care where MLCs live as long as they are competent and represent the people of their regions. Landeryou is like the Truth, or News Weekly. No one admits to reading it but most people in politics seem to know what is in it. Andrew Landeryou is a great source of information.
democracy@work, it’s true that I usually have no idea what you are talking about, and I am far from being Robinson Crusoe in that respect. Was your comment intended as a reply to my criticism of your paranoid ravings about the AEC/VEC, or was it directed at my discussion with Caroline Church about the country credentials of Broad and Darveniza?
Caroline, you described as a “lie” an ALP ad which said that Broad and Darveniza were “country raised and country focussed” (I haven’t seen the ad, but I will take your word for it.) I have demonstrated that they were both country raised, so that half of the statement was factual. Whether they were “country focussed” is entirely a matter of opinion. Since they were candidates for a country seat, I think they would have been very foolish not to be “country focussed.” As I said above, I am not defending these preselections. I think local candidates should have been selected. But you go a claim too far in calling people liars.
Dod Marg Lewis lose in 2002 because Labor ran dead in Mildura to assist Russell Savage? Would Labor have won 3/5 in Western Victoria in 2006 with Carbines at number 1?
You full of it Adam. You and TT having an affair?
With 50% of the vote counted Doyle looks unstoppable. He picks up a significant drift in what’s called the inverse donkey vote.
There is an inbuilt bias in the data set ( the order in whcih the ballot paers where recived and collatted). The results could swing back to being closer. But all analysis of the data available shows that in all circumstances Doyle crosses the line
Doyle greens received the top end of expectations and the rest at the bottom end. Assuming that the bias/order in the count is based on the order in which they are received I would expect that Doyle would lose some ground as the campaigns developed or in the case of Doyle did not happen.
DOYLE, Robert / RILEY, Susan 8672 26.76%
NG, Catherine / MAKINGS, Terry 3561 10.99%
TOSCANO, Joseph / ELY, Margaret 495 1.53%
COLUMB, Nick / CALDWELL, Sue 1524 4.70%
BANDT, Adam / MALTZAHN, Kathleen 4799 14.81%
CRAWFORD, Robert King / KENNEDY, Michael 391 1.21%
ROBERTS, Shelley / FARAH, Abdiaziz 391 1.21%
SINGER, Gary / PAINTER, Joanne 3314 10.23%
FOWLES, Will / WILSON, David 2750 8.49%
McMULLIN, Peter / WILSON, Tim 4035 12.45%
MORGAN, Gary / ANDERSON, Michele 2473 7.63%
Total 32,405 100.00%
Group Stats
group_name Total Vote Percentage
DOYLE 8672 26.76%
Singer/NG 6875 21.22%
Fowl/McMullin 6785 20.94%
GREENS 4799 14.81%
Column/Morgan 3997 12.33%
Others 1277 3.94%
Fortunately I don’t know who TT is. Whoever they are, they couldn’t be worse than the neo-Stalinist despot and murderer Putin, to whose interests you are so devoted.
Caroline Church: I do not blame Candy Broad. The system was put in place by Bob Cameron. The real culprit in the Representation review mosaic is TT/ST and the VEC.
They applied an inconsistent assessment, analysis and review in drafting the recommendations. The State Government having but them in charge of the review had to accept their recommendations.To do otherwise would have been seen as interference.Although it would appear that Hobson Bay may have been involved some political influence. This was Steve Bracks seat,. There the VEC recommended single member wards yet in Stonington.
Someone who has stated here that Russia under Putin is a functioning democracy and who has supported Russia’s clumsy attempts to destroy democracy in Ukraine really has no right to be taken seriously on these matters at all.
Lord mayoralty count with 50 per cent reported here.
Viva Doyle!
This is actually quite a good result for Labor. McMullin and Fowles between them have polled respectably, given the dominance of the non-resident vote in MCC elections and the competition from Bandt and Singer for the generally lefty residents of the MCC area. Bracks and Doyle get on very well, and Doyle will work happily with the government. On the other hand Doyle and Baillieu loathe each other, so the state Libs get nothing from the election at all. I don’t know what Glen is so pleased about.
oops Bracks = Brumby.
Point made Adam in Canberra. I did go a little too far calling the ALP ad “lies.” I hope you accept my clarification. I agree the second half of my statement is a matter of opinion. I am pleased we both agree it would have been better for candidates with more in common with their region to have been preselected.
A previous comment says the ALP vote dropped because the ALP ran dead in Mildura to protect Savage. This is partly true but the proposal to build a toxic waste dump was the Labor Party being as dirty to Savage as it was to David Risstrom by preferencing Family First ahead of the Greens. Others will take this as a warning. Support an ALP government at your peril. The ALP may backstab you like it did Savage and Risstrom. Also the ALP never came good on its promise to re-commence passenger rail services to Mildura. This also cost Savage votes. Savage won the seat initially because Kennett ended Mildura passenger services. There is still no passenger train between Melbourne and Mildura.
I just like seeing a Liberal winning for once Adam it has happened rarely since 2007…also i dont like Baillieu.
Caroline: first paragraph, fair enough. Matter ended.
Second paragraph: Oooh, now you’ve got me going. It wasn’t a “dump”, it was (or would have been) an extremely secure, state of the art, waste management facility. This material has to go somewhere, and it was far better to put it at a modern, purpose-built site in the Mallee, where the human population within a 10km radius was ZERO, than in its current substandard facility near Dandenong, where the human population within a 10km radius is about a million. This material, dumped by past governments and private industry without proper safeguards, is currently leaching toxins into the groundwater of south-eastern Melbourne. Thwaites’s decision to abandon the Mallee site in the face of totally predictable nimbyism from Mildura was totally gutless and a betrayal of Labor voters in the workingclass suburbs.
Based on that it is the weakness of the preference flows from Singer and Morgan that have stymied Ng. At most 50% of Morgan’s voters appeared to have followed his recommendation.
I don’t think Doyle regards himself as a Liberal anymore. He didn’t run as one. He was extremely dirty on the state Liberal Party when he left Parliament. But Glen, I will not begrudge you some small crumbs of consolation as you wander in the political desert.
He ran on the basis of his leadership of the Opposition…he is centre-right…but because he is a wet he would fit in very well as Mayor…
I can understand him being dirty with the Liberal Party…he got a rough deal especially in 2002 with his shadows and then being booted before an election that Ted didnt do well at either…
Anyway id rather Doyle than Ng or McMullin.
I know nothing about Ng. If I had been a voter I would probably have voted for McMullin out of party loyalty, but I don’t have a very high opinion of him. Personally I think the MCC should be abolished. The state government should run the CBD itself and the residential areas should be hived off to the neighbouring councils.
But McMullin had that unsavory character in Tim Wilson as his running mate…bad move.
If Glen’s calling Tim Wilson unsavoury I wonder what that says.
Doyle has won it!
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24729041-661,00.html
Robert Doyle wins race for Melbourne Council election
Get with the times Adam, the CBD is a residential area (the number of residents bottomed out in the mid-90`s at about 200 I think and has been increasing ever since).
The results page which the article links to has the leadership team undecided.
Thanks Adam in Canberra for your comments about the dump.
Results are up for Rucker ward in Darebin. As could have been predicted Diana Asmar was returned with a quota and so was the Green McCarthy. The surplus from Asmar plus dummy exclusions (there were two obvious dummies funnelling votes to Asmar) Stephen Tsitas was returned to the third position. Am awaiting with interest future wards in Darebin and will comment when they come in. Lewin-Hill in Rucker polled best of the independents. He should join the ALP if he wants a career in Darebin council politics, and possibly as an MP. Lewin-Hill has lots of ability.
If he can win as an independent why would he join the ALP.
One of the good things about the introduction of PR to Darebin is the end to it being a one party council.
Doyle huh?
Well, as long we foil his idiotic plot to open Swanston St to cars, he cant do much damage. Does the Mayor actually do anything, or have any, like, powers n shit?
Foil Doyle!!
Rucker ward where the Greens have a newly elected councillor is the majority of the seat of Northcote (with part in Cazaly ward and part in the City of Yarra) which is not good for the ALP because I am told that having a Greens councillor is good for the Greens vote at higher levels.
I hope that the Greens win in Cazaly ward.
Trying to open Swanson St to cars again would be like kicking a hornets nest because of all the people who would be opposed especially if they try and narrow the footpath (it is a very busy footpath and is often crowded and all the traders with stalls/tables would kick up a stink too).
Tom Darren Lewin-Hill cannot win as an Independent. The Greens are now represented in his ward. He did not win as an Independent and gets no preferences from ALP candidates or their dummies. Call them running mates is probably a better term as it is pr and dummies are essentially a device for single member wards.
Darren Lewin-Hill ought to seriously consider joining the ALP if he wants to become a Darebin councillor. It has been done before, only the people concerned were Libs. Councillors in Northcote named Bryan and Hales (now both deceased) won election initially as independents but joined the ALP so that they could become Mayor. The difference between them and Darren is that Darren is really Labor, whereas those councillors in the past are all really Libs.
Well not this time.
There were a number of porkies presented in how the fold of the LM count went.
Doyle has come out and called for electroal reform and in the process created the so called preference deals. Hmmm.. There are no binding preference deals in the LM count Voters make that choice.. influenced by the candidates HTV recommendations.
In fact Doyle only crept above the line due to preference drift.
The Greens were never in place to win. Catherine Ng out polled the Greens.The Greens were below Doyle.Ng and McMullin. McMullen’s vote drifted to Doyle which put him ahead of Catherine Ng. The Greens are quick to try and place blame for their loss on others. Catherine Ng was more tory then Doyle and the Greens backed her in the hope of securing a sweetheart deal.
Doyle received top end of expectations. It was reasonable to assume that due to his low campaign activity that his vote would have dropped back to around 22-24% which is where we assessed him at being. Gary singer can in at the top end of expectations, Catherine Ng at the bottom end. McMullin 4-6% below (expectations).
Early Analysis of the data shows that on a one to one basis against Doyle no candidate was in a winning position other then Doyle.
Doyle owes his election to Australia’s Preferential ballot system.
The main issue of electoral reform that should be enacted is to scrape the Direct election of Lord Mayor and revert to a collegiate system – elected from and by the elected Councillors.
Doyle does not have the numbers on Council. His team only has three candidates. Doyles 26% did not flow to his lead candidate Incumbent Councillor Carl Jetter. Jeter polled 20% (Around expectation level).
Well he could, but it’s a tough ask. He’d have to more than double his primary from 5% to over 10% (maybe by gathering the Liberal votes in the ward), have the Greens capture another 5% from the ALP for 35% of the vote, and then have preferences fold for him. That’s a conceivable scenario, but obviously it’s a tough ask.
The voting system is really dumb i mean Doyle won 26% of the vote and has only 1 councilor on his side out of 7 how the heck is he meant to get things done?
Oz .. Not enough attention was given to the fact that McMullin has Time Wilson on his team. I liked this fact. I thought it was a positives that was not excentuated. The media most certainly did not explore this issue. We keep hearing from the Keep Politics out of Politics – No party involvement BS.. fact is Catherine Ng is more and closely aligned and associated with the Liberal party then any those that are members.
Catherine Ng had a Labor Member as her Lead Candidate in the Council. Brian Shanahan who clung on to her skirt tails and was elected as a result. Gary Singer has Ken Ong who is a member of the Liberal party, he sought preselection for a state seat if I recall and lost.
The Greens were the only party to endorse candidates. It is fair to say that Adam Brandt was the next highest profile candidate below Doyle in the electorate as he stood for the Federal Seat one year ago.
McMullin was around ten years ago and no one other then those in Geelong really knew him. I am not a great fan of McMullin, he sold us out back in 1996 when he cow tailed to Kennett and abandoned his opposition to then location of the Museum in the Carlton Gardens. (An issue we were winning in the public arena) opportunity lost to Melbourne and the issue that McMullin was elected to Council on. It took McMullin less then 3 months to betray those that voted for him. He held the Deputy position for one year out of a three year term of office before losing it to Lorna Hannon and Liberal Clem Newton-Brown. No a great tallent there but if it was achoice between McClown and Doyle or Ng McMullin would still be preferable. In the wash (Best of a bad lot in my view.) I supported McMullin from a distance but never joined his campaign team. There were mistakes made. First was getting our of the starting gates and his published preference deals did not go down too well. It took him a week to recover.
The media gave Doyle a hall pass and let him off very lightly for his non-attendance and lack of activity in the campaign. So much for Activating the electorate.
Yes, from Singer’s and Morgan’s vote in particular. If those voters had followed recommendations to preference Ng over Doyle then Ng would probably have been elected. Instead they both seem to have leaked at about 25% directly to Doyle.
Martin yes I would agree I need to do more analysis in the voting patterns but allindications is that is correct. Doyle, like John So, picked up preference drift/the inverse donkwy vote. The margins in the count were close and thought the count there were a number of very close calls between Ng and Singer, Ng and the Greens and Ng and McMullin. On each case and distribution Doyle edged ahead.
And Democracy@work we wouldnt have to analyse a thing if we had first past the post…Doyle would have won by a large margin…enough said.
Adam in Canberra @ 302
“I know nothing about Ng.” This a surprise given that she actively campaigned against your ex boss and was the talk around the office in days to come.
Catherine is closing alliagned and associated with Ted Baillieu, her Hu8sband is Teds advisor. She was John So’s lead Candidate in 2001 and 2004. Chair of Planning. She is also loathed around town hall and is the main reason why John So did not seek a third term.he could not stand her or work with her. Town Hall staff were keen to not see her re-elected. They would have supported McPlyable and Singer in preference.
Robert Doyle is in for a hard time.not only because he has the greatest duds in his team (His Deputy Susan Riley and lead candidate Carl Jetter – Both I have rated last in my choice). Doyle will soon find that the Council is a hot bed of corruption and self interest. Management of Melbourne health is a holiday compared to the bun fights and back stabbing in Town Hall. We can expect Susan Riley to report the system and seek to become defactor Foreign minister for Melbourne. I am pretty confident that Doyle will be the media’s dream candidate. Doyle putting back the fun and entertainment in Clown Hall.
vexnews has more to say on events surrounding the leadership of the VEC.
Colac Otway is becoming Colac vs. Otway. The new Council will be dominated by coastal representatives from Apollo Bay who have felt overshadowed by Colac. Simon Price, the cashed-up Liberal failed to get elected and this will have implications for Liberal pre-selection. Labor’s Corangamite victory was built on a strong performance in Colac the Liberals would benefit by a Colac based candidate.
More And more reports and complaints are being received at the way in which the VEC had conducted the elections overall. Not just in Melbourne
Elections in Victoria are no longer open and transparent.
A number of candidates outside the City of Melbourne have requested the VEC provide copies of the preference data-files used to determne the results of the election . The VEC refused to make this information available, even though it is a public document and subject to FOI. It is a disgrace that this information is not made available to candidates scrutineers or the public.
Tell us about open and transparent election in Russia, D@W.
or China D@W…
Ok, so on one level it’s not accurate to blame preference leakage.
In a two-horse race between Ng and Doyle there were 30837 primary votes cast for tickets recommending a preference for Doyle ahead of Ng, and 27125 primary votes cast for tickets recommending a preference for Ng ahead of Doyle. this compares with the final margin of 31348 Doylve vs 26614 Ng. So if preference flows were 100% as recommended then Doyle would still have won comfortably. Only a net 511 votes leaked, which is tiny. (The significant leakage from Singer’s and Morgan’s voters seems to have been almost entirely matched by the leakage to Ng from Fowles’ and McMullins’ voters.)
(This ignores the fact that if preference flows were 100%, then Singer and Morgan would have been ahead of Ng at the 6th exclusion, and so Ng would have dropped out there, but that’s another story.)
Adam tell us more about your relationship David Feeny? What is you do for him agaion apart from pull a salary? Obviously you do not support the need for the conduct of elctions to be open and transparent.
The mayor having only one ally on council is an argument against the direct election of the Lord Mayor because the Lord Major should be dependant the support of the majority of the council so as to be able to govern and to be held to the executive responsibility.
Having 9 normal councillors would be better that a “leadership team” and 7 seven normal councillors.
Adam I assume you are using Parliament resources in your blogging… is this part of your job decription
Tom the City Council should be 21 members with the size of the municipality taking in Prahran, Albert Park, Melbourne and Richmond. Apart from the drierite election the main problem is the City of Melbourne is too narrow in its focus. Councillors such as Susan Riley and Carl Jetter want the larks and perks of public office.Jetta get the City Council to pay for all his travel costs (Private and Council related) He is one of the highest costing most travelled councillors
D@W they should just increase the size of the representatives instead of 7 increase it to 20 and base them on the proportion of votes recieved by those running for Mayor thus the Lord Mayor would have a sizable voting block and so would opposition candidates.
The VEC had refused to make available a copy of the electronic preference data file to Candidate’s scrutineers in the City of Hume. The election result is scheduled to be declared at 7:00PM tonight. The Returning Officer has claimed that legislation prevents the VEC from providing this data, the same information that was made available in the City of Melbourne election and also previously available to other municipalities. Without access to this data there is no way in which an computerised count can be verified. The Candidate has been denied the right of a recount. The extent of data-entry errors is significant and can only be verified to be accurate with a comparative second data-entry count. The RO could not provide which sections of the Act and regulations prevents copies of this information being made available. This is very alarming and raises serious questions as to the conduct of public election in Victoria.
Glen first you need an odfd number in total. But I would not justofy a counil of 20 odd under the exsiting boundaries. The City should be bigger in size and consist of seven wards with three councillors elcted for each ward. The Mayor elected from the Councillors. There could be justifcation for a recount of the votes to elect an additional person to fill the role of ward councillor vacated by the person appointed Mayor. This would be inaddition to the Mayor’s position
What is clear is that the system of local government in Victoria is in need of serious review and reform. There is no point in enacting piecemeal patch ups. Each council should be structured in the same basis and representative model. This Mosaic approach of state imposed models is a disaster.
Glen I would never support or advocate a first past the post system. The system is seriously flawed. Take a look at Canada. England and the USA. Whilst 26% of punters preferred Robert Doyle to be elected conversely that means 74% preferred someone else.
Darebin results might seem a result on paper for Labor Unity but infighting suggests the race for Mayor might come down to horse trading across factional lines.
The Leighton-Scott sub faction of Labor Unity has 3 (Morgan, Fontana and Chiang).
The Theophanous-Elasmar sub faction of Labor Unity has 3 (Katsis, Asmar and Tsitas. The last two from Rucker ward, and Leighton-Scott powerbrokers must be really annoyed they left that ward alone.
The Socialist Left has one, former roadie for an Elvis impersonator Gaetano Greco, who according to Vexnews had a falling out with Stanley Chiang in the same ward. The Socialist Left probably would have had two if Rae Perry had not been injured in a traffic accident and did not stand.
The Pledge has one, Laurence
The Greens have one, McCarthy.
Darebin under pr has gone from an all Labor Unity Council with 9 out of 9 to a divided council with 6 Labor Unity out of 9, two from Left ALP factions, and one Green.
Another mistake by Labor Unity was not to run retiring councillor Mendo Kundevski in the northern La Trobe ward. That ward is full of Macedonians and Kundevski would have been a big vote winner in that ward.
Of course three of the sitting Darebin councillors have previously been mayor: Asmar, Fontana, Chiang. The fourth sitting councillor, Tsitas, doesn’t come across as mayor material, but I’m sure the ALP can surprise me. Presumably Greco, Laurence and especially McCarthy have no chance.
Yes D@W but he was the most popular…if you counted people’s first choice…you really should only get one choice…
Well that explains a few things (to a newcomer to Darebin, ex Yarra), Caroline.
Only a ‘faceless men’ style labour right regiem. with effective no opposition could have come up with an electroal process as unispiring and apathy-inducing as the Darebin post-only ballot.
Let’s hope that gets the heave-ho quick smart.
Democracy – you may have to get off your fat arse every few years. deal with it.
“if you counted people’s first choice…you really should only get one choice…”
Much as it pains me to agree with Adam, I have to agree that this constant refrain is boring.
Yes, Glen, we all understand how first-past-the-post works – except that the nominations would have been completely different and the voting different.
Being Mayor Martin B is not about quality. It is about numbers. Laurence has been a councillor before and he could be a good Mayor. Don’t oppose him because he is Indian. He intelligent and articulate. McCarthy has no chance because he’s Green. Greco is in the Socialist Left but that doesn’t stop a deal. Tsitas could even be Mayor as part of a deal. It is often you are Mayor this year, you are Mayor next year, and someone else the year after. It’s been done before and it will be done again. A good topic for your PhD thesis Martin B. The selection of the Mayor of Darebin.
lefty e wants an attendance type ballot like Yarra. Postal worked well this time in Darebin. What Yarra wants is up to Yarra.
‘Don’t oppose him because he is Indian.’
Ive been reading the posts, and I dont recall Martin suggesting that.
“lefty e wants an attendance type ballot like Yarra.”
yes. An attendance ballot facilitate a bare minimum of political participation in the community. Why do you oppose that, caroline?
Incidentally, did this system go to local referendum, or was it a clique of 9 faceless hacks who decided for us?
I neither support nor oppose anyone. My observation is merely based on my rudimentary grasp of deal-making whereby a faction with more numbers is in a better position to grab the lollies now, and promise to hand them to a faction with lesser numbers later.
The postal voting system encourages stooge candidates because all they need is a photo, statement and preference recommendation and they can direct votes towards the candidate they are a stooge for while if there is attendance voting then they would have to have their own team of how to vote card distributors to be effective.
True Tom – plus you dont get to meet party workers and candidates when you go vote. This is most people’s only contact with their reps – ever. darebin cc has managed to reduce the farcical minima of australian democracy to zero – and for that, I believe they should be condemned.
Trotting out some micro-parochialism about “other councils” would only be appropriate if the people of darebin had a chance to decide on their own system.
Im guessing they didnt. I suspect the work of hacks.
AFAICT the initial decision in favour of postal voting was taken by the administrator appointed by the Kennett government when they sacked the Darebin council.
Postal voting has been maintained by each Darebin council since then. (Under the legislation each council can opt for either postal or attendance voting.)
I was not suggesting that Martin B had any opinion about Tim Laurence. I was merely posing a rhetorical question. Also Tim Laurence has been Mayor before and he was a very good one. It was a conservative councillor whom Tim defeated who raised questions about Tim’s background, and I think that is objectionable. I’m sorry if I appeared to suggest anything about other contributors. I wasn’t. Tim retired from the council owing to pressure of work but he’s back again and that’s great news.
On postal or attendance voting the decision is made by each individual council. Most councils prefer postal voting because it’s cheaper. I know I’ll be unpopular with some contributors but I prefer postal voting rather than attendance voting because I think the major political parties (particularly the ALP) spend too much effort on parish pump politics and attendance voting means they devote more effort. The activities of the major parties in this round of local government elections has been minimal, and that’s to the good. I am opposed to political parties endorsing candidates in local government elections.
Demoracy@work, your proposal for a massively expanded Melbourne City Council, does it include St Kilda and Malvern (including the old City of Malvern would include Chadstone Shopping Centre) or would other boundary changes be required in the South and South East?
The 4 councils (Melbourne, Yarra, Port Phillip and Stonnington) covering the areas that you propose have 36 councillors (with out St Kilda and Malvern it would be around 27) which means that you are proposing some quite big wards.
I think that combining Melbourne with any council other than Yarra won`t be at all popular with the absorbed population.
I think that the existing Melbourne councils should be retained with some small boundary and a few other changes, with a Melbourne Metropolitan Council with plenty of power including over planning and transport and no state government.
Right – there you go. An unelected adminstrator decided this, after the elected reps of Darebin were sacked.
Not exactly born of a spirit of grass-roots democratic rejuvenation then?
Tim Laurence has been Mayor before and he was a very good one
Didn’t realise that so thanks.
Still, internal ALP brawling with fellow councillor Chiang can’t exactly help his chances.
Lefty should enjoy this paper:
Yeah, I might even start making a few noises about this via Darebin Greens. Down with post-only systems!
Doyle versus the rest “head to head”
Poll Stats:
Candidate Vote Doyle Total
McMullin 26987 30974 57961
Singer 26711 31250 57961
Ng 26613 31348 57961
Fowles 26006 31955 57961
Brandt 24911 33050 57961
Morgan 24770 33191 57961
Columb 21855 36106 57961
Roberts 19434 38527 57961
Crawford 19005 39856 58861
Toscano 18145 39716 57861
I propose combining the four State seats Melbourne, Prahran, Albert Park and Richmond (Along th lines of the Old Melbourne Province voundaries when Evan Wlaker was member for Melbourne or the Old Municipality of Richmond, Prahran, Albert Park and Melbourne boudaries.)
Ticket Stats Melbourne Lord Mayor
Group Name Ticket votes Percentage
ACTIVATE MELBOURNE 6862 11.86%
THE GREENS 3745 6.47%
TEAM MELBOURNE 2548 4.40%
C MELBOURNE GROW – CATHERINE NG 2227 3.85%
FOWLES A FRESH VISION 2218 3.83%
McMULLIN-WILSON FOR MELBOURNE’S FUTURE 3755 6.49%
MORGAN CLARKE – OUR CITY – YOUR COUNCIL 1575 2.72%
PASSION FOR MELBOURNE 1046 1.81%
MELBOURNE SUPERCITY. WORLD 223 0.39%
SHIFTING THE BURDEN 222 0.38%
RESIDENTS EQUITY – AFFORDABLE RESIDENT RATES 191 0.33%
0.00%
DONKEY 1034 1.79%
REVERSE DONKEY 172 0.30%
Basing local governments on electoral districts is silly because they move or if you mean the current boundaries then they are significantly arbitrary because of the need for an equal number of voters.
By the old municipality of Albert Park do you mean the old municipalities of South Melbourne and Port Melbourne?
Does anyone know when the new councilors get sworn in? I can’t seem to find it anywhere in the news stories.
Rosemary Kiss who wrote the paper on postal versus attendance voting which is viewable via a link from Martin B’s comment is interesting, but you need to know something about the author’s agenda before you accept it totally.
Rosemary Kiss is a retired academic and lives in Greater Geelong. She is a former Labor councillor in Fitzroy. She co-authored an academic paper in the 1990s with Peter Johnstone, the former CEO of the Liberal dominated Boroondara council. Kiss submitted an erudite paper to the VEC representation review for Greater Geelong advocating single member wards. This is in the ALPs interests and the ALP was successful in Greater Geelong this time. Johnstone submitted an erudite paper to the VEC representation review for Boroondara making similar points and advocating single member wards. This is in the interests of Liberals in Boroondara (strangely Ken Coghill, the former Labor Speaker of the Legislative Assembly made a submission in Boroondara in favour of single member wards also). The Liberals won in Boroondara this time, as expected for its the Liberal heartland.
I do not believe a paid CEO should be making his own submission, nor do I believe ratepayers money should be spent on councils making their own submissions, as happened in Boroondara when Johnstone was CEO, although the council authorised such expenditure and Johnstone cannot be criticised for this. Johnstone told a PR Society member that he had not spoken to Rosemary Kiss over his submission. It’s a case of great minds think alike. I think this is so as the submissions were not identical although their much of their content was similar. I do not believe there was collusion and accept what Peter Johnstone said.
Rosemary Kiss is a Labor girl and her views are consistent with Labor factional bosses whatever the language used. Johnstone’s views are also consistent with those of Labor factional bosses. Liberal heavyweights in Boroondara agree with him on this.
Kathryn Erikson, the wife of former Labor MHR Andrew Theophanous, was defeated in Brimbank. This is unfortunate as she was a very good councillor. Highly intelligent and not taken in by the local bully boys and girls.
Heidi Seitz, a cousin of George Seitz, the Labor MLA, has been elected in another ward in Brimbank. She is of high calibre, and this might help alleviate the loss of Kathryn to some extent.
Michael Freshwater, former One Nation candidate, has been elected to the Council of East Gippsland. What influence did publicity on Vexnews have to his election? Was there support from Gavin Jennings (the term Stasi Minister was used on Vexnews but I will not use that term myself as I don’t wish to get into further senseless arguments with certain contributors to this blog) and Jenny Mikakos. I suspect this is not true.