Upper House

Sustainable Australia Party's Southern Metropolitan region Upper House candidate Clifford Hayes appears to be elected to the Victorian Upper House, according to various media reports. For those of you reeling at the thought of a Labor Government, second time round, with the bit between its teeth on immigration, land-clearing and the scent of developer money in its nostrils, this news of a win by SAP, may give some hope. We need more SAPs in government, as fast as possible.

How the preferences worked

A quick look at the flow of preferences for Clifford Hayes Southern Metro Region so far is revealing. (Congratulations Cliff!)

A weight of 15,000 votes (from 148,000 ballot papers) actually comes from the overflow of successful Labor and Liberal candidates. This amounts to 35% of Cliff's vote count and is due solely to the way the two Major's preferenced him - not micros. Just saying this as it might help counter any complaints there might be about preferencing.

The difference in 'votes' vs 'ballot papers' in the above counts is of course because overflow ballot papers are reduced in weight each time they have already served to elect someone. Here reduced 90% in weight on average by the time Cliff got them.

Looking at the Group Tickets: Labour preferences for SAParty started at 12th of 45 candidates, Liberal at 22 of 45. ( Greens had us at 14 of 45). These are all pretty good for us. Anyone using above the line voting for these majors dictated their preferences would go according to these Major's tickets (not SAParty's of course).

The runner up here is the Greens. Cliff is ahead of the Greens by 4,000 votes. or some 8%. (No Green was elected in this Region)

Clifford Hayes speaking on developers and planners June 2017, when people tried to avert Labor dictatorship on planning

Some quotes from Clifford Hayes' speech: "We residents must have a say. The whole process has been corrupted." "It's a problem of culture: developers and planners sing from the same songbook. More housing, more consolidation, more appartments, more units, more highrise - all on existing infrastructure. And this forces the price of land and existing housing up. Bad news for our kids, bad news for our suburbs, bad news for us. Good news for investors, good for speculators, dramatic profits to be made. So this pressure makes property speculation and property development a government protected industry. And it's backed up by planners, VCAT, the government, the department: The whole problem has been left to market forces to sort out. This is great for people who see housing as a way for people to make profits, but for a community it's bad news. We lose all the things we value. As communities we need to get things right. Housing should be for families, not just for investors."