Victorian Greens

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Victorian Greens




Leader	No official leader¹

Founded	1992
Headquarters	GPO Box 4589 (1st floor, 377 Little Bourke St) MELBOURNE VIC 3001

Political Ideology	green politics
International Affiliation	Global Greens Asia-Pacific Green Network

Website	Victorian Greens

See also	Politics of Australia Political parties Elections

The Victorian Greens is a Green Party located in Victoria, a member of the federation of the Australian Greens party.

1 Electoral history
2 Notes
3 External links

[edit] Electoral history

The first election the Greens contested in Victoria was for the seat of La Trobe in the 1993 federal election. In 1994 The Greens achieved by-election results of 21% in the state seat of Coburg and 28% in the federal division of Kooyong, extraordinarily high results for a minor party in Australian history.

[edit] Greens in Local Government

In March 1999 barrister David Risstrom was elected to the Melbourne City Council, following numerous local government campaigns in Victoria. Risstrom was re-elected in 2001 and retired in 2004 in order to contest the Senate in the australian national elections of that year. Fraser Brindley, previously elected to Moreland City Council as a Greens representative in 2002, ran successfully for Melbourne City Council in 2004.

The first Greens person in Australia to be elected in a single-member electorate was Gurm Sekhon, elected to Yarra City Council in 2001. In 2002 Sekhon was re-elected and three more Greens were elected to Yarra City Council, giving the Greens 4 out of 9 seats on Council. In 2003 Yarra City Councillor Greg Barber became Australia's first Greens Mayor.

In 2005 the Greens' Janet Rice was re-elected to a second term at Maribyrnong City Council and subsequently became Mayor, and a total of 14 Green local government councillors held office across Victoria, in Cities or Shires of Melbourne, Yarra, Maribyrnong, Moreland, Moonee Valley, Yarra Ranges, Whitehorse, Brimbank and Mt Alexander.

It is becoming quite common to find Greens candidates in local government elections across Victoria. The advent of proportional representation is believed to increase the likelihood of Greens getting elected at future elections. Interestingly, however, the majority of past and present Victorian Greens local government councillors were elected prior to the advent of proportional representation at their councils. Gurm Sekhon (Yarra CC 2001), Jenny Farrar (Yarra CC 2002), Fraser Brindley (Moreland CC 2002), Colleen Hartland (Maribyrnong CC 2003), Janet Rice (Maribyrnong CC 2003), Ben Opie (Moonee Valley CC 2005), Julie Rivendell (Greater Bendigo CC 2005), David Jones (Greater Bendigo CC 2005) and Samantha Dunn (Yarra Ranges SC 2005) were all elected to single-Councillor vacancies requiring a majority of votes across their wards.

[edit] State Elections

The Greens have never had elected representatives in the Legislative Assembly or Council. Minor parties have had little or no success in state lower houses that have single-member electorates, though in other states where there are multiple-member electorates in the lower house (such as Tasmania's or the ACT's), or where there are multiple-member electorate/s in the upper house (such as in NSW, SA and WA), minor parties including the Greens have been more successful. Up to and including the 2002 state election, Victoria's upper house has had double-member electorates, though, for the first time in the 2006 state election, Victoria's upper house will have 8 electorates of 5 members each. It has been widely predicted that The Greens will win the fifth seat in 2 and possibly more upper house regions (Greg Barber in the Northern Metropolitan Region, and Sue Pennicuik in the Southern Metropolitan Region). [1]

In the lower house, Greens candidates were second in four two-party-preferred races in inner-city seats. These included two now marginal seats, where Dr Richard DiNatale came within 2% of winning Melbourne from Labor cabinet minister Bronwyn Pike [2], and Gemma Pinnell came within 3.1% of winning Richmond.

[edit] Federal Elections

Ethicist and animal liberation activist Peter Singer was the lead candidate for the Victorian Greens during the 1996 Federal election, in which the Greens polled a total of 1.90% in the House of Representatives and 2.94% in the Senate. Since then the Victorian Greens' vote has grown with 7.45% of the vote in the lower house at the 2004 federal election.

David Risstrom left the MCC to contest a Victorian Senate seat in the 2004 Federal election. He received 8.80% of the primary vote, but was unable to make the quota of 14.3% due to decision of the Australian Labor Party to direct their preferences to the newly-formed Family First Party; this saw the Family First candidate Steve Fielding elected with only 1.76% of the primary vote.