I running for Maling Ward in Boroondara

I am running for Maling Ward in Boroondara in the upcoming Council elections.  It is a postal ballot - residents receive candidate statements and a ballot paper that they complete and post back.

Voting closes 6pm on Friday 26 October and the ballot will be counted on Saturday 27 October.

You can read about my campaign, why I am running on my campaign blog and the election [here]

I am running as an independent candidate as I with to represent Maling Residents directly.  I am not a member of a political party.

The Liberal, Labor and Green parties all field candidates in local government elections.  The Greens endorse candidates, while Labor and Liberal candidates run undeclared, often pretending that they are "independent".

Our democratic system is based on Councillors representing all the residents in their ward, not just the interests of a particular political party and its supporters.

I think we need to implement optional preferential voting. People should be able to control where their preference does or doesn't go.  If they only support one candidate in a single member ward, then just "1" on the ballot paper should be valid vote.  I think this would reduce all the undemocratic deals and manoeuvering that goes on behind the scenes when candidates decide who they are going to direct preferences to.

Of course voters actually choose where their preference goes, but candidate recommendations often influence many people, who often don't know much about who they are voting for (other than by a photo and a 150 word statement).

I am looking forward to serving the people of Maling Ward should I be elected.  It will be a tight race however so every vote will count.

The 2009 federal budget does not move as to a low carbon future

Summarising the environmental & energy items in the 2009 Federal Budget:

The Government will invest $4.5 billion (including $1 billion of existing funding) in a new Clean Energy Initiative, including:

• $465 million for the establishment of a renewable technology innovation body, Renewables Australia (could be good, if they don't sanction burning forests for fuel)
  
• $1.5 billion for a Solar Flagships Program aiming to establish 1,000 megawatts of solar electricity generation (looks good, a step in the right direction)
  
• $2 billion over nine years for investment in large-scale Carbon Capture and Storage demonstration projects (not good - this should be funded by the coal industry, not taxpayers).
  

Additional sustainability programs funded under the Budget include:

• $2.75 billion ($2.45 billion existing funding) to the Climate Change Action Fund under the CPRS, to inform and position business, industry and community on the impacts of a low carbon economy (This looks like a huge amount of greenwash for the CPRS? The money would be better spent on clean energy provision)
  
•  $100 million per annum to establish the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute to inform global action on the development and commercialization of this technology (not good, this is more corporate welfare for the coal industry)
  
• $100 million per annum over three years to the World Bank’s Clean Technology Fund. (not sure about this one, if the the fund delivers genuine clean energy this would be OK).
  

For those that want more detail, the Climate Change Budget Overview 2009—10 provides a summary of the Government's climate change strategy, describing the objectives of each measure and the providing the name of the agencies who will implement them.

Overall, for I give it 2/10 for transitioning us to a low carbon economy and off coal.  There is far too much corporate welfare gifted to the coal industry, and not enough directed to efficiency measures and genuine clean energy.

My speech at the senate candidates event at North Melbourne

I attend another of the series of the "meet the senate candidates" events being held across Victoria for the preselection of the Greens lead senate candidate for the 2010 federal election.

This time, we were given a hypothetical scenarios where, as Senator for Victoria, there were four options to attend events.

These were:

1. The first action of the Swan Hill Climate Action Group
2. The Melbourne Writers Festival, discussing the Parallel Importing legislation removal
3. The inaugural conference of Democracy Watch in Sydney, discussing election campaign funding and transparency
4. Voting in the Senate on a the acquisition of 5 extra jets, following a special extra sitting day to discuss this issue.

I chose option 2 due to the large audience of around 500 people, and the opportunity to reach an audience that shares our values but due to their age and background are statistically less likely to vote for us.

You can read the speech I wrote - as the "Greens Senator for Victoria" at this hypothetical future meeting, here.

My results for Cotham Ward, Boroondara Council election

I stood as an independent candidate for Cotham Ward in the Boroondara Council elections counted (by postal vote) and Saturday 29/11 and Sunday 30/11. Here is my campaign blog.

The results have been declared -

Candidate	First preference votes
PERRYMAN, Benjie	814
BLOOM, David	2935
CAMPBELL, Peter	3229
BILA, Theo	2071

Candidate	Votes after distribution
BLOOM, David	5113
CAMPBELL, Peter	3936

For more details see

• http://www.vec.vic.gov.au/lgresults.html
• http://www.vec.vic.gov.au/boroondararesult2008.html

Even though I got the highest primary vote (for which I am pleased) David Bloom (Liberal, works in David Davis' office) got elected by the preference flow from the other two.

It was actually quite close - if Bila got ahead of Bloom then I would have been elected. I think it is a very good sign that so many people in Cotham ward voted for a sustainable future!

I would like to thank those who helped with leaflets and scrutineering. I would also like to thank the many people in the ward who contacted me during the campaign about local issues, and for their encouragement.

Also, it was a good result for Des Benson to come second as the Greens candidate in Studley Ward.

I understand that the overall result for Council is that 4 out of 9 are Liberals (or sympathisers) so they don't quite have a majority - unless they elect a Liberal Mayor who will have a casting vote.

Also, apparently Brad Miles (Bellevue Ward), while not a Liberal, opposes the Darebin - Yarra bike link bridge, so the Council decision to support this is now likely to be reversed. Hopefully this won't happen.