Community independent · Southern Metropolitan Region
I'm Melissa Lowe. I'm running for the Legislative Council so that the independents your community elects have someone in the upper house — the chamber where legislation is amended, delayed, improved, or stopped.
Victoria has scrapped group voting tickets — the last state in the country to do it. Above the line, you now number at least five groups in the order you want them. Your preferences go where you send them, not where parties agreed to send them in a back room.
Number at least five boxes. Put us in your five.
Southern Metropolitan Region elects five members. That means a candidate needs about one sixth of the vote — a share a community campaign can genuinely reach, which is not true of most single-member seats.
In 2022 I ran for Hawthorn and came close. What I learned is that a local campaign can shift a seat, but a seat is one vote on the floor. The Legislative Council is where the numbers are tight enough that one independent can force an amendment.
I spend most of this campaign out on the street, at markets and stations across the region, backing the community independents standing in all eleven local districts.