State Election 2022

KCCA campaigned in both the Hawthorn and Kew districts. The results weren’t what we hoped for, but we put in a mighty effort and made a significant contribution to ensuring the climate was a major issue in both electorates. Highlights included:

  • Preparation of climate scorecards for both electorates (covering the upper and lower houses), with updated versions for late policy releases and special election day versions
  • More than 130 committed volunteers handing out the scorecard at pre-polling and on election day
  • Staffing nearly every shift for two weeks at the three Hawthorn and Kew early voting centres
  • Filling almost every shift at the 26 busiest voting centres on election day, with 2 people at the busiest 14
  • A ground-breaking victory in VCAT, overturning the VEC’s decision to reject our scorecard, which meant we were the only non-party/non-candidate aligned group in the State active at voting centres on election day
  • Delivery of scorecards to most households in Hawthorn and Kew by our dedicated army of letter-boxers
  • Two illuminating candidates’ forums run by Lighter Footprints, nearly filling the old Hawthorn Town Hall and with a capacity crowd at the Marwal Centre for the Kew forum
  • Raising more than $12,000 in just four months thanks to the generosity of more than 100 donors; this is a small amount compared to the major players, but it meant we could distribute our scorecards widely, put up fence signs in both electorates and fund a modest social media campaign.

A big thank you to everyone involved!

Here are some reminders of the campaign.

Our Scorecards

You can find full details of the scoring rationale for Hawthorn here and for Kew here. Extracts from the candidates’ published policies used as the basis for the Hawthorn scoring can be found here and for the Kew scoring here.

The make up of the Legislative Council is also crucial to the future direction of climate policy in the State. The voting system is generally not well understood in the community, and the flow of preferences in the easiest method of voting (‘above the line’) is opaque. Our Legislative Council scorecard for the Southern Region (which includes both Hawthorn and Kew) gave clear guidance about how to vote for the climate.

The Council scorecard was developed by Vote Climate (with help from the KCCA and other climate groups), and details of the scoring rationale can be found at the Vote Climate website.

Preferential voting

Many voters don’t fully understand how the preferential voting system works, particularly in the upper house. So we included a brief overview of the system on the reverse side of the first version of the Legislative Assembly scorecards we letterboxed early in the campaign. The aim was to encourage people to use their preferences effectively to maximise the prospects for climate candidates.

Our Fence signs