The Greens are fielding almost 100 candidates across Victoria in local council elections on November 29. There will be Greens candidates in almost every ward.
It is expected that in many places, Greens councillors will be elected for the first time and in other places Greens councillors re-elected.
Barrister Adam Bandt is the Greens' candidate for lord mayor of the City of Melbourne. He told Green Left Weekly: "It's a sign of the political times that in this City of Melbourne election, the Greens are seen as such a threat that Labor has teamed up with the Liberals to defeat us."
One of the frontrunner tickets is led by Labor Party-supported mayoral candidate Peter McMullin. McMullin's candidate for deputy lord mayor is Liberal Party member Tim Wilson, who is also director of the Institute of Public Affairs' free trade unit, a far-right free market think-tank.
"The so-called Progressive Labor ticket from the ALP left faction is preferencing McMullin's ticket ahead of us", said Bandt. "So Labor voters' preferences could put a far-right member of the Liberal Party into the deputy lord mayor position."
Bandt believes that the lead Labor ticket is spending approximately $400,000-$500,000 on sending out large amounts of anonymous smear material to voters.
One of the Greens' policies is to establish an authority across the Melbourne and Yarra councils that "won't rely on market mechanisms, but will use government resources to audit and retrofit people's houses.
"We are offering free insulation for low-income earners so they can cut their energy bills and so tackling climate change doesn't fall disproportionately on those of low income", Bandt said.
Bandt said that local government should be at the forefront of any response to climate change.
Bandt also highlighted public transport. He criticised the state government's plan to spend $18 billion on a road and rail tunnel, "where for $14 billion you can have a world-class public transport system in Melbourne where you never had to use your car again".
The Greens plan to turn local councils into the state's public transport advocates.
Bandt's platform includes bringing the waste and recycling collection back under one council provider. "At the moment when you walk down a laneway, you see 10 bins, each one collected by different private companies with 10 times as many trucks going down there. It makes sense to bring it back under one publicly planned, operated and owned provider", he said.
Bandt says that the state government and property developers view councils as a pot of money to assist their projects. "The current City of Melbourne council has spent $70 million of council money on state government projects such as the Commonwealth Games and a new convention centre on the Yarra", said Bandt.
"There's tens of million of dollars available for tackling climate change once we recognise that local council should stop subsidising state government. At the moment there's massive subsidising of the private sector. Once you've stopped that, you don't need to raise rates, there's plenty of money there", Bandt said.
Bandt also slammed the current voting system in the City of Melbourne. He described it as a "gerrymander" set up by former Coalition premier Jeff Kennett and then made worse by the subsequent Labor government.
It is a system where businesses get two votes whereas residents only get one vote. According to Bandt, it's the only council election system in the state that's exempt by law from being reviewed by the Victorian Electoral Commission. The Greens are pushing to have the system reviewed.
Bandt pointed out that at the moment, the owner of Singtel will get around 20 ballot papers for all of the mobile phone towers it owns in the CBD and nearby area, and each of those ballot papers gets two votes.