The implications of fast footwork on Victorian upper house preference deals are reverberating around the Northern Victoria Region, as well as the state more broadly this week.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Mr Druery has promised to help potential clients get elected for a fee of $55,000 if successful, telling them: "A minor party has had the balance of power at a state or federal level for nearly 25 years and my fingerprints have been on almost all of them".
However, on Sunday the election fixer was apparently himself the victim of brazen political manoeuvring, when the Animal Justice Party, who had for months been negotiating with him to secure preferences from his other clients, reneged on their reciprocal agreement just before the registration of preferences closed.
While still receiving preferences from Druery's clients, the AJP instead directed theirs to a bloc of progressive parties they were more aligned with.
In Northern Victoria Region AJP preferences will flow to the Victorian Socialists, Fiona Patten's Reason Party and Legislate Cannabis Victoria, followed by Labor.
Derryn Hinch's Justice Party MP Tania Maxwell slammed the AJP, and the original preference deal, in a Facebook post on Tuesday, describing herself as "appalled" that her party had agreed to preference the "radical outfit" second.
"If I'd known my party was doing a deal to direct preferences in Northern Victoria to the hard-Left Animal Justice Party - against the livelihoods and interests of the people and farming communities that I've represented for four years - I would have demanded changes," she wrote. "That's probably why I was kept in the dark."
The AJP has listed Maxwell 38th out of 55 upper house candidates in the order of its preference flows.
According to La Trobe University Associate Professor Ian Tulloch, the AJP "sting" is likely to see Derryn Hinch's Justice Party lose a seat and the AJP potentially gain one as a consequence.
He said Mr Druery's deals had got three MPs elected at the last election with only about 1.5 per cent of the vote.
"Whereas the Greens consistently get about 9 per cent across the entire state but only got one person elected because they're not part of that preference deal," he said.
The Opposition Leader, Matthew Guy, has said that a Coalition government would reform the group voting ticket system.
Lead AJP Northern Victoria Region candidate Georgie Purcell told the Advertiser she hadn't been involved in the negotiations and found the fallout from the incident "a little bit overwhelming".
"It's also exciting because it really increases my chances of winning," she said.
