Below is a mock up of a Traffic Light Voting Guide for Footscray. The Bundoora guide for voters will not be published until after the ballot draw on Tuesday November 10th.

Below is a mock up of a Traffic Light Voting Guide for the Victorian Upper House in the WESTERN METROPOLITAN REGION. The actual guide for voters in Williamstown will not be published until after the ballot draw on Tuesday November 10th.

Voting Traffic Light in the 2026 Victorian State Election

You will receive two ballot papers to vote for your preferred candidates in the Victorian House of Assembly and the Victorian Legislative Council .

To vote Traffic Light, vote for all the Green Light candidates or parties first, then the Orange Light ones. Number the red light candidates last.

Red light candidates are threat to achieving a fair future for us all not just in relation to Climate Rescue, but also a range of social issues most of us are concerned about. The order you number the Red Light candidates will have a significant effect on creating a good outcome at this election. We describe this advice as Strategic Preferencing. Strategic Preferencing combined with your Traffic Light Voting Guide will turbo charge the effectiveness of your vote in Red Light electorates.

Strategic Preferencing in the Williamstown District (How to turbo-charge your vote!)

Williamstown is a Red Light electorate held by the Labor Party. We strongly advise to you preference the Labor candidate last. You have three other Green Light candidates to vote for. Fortunately for the good people of Wiliiamstown , one those three is an Outstanding Green Light candidate and a very worthy community independent.

Strategic Preferencing in the Southern Metropolitan Region

Whether you vote below, or above the line, number One Nation or their candidates last. The divisiveness promoted by this party will tear us apart. Your vote can help to exclude them from minority government and preserve our capacity to restore social cohesion. They have the unhinged capacity to take a wrecking ball to the good influence of the Legislative Council.

To do this effectively you will need to fill in all the boxes either above the line or below the line.

Outstanding Green Light Candidates

Tony Briffa Community Independent

I have the experience to get results

I have a strong track record of community advocacy and negotiation at all levels of government and the proven ability to work constructively on government planning, funding and legislation. My experience, locally, is unrivalled.

I’m one of you

For many years, I have served our community as one of us. I ensure nobody is left behind and I don’t take our community for granted.

I’m truly independent

I’m a true independent. I work for us and not for big and powerful vested interests and I won’t bend to party political interests that don’t serve Williamstown and Victoria.

My record speaks for itself

As a community advocate, Hobsons Bay Councillor and Mayor, I have a proven track record of delivering and standing up for our community:

• Led the delivery of major upgrades to local sporting facilities across Hobsons Bay.
• Delivered significant upgrades of the Altona and Seaholme foreshores.
• Campaigned for increases to local police numbers and pushed relentlessly for our police stations to be kept open 24/7.
• Opposed the closure of Champion Road Newport, and continues to fight for the Altona North Rail Station to be reopened.
• Regularly opposed inappropriate development – even before I was elected to our council.
• Fought to protect our environment from damage and to decontaminate land in industrial areas.
• Have always fought for our elderly and disabled citizens, young people and our community groups.

Cost of Living

I will work to put downward pressure on the cost of living in Victoria by carefully and strategically negotiating with government.

I will ensure local businesses and households are given real tax relief.

I will fight to prevent local people from losing their jobs under planned job cuts at the state level.

I will fight to ensure planned budget cuts do not rob local people of the badly needed essential services they use every day.

I will negotiate a plan for the State Electricity Commission to provide significant discounts on power bills for all Victorians.

I will negotiate stronger powers for our anti-corruption bodies and the police to stop government waste and corruption.

I will insist that the government implement a gradual and phased reduction in state debt that does not harm our community.

Traffic Light Voting Guide (TLVG) Assessment

I am very grateful you contacted me and are happy to assess me for your Green Light ranking.  My answers to your questions are:

1. If you are elected to the next Victorian House of Assembly will your policy focus support real action on issues relating to the ecological and climate emergency?

I am very committed to supporting genuine and meaningful action on ecological and climate emergency issues if elected to the next Victorian Parliament.

2. Are you prepared to use the application of the 3Rs, the Climate Rescue Accord and the Green Transition to inform, when relevant, your position and advocacy on legislation and policy?

I have always been a supporter of the triple bottom line framework, and if elected I will utilise the three 3Rs (i.e. Reduce, Remove and Reflect) and the Climate Rescue Accord where relevant, to inform my position and advocacy on legislation and policy.

Kindest regards,

Tony

Green Light Candidates

Ben Hocking Greens Candidate

As a long-time local, I’m running for election because I care deeply about this community, our local environment, public education and social justice.

Before moving into surveillance, where I am also a union delegate, I worked as a journalist. I’m committed to improving transparency and integrity in politics – especially through a stronger anti-corruption body, and fighting for workers’ rights.

I decided to run after watching this community be ignored in planning decisions and neglected when it comes to public transport.

Labor has taken our community for granted for too long, chronically under-investing in the area. There are not enough GPs, the local hospital is under-funded and our train line is treated with contempt.

I am running to be a loud voice for this community that deserves its fair share.

Climate Change Policy

All of our state policy principles and aims should be read alongside our relevant federal policy principles and aims, as well as our state campaigns and federal campaigns.

Principles

1. Human-induced climate change poses one of the greatest threats to our world in human history and requires urgent local, national and global action.
2. We are already experiencing dangerous impacts of climate change; urgent, deep, and broad action is required to avoid catastrophic impacts.
3. The amount of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere necessitates urgent emission reduction and drawdown of greenhouse gases as well as prompt adaptation to climate change.
4. Early action to reduce greenhouse emissions is cheaper and fairer than delayed action.
5. Governments must ensure that organisations responsible for pollution pay for the costs of mitigating climate change and adapting to its impacts.
6. Climate change policy should be based on the best available science.
7. Climate change policy should inform and frame all other policies.
8. Victoria must take responsibility for the greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the goods and resources it consumes and exports.
9. Victoria is one of the world’s largest per-capita emitters of greenhouse gases with a large percentage due to the burning of brown coal.
10. The lack of effective global (or Australian) climate action must not prevent Victoria from taking immediate and comprehensive measures.
11. Offset schemes must be carefully controlled to avoid them undermining emissions reduction efforts or being used for greenwashing or fraud.
12. Climate action should prioritise proven solutions such as large-scale reforestation over unproven or harmful technologies that prolong fossil fuel use.
13. Climate change adaptation and mitigation measures should not discriminate or treat anyone unfairly on any basis including gender, age, race, ethnicity, vulnerability, religion, disability, sexual orientation or membership of a minority group.

Aims

Mitigation

1. To achieve net zero or negative total greenhouse gas emissions across all areas of human activity – including via the removal of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere, in a way that is environmentally responsible and socially fair.
2. Development and implementation of a detailed plan to end Victoria’s reliance on fossil fuels by shifting to, and beyond, a zero greenhouse gas emission economy.
3. Position Victoria – through appropriate investment in technological innovation – to benefit from the new jobs, skills, technologies and markets available in a zero greenhouse gas emission economy.
4. Provide transitional support for all regions, businesses and communities adversely affected by measures that reduce climate change.
5. Support place-based adaptation and mitigation initiatives which engage the community in identifying local challenges and co-designing solutions.
6. Regulation of the phasing out of existing coal-fired power stations and the banning of new fossil-fuel based power stations.
7. A ban on the exploration and development of new fossil fuel resources including but not limited to coal seam gas and other forms of unconventional gas.
8. Develop complementary mitigation measures in collaboration with other governments where possible.
9. Support for elevating sustainability requirements for buildings and construction.
10. Where practical, support nature-based responses to climate change, such as increasing canopy cover, and planting mangroves to reduce storm damage to coastal areas.
11. Assistance to the agriculture and forestry sectors to reduce emissions from ruminant livestock production and land clearing and other sources.
12. Maximise effective and sustainable carbon farming, bio-sequestration and other drawdown methods.
13. Implement low-cost, high-impact emissions reductions in Victoria’s stationary energy sector, and reduce emissions across other sectors including transport, industrial processes, agriculture and forestry.

Adaptation

14. Government support for adaptive actions to protect the environment and key public assets, and to manage major public risks.
15. The implementation, through public and private action, of Victoria’s climate change adaptation action plan, and ongoing review with community and expert involvement.
16. Assisting the agriculture sector to adjust to reduced water availability and to make itself more energy self-sufficient.
17. Ensuring that planning regulations allow for expected impacts of climate change such as rising sea levels, storm surges and other extreme weather events.
18. Implement adaptation measures that take account of those groups disproportionately impacted by climate change and resulting disasters and emergencies.

Further reading 

• Climate change and energy (federal Greens policy)
• No more coal and gas (state campaign)

Greens state policies

Oskar Martin Victorian Socialists Candidate

Hi I’m Oskar. I’m a proud Aboriginal socialist from Bundjalung and Kamilaroi lands, and I’m your socialist candidate for Williamstown.

Today I work as a Research Assistant in the Aboriginal History Archive at Victoria University.

In my time as a socialist activist, I have campaigned for Palestinian and Aboriginal rights at university, and on the streets of Melbourne. I have taken up the fight against inequality in the Western suburbs as well.

Addressing climate change and protecting our environment

The climate emergency is a dire threat to our natural environment and the liveability of our cities. Victoria’s Climate Science Report 2024 projects hotter summers, more frequent and severe bushfire weather, reduced water availability, rising sea levels, and intensified short-duration flooding. Victoria’s greenhouse gas emissions were 84.2 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent in 2023 with around 90 percent of those emissions coming from burning fossil fuels, and electricity generation alone accounting for 46 percent. The Allan government’s targets fall well short of what climate science requires of wealthy developed states to limit warming to 1.5°C. In 2025, the Allan government opened up a new offshore gas exploration program, a pivotal policy shift after years of more restrictive measures, and locking in fossil fuel development that will generate emissions for decades and is incompatible with any credible path to net zero.

Victorian Socialists acknowledge that climate change is an existential risk with the potential to impact all other aspects of our policy platform and believe the climate emergency demands a response that matches the scale of the threat. The cost of the transition must fall on those who created the crisis and have profited from it.

What we think

1. Climate change is a direct product of the capitalist world economy, which turns everything in the natural environment into a resource exploitable for private profits.
2. Market mechanisms such as carbon trading, offsets, and voluntary targets have had decades to work and have failed. Climate change cannot be addressed without a comprehensive, planned restructuring of the economy away from fossil fuel dependence.
3. The concentration of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere means that net-zero emissions will not be sufficient to curtail dangerous warming. Net-negative emissions — actively drawing down atmospheric carbon — will be required.
4. Nuclear power is neither clean nor renewable.
5. The effects of climate change are disproportionately felt by people on low incomes; their lives and livelihoods need to be protected not only from changes to the climate, but during the transition to a new economy.
6. The economic burden of dealing with climate change must fall solely on those who have profited from destroying the environment: the ultra-rich and the big polluters.
7. The renewable transition, if publicly owned and democratically controlled, is an opportunity to rebuild Victoria’s manufacturing capacity, create skilled and secure employment, and revitalise regions that have borne the costs of the fossil fuel economy for generations.
8. Policy should be focused on mitigation of the crisis rather than adaptation.

We’ll fight to

Emissions targets

1. Reduce emissions by 75 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, achieve a zero-carbon economy by 2035 and a permanent net-negative emissions economy by 2040.

Fossil fuel phase-out

1. Accelerate the closure of all remaining coal-fired power generation, with Loy Yang A to close no later than 2030 rather than its current scheduled date of 2035, with guaranteed jobs, income support and community investment for all affected workers and regions.
2. Reverse the Allan government’s 2025 offshore gas exploration program, prohibit the development of all new fossil fuel projects — onshore and offshore.
3. Make environmental approval for any new resource development contingent on full greenhouse gas emission neutrality.
4. Stop the establishment of a nuclear power industry in the state.

Sustainability

1. No new data centres. Data centres have detrimental environmental footprints, disproportionately high water and electricity demands, and no community benefits to the areas they are placed.
2. Require existing data centres to meet mandatory standards on water consumption, energy use and renewable energy sourcing, with binding targets and enforceable penalties for non-compliance.
3. End all planned waste to energy schemes and ban the creation of future waste incinerators.

Renewable transition

1. Urgently construct solar and wind farms and upgrade the power grid with battery storage to enable the quick transition of Victorian homes and businesses to an all-electric, post-gas energy system.
2. Establish a renewables manufacturing industry (solar photovoltaic, lithium-ion battery and electric vehicles), with guaranteed secure jobs and retraining for workers from the fossil fuel industry.
3. Electrify Victoria’s transport system and commit to 100 percent electric new car sales by 2035, establish a comprehensive fast-charging network across the state including regional and rural areas, electrify the public bus fleet, and end all subsidies and concessions for fossil-fuel vehicles.

Nature and carbon stores

1. Protect, restore and expand Victoria’s natural carbon stores — defending and extending the end of native forest logging introduced in January 2024, establishing large-scale programs of reforestation, restoring native grasslands and wetlands, and protecting blue carbon ecosystems in coastal and estuarine areas.

Adaptation

1. Fund research into adaptation strategies to protect biodiversity, water resources and agricultural yields.
2. Develop a comprehensive urban heat adaptation strategy — including mandatory tree canopy targets, green roofs and walls, shading requirements in new developments, cool corridors in areas of high heat stress, and publicly funded cooling centres accessible to vulnerable communities.
3. Require all new public buildings and public housing to be built to standards that protect residents from extreme heat without reliance on air conditioning, and fund retrofitting of existing public housing stock to the same standard.
4. Develop a managed retreat framework for communities facing unacceptable risk from rising sea levels, flooding and fire, with full financial support for affected working-class residents, no forced relocations without genuine community consent, and particular attention to renters and low-income households with no capacity to relocate.