how the amateurs took on the pros

\"It sucks.
It\'s terrible.
\"Victorian Green Party convener Adrian Whitehead fell down on a chair at the Swiss club on Saturday night.
Around him, disco lights flashed, supporters danced with love, we were a family, and it was nice that almost ten percent of Victorian people voted Green.
They are always optimistic that Richard Di natalai can still take Melbourne\'s seat from Labor Minister Bronwin Pike.
But Mr Whitehead knows that, politically, there is little hope of defeating the numbers and that to win Melbourne, it will take a lot of absentee votes to go to the Greens.
Before the vote, the party tried to curb expectations of victory in the House --
Even if you try under the preferential system, it is bold --
But its exciting supporters believe it will happen.
\"If we win, it means a lot to us,\" said Mr Whitehead . \".
\"It will mean that we have one person in Parliament who supports all our policies.
Without this, it is difficult to make an impact.
\"It was very late, and Mr Whitehead was very tired, but he saw clearly the gap between proximity and victory.
Throughout the campaign, the Victorian Greens relied on their national leaders and Senator Bob Brown as their star communicator.
They still have no local leaders.
One seat means the speech of Parliament and the attention of the media.
This means taking it seriously.
All night, Green Party election analyst Stephen Luntz called on his laptop.
He is looking for a series of obstacles that Green candidates have to jump to win a seat.
It was their best chance in Melbourne, and they needed independent candidate Kevin Chamberlin to vote about ten percent, but he only succeeded six.
They needed a good poll by the Liberal Party, but their vote plunged to just 20 per cent.
Even with a preference for freedom and independence, it is impossible for Mr. Di Natale to surpass Pike\'s MS because of the labor flow across the state, and Pike\'s vote fell to 46 cents, but no longer increased.
Yesterday, Senator Brown insisted that the Green Party was \"still in the race in Melbourne\" because there were about 7000 absentee votes to count, but the situation depends on the Green Party --style miracle.
They\'re looking for votes.
About 20,000 young people attended the dance festival west of Ballarat on Saturday, when Green Volunteers transported voters to the polling station.
Small parties look for a glimmer of hope, and they are pretty impressive for Green parties.
Five of them.
The candidates in Melbourne won the vote in the primary, including Gemma Pinnell at Richmond.
The Green Party buried the Democratic Party as another political force.
They will almost certainly win a Senate seat in the next federal election.
If the Labor Party had a proportional representation system in the House of Lords, the Green Party would have been assured by parliamentary representation.
The challenge for them is to force Labor to improve its environmental qualifications by providing everything from covering rebates to phasing out Otways logging.
The Greens are based on protecting the environment, but the issue has caused the biggest internal tension in their movement and has pointed out the issue of a party that has a surge in popularity but is trying to find a direction.
Whitehead said there are two kinds of green protection: one is to worry that the attack on Labor is too harsh, because they finally want the Bracks government to return, those who feel so deeply about the environment, so much so that they don\'t care if the \"green\" labor force is hurt by voters.
The party has three election targets, he said: as many candidates as possible, win a seat and advocate proportional representation.
The party excluded the environment, and Mr Whitehead said it was a mistake that could have cost them victory in the partyMelbourne.
\"We are not dead, but we are not strong enough,\" he said . \".
\"Our biggest concern is that people will think that we are a single problem party and we need to promote other things (
Traffic, gambling, etc).
\"As a result, about 20 candidates felt so strongly about logging that they refused to give labor concessions, a unilateral decision, sometimes without consultation with party organizations or even the regional commissions, which one should determine the preference.
\"It\'s a bit amateur,\" he said of the campaign . \".
It\'s not bad for amateurs, but it\'s not exactly what they want.