Meanwhile in Victoria: Mantach sentenced, Abercrombie a victim,

Judge hands ex-Liberal boss a heavy sentence; Labor’s easy votes; and why there’s nothing ugly about wind farms.

Former Liberal Party Victorian state director Damien Mantach has been sentenced to five years.

Judge Liz Gaynor surprised judicial and political observers with the strength of the sentence handed down to fraudster and former Liberal Party state director Damien Mantach today.

The 42-year-old was sentenced to five years in prison for defrauding the party of more than $1.5m via a false invoicing scam between 2010 and 2015.

The sentence includes a non-parole period of two years and eight months.

Mr Mantach, who pleaded guilty to fraud offences, opted not to apply for bail after he was charged and has remained in custody since late last year.

Nevertheless, he will still have to spend another two years behind bars under the terms of the sentence.

He told the court in sentencing hearings he stole the money to pay off debts and to try to save his failing marriage.

The fraud created shock waves in the Liberal Party with president Michael Kroger blaming his factional opponents for failing to prevent the fraud during their time in charge.

There have also been tensions over how Mr Mantach came to be employed by the Victorian division when there were doubts raised about his credit card expenditure while running the Tasmanian division of the party.

Abercrombie and filch

In one of those bizarre coincidences, the man who quit as Liberal state treasurer amid the fallout over the Mantach scandal was himself in the news today, as a personal victim of crime.

The multi-millionaire businessman Andrew Abercrombie, who founded the listed credit provider FlexiGroup, has suffered not one but two break-ins with thieves taking $1m of jewels from his Toorak mansion in June. A week later his clifftop house in Portsea was also broken into.

Police have released photos of some of the jewellery stolen in the Toorak raid along with pictures of a blue Holden station wagon allegedly used by the thieves.

The easy way to find a Labor voter

Look for areas where the median house price is $700,000 or below. That’s in Victoria anyway. This rule of thumb, which has emerged in new federal election analysis by state Labor assistant secretary Kosmos Samaras, may have to be adjusted upwards in the case of Sydney and downwards in other capitals.

Samaras, in a post published on his personal blog, analysed swings in Victoria at a booth level against median house prices.

The results showed most areas where the median house price was above this magic level, swung hard against the ALP and those beneath it, swung towards the ALP.

“It’s so strong that the correlation is around 80 per cent,” Samaras wrote. “So the more expensive the suburb, the strong likelihood Labor lost votes. Geography and political history amounted to very little in the result.”

This trend might be accentuated this time around by the ALP’s negative gearing policy as Samaras found that higher proportions of negative gearers were found in areas above $700,000 median house price.

This offers an explanation for the ALP’s loss of Chisholm with home values soaring in this heavily Chinese influenced part of Melbourne, although Meanwhile in Victoria has heard the local campaign to retain the seat was anything but smooth.

Conversely in Dunkley, where Labor logged a swing but ultimately failed to pry the seat from the Liberals, it was on the back booths in those pockets of the seat where house prices are lower than the southeast Melbourne average.

It is food for thought for ALP MPs in areas with rising house prices. And it cuts both ways — in the post-material inner city, the drift is towards the Greens, and in the suburbs it is towards the conservatives.

Wind changes on renewables

Mary Poppins famously told the Banks children that she would “stay until the wind changes”, well the wind has changed in Victoria according to Planning Minister Richard Wynne with the announcement of a $650m wind farm in the southwest.

Mr Wynne said the Andrews government’s streamlining of wind farm approvals last year had revived Victoria’s renewable industry after “the Liberals almost killed it”.

The new 96-turbine wind farm will be near Dundonnell, 200km west of Melbourne, and is expected to generate enough energy to power 140,000 homes.

Premier Daniel Andrews said Victoria couldn’t be left behind in the world’s shift to renewable energy.

“There’s nothing ugly about wind farms, because there’s nothing ugly about jobs,” he said.

According to the government there will be 300 direct and indirect jobs during construction but only up to 16 positions when the wind farm is operational.