By Sean Nicholls & Leesha McKenny
Smh.com.au

WHAT HAVE WE HERE?The Australian Sex Party’s candidate in the Higgins byelection on Saturday, Fiona Patten, may lodge an official complaint with the Australian Electoral Commission after she was detained by Victorian police on the morning of the poll. Patten gained an impressive 3.27 per cent of the vote but had a hard time convincing local police that she was a candidate. She was pulled over and detained for 30 minutes as she began her rounds of the polling booths early on Saturday morning after two complaints from parents that the Sex Party van she was travelling in along Toorak Road was offensive. ”I explained that I was a candidate in the byelection,” Patten said yesterday. ”But they didn’t seem to be aware there was one.” In Bradfield, the party achieved a similar result – without police intervention – reporting that its candidate, pole dancer Marianne Leishman, aka Zahra Stardust, was most popular in booths at Chatswood Public School and Lindfield, both of which accounted for 5 per cent of the party’s overall vote in the seat.