A suite of preference deals has meant a climate sceptic micro-party is an outside chance to secure South Australia’s sixth Senate spot – and it could be Greens preferences that get them over the line.

No Carbon Tax Climate Sceptics have secured 11 second-preference deals with minor parties in the SA senate race – far more than any other party.

Political experts say a win for the climate change denialists is very unlikely, but the preference deal has at least given them a shot.

No Carbon Tax has secured second preferences from parties right across the conservative spectrum, including Family First, Rise Up Australia, One Nation, and Bob Katter’s Australian Party. As soon as those parties are eliminated from the vote count, their votes will flow to No Carbon Tax.

“I still think that it is unlikely result but the early flow of preferences from the assorted other minors may well keep them in the count for a fair while,” Adelaide University political scientist Clem Macintyre told InDaily.

“A win on green preferences would be an extraordinary result.”

To win a seat, the party needs a complicated range of factors to go its way.

First, the party needs to equal or better their first-preference result from 2010, when they won about 0.46 per cent of the vote.

Do that, and the preference deals mean they can quickly overtake other small parties that received more first-preference votes.

“I think I’ll be in front of about five or six,” No Carbon Tax’s South Australian lead candidate Leon Ashby told InDaily yesterday.

Ashby hopes the gradual accumulation of preferences will allow him to overtake, one-by-one, everyone who has preferenced him.

If all goes to plan, those accumulated preferences will allow the sceptics to overtake a larger party like Family First in the final rounds of voting – which will deliver them enough preferences to take them all the way to the end.

“Then I’m up to 8 per cent. You get to over half a quota, then you’re in the running. The ones that will be left will be the Greens, the Liberal Party, and probably myself.

“We’ll all have somewhere between 6 per cent and 11 per cent, or maybe 12 per cent for the Greens. Those two parties (the Greens and Liberals) actually preferenced me before the other. That means that I’m a really good show.”

Flinders University psephologist Haydon Manning is less enthusiastic about the party’s prospects.

“It is highly likely that the sceptics will fall out before any number of the other minor parties even if their vote shifts up a few tenths of a per cent,” Manning said.

“The more likely surprise would be Family First, but it would still be a huge surprise, one requiring a couple of per cent improvement in their primary vote to nearly 5 per cent and Xenophon or [the] Greens much lower than expected.”

Mt Gambier-based Ashby believes climate change is a “scare”, and is opposed to both Labor’s carbon price and the Coalition’s direct action plan.

“It’s not the scare that’s been hyped up by the Greens. We don’t have to reduce CO2. In fact CO2 is actually good for the ecosystem because we grow more plants, we’re going to grow them faster.

“Those who’ve got a hard nose and know the reality, we know what will work and what won’t. We don’t need to waste money on things which are tokenism and make us look nice.

“To be able to afford the good things like a disability insurance scheme, or paid parental leave – all those things are affordable if you don’t waste money on things that aren’t going to achieve anything.”

If elected alongside a Coalition Government, Ashby says he would try to drag Tony Abbott away from instituting any climate change policies to replace the carbon price, which Abbott has pledged to scrap.

“You like the sentiment, supposedly trying to do something good, but in the end he’s putting foot in each camp, trying to look like he’s green on one side, but he’s not backing it up with real science. We’re going to drag him to the common-sense part of the debate, we hope, if we’re in the Senate.”

In 2010 Ashby and a group of supporters crashed a climate change rally in Adelaide, leading to police being called.