The Wodonga councillor, who stood as a Liberal Democrats candidate, was elected along with another first-timer Tania Maxwell, Labor duo Mark Gepp and Jaclyn Symes and Liberal Wendy Lovell.

Mr Quilty polled less than four per cent of the vote, but still climbed to third place behind Mr Gepp and Ms Lovell on preference deals pieced together by so-called preference whisperer, Glenn Druery.

“I never had contact myself,” Mr Quilty said.

“But he was working with someone in the party and as you can see with the flow of preferences, I did get preferences from the small parties coming to us.

“If he wasn’t around we probably could have put together something similar ourselves, but we didn’t have to.”

He will be joined in the Legislative Council by another Liberal Democrats candidate, David Limbrick, who was elected in South East Metro.

Ms Symes’ election confirms her role as the state’s next agriculture minister and also bumps the National Party’s Luke O’Sullivan from his upper house after just one term.

Mr Quilty was formerly a Liberal Party member, but became disillusioned with major parties and was elected to Wodonga Council two years ago.

“When I was elected to council I thought that would be as far as I would go,” he said.

Mr Quilty planned to hand in his resignation as a Wodonga councillor on Tuesday night which will create the need for a countback of votes from the election two years ago to come up with a replacement.

He had some notable run-ins with mayor Anna Speedie in his brief time on council.

“It wasn’t all conflict and fighting,” he said.

“I will miss all of them, but Ron (Mildren) and Libby (Hall) the most.”

Ms Maxwell from Wangaratta was elected as a Derryn Hinch Justice Party candidate.