Transform effects are appearing below content, not above

I'm experimenting with spirograph like patterns and effects, To do this I have created primitive shapes like squares and hexagons and applied transfrom effects like this…

In the above example there is one square with a black stroke and no fill. Even though I tell the stroke not to scale, it is scaled.

The problem is the duplicates are stacked below the primary object or group. I don’t think this has always been the case. See this one…

If I expand the appearance I can see outlines for all the shapes. But I need the duplicates to appear above the source image. Is thee a way to do this? Is this a bug?