Queensland candidates announced

Hi,
Could someone please tell me what are the costs for running in the State Election?

My understanding is that:
* ON will charge the candidate for electorate material (e.g corn-flutes and pamphlets etc). From my memory ON used to charge candidates a very high cost for this material. Is this still the case? Do other parties do the same, I would have thought it would come out of their operational budget?
* The SEC will charge a fee, which is refundable if they gain a certain % of the vote. How much is this fee and what is the % of the vote they have to receive to get a refund?

I only ask this because my ex-Brother-in Law is running for ON in Woodridge.

Hey Neil,
The % for a return is 4% according to the 1992 electoral act. Not sure on the other parts of the question though!

The division of electoral material costs probably vary wildly between parties. I don’t have any detailed knowledge there.

Qld nomination requirements are pretty light – $250 deposit. You need 6 signatures as an independent, or else a party endorsement. I can’t actually see anything about getting your deposit back, but the threshold for election funding is 4% of primary votes, same as federal. For some reason parties get double the reimbursement rate ($6.66/vote) that independent candidates do ($3.33).
This is all done with a reimbursement system – you can’t make a profit off an election (this mostly hurts One Nation and the Greens where some seats would otherwise cross-subsidise others.)

Party rego at a state level is 500 members. It’s a substantially harder process than federally.

The ECQ appears to be constrained to taking exactly 500 members in the initial application, but if you fail a few address checks on the first round you can submit more people to make up for it. Then all 500 of the final list will be contacted by the ECQ first by email and then by physical mail; all need to respond.

By contrast the AEC lets you submit +10% extra people, contacts a statistical subsample (preferably by phone) after matching to the roll, and you need to get no more than a couple of denials (no-responses don’t count against you).

I guarantee half of the One Nation candidates don’t even live in their electorates.

Surprisingly, most One Nation candidates have full profiles, and seem to live in (or close to) their electorates. I’d say about 15% of their candidates are ghost candidates who don’t live in their electorates. This is probably on par with The Greens.

I’ve analysed the seats KAP are contesting:

* Seats they contested last time and are contesting again: Burdekin (LNP), Cook (ALP → LNP), Hill (KAP), Hinchinbrook (KAP), Mulgrave (ALP → LNP), Mundingburra (ALP → LNP), Thuringowa (ALP → LNP ), Townsville (ALP → LNP), Traeger (KAP)
* Seats they didn’t contest last time but are contesting this time: Barron River (ALP → LNP), Mirani (ONP/KAP → LNP?)
* Seats they contested last time but are not contesting this time: Rockhampton (ALP → LNP/IND), Warrego (LNP), Whitsunday (LNP)

So KAP are running one less candidate this time.

Family First are contesting a majority of seats. I am interested if they will run at the Federal election they did so the last time in 2016.
UAP not contesting, i am wondering if they will bother contesting many seats in the federal election.

The UAP is de-registered at a federal level, and in every state but Victoria. Makes me wonder if they’ll just give up and not contest any more elections.

They could’ve been competitive in Queensland in 2015 if they ran John Bjelke Petersen in Nanango (he lives in Kingaroy, plus his last name is an asset in that area), but for some reason they ran him in Callide. That was the last serious chance they had in Queensland. Most of their Queensland state vote has been eaten up by One Nation.

UAP were a “one season wonder” as we say in football. People thought they’d be good for a long time but in reality they flopped.

Why? They lacked clear policies, and were backed by an unpopular billionaire businessman. It’s funny how they claimed they were against the elites when Clive Palmer is the richest person in Queensland.

Family First are running in all five seats in the ACT election – this is not going to be fruitful territory forth – though they have a sitting Liberal members who was chucked out the party running in Gininderra

@ AA/NP
I do see the UAP as a party without a base or clear ideology. Each election they talk about something unrelated and do well in very different demographics. If it was not bankrolled by a billionare we would have never heard of it. I really wonder if Ralph Babet will just defect to One Nation, his office is in Narre Warren but if anyone did a Vox pop at Westfield Fountain Gate just adjacent i doubt it even 3 percent of people will know anything about him.

@Nimalan unlike Palmer or Kelly or Hanson virtually very few people who either didn’t either vote for him or aren’t really into politics will know who he is.

Someone should do a poll for the most well-known incumbent MPs and Senators. I think Albo would be the most well-known MP simply because he’s PM but Pauline Hanson would likely be the most well-known Senator because she’s been very well-known and recognisable for so long.

NP, I think “most known politician” goes to Donald Trump in Australia

Agree NP
i dont think he is made much of an impact or could actually help build a brand for the UAP in Suburban Melbourne

@Daniel T I meant Aussie MPs.

@Nimalan what I find interesting is that the UAP is trying to court both Labor and Liberal voters but in the city which is harder than in the country. A lot of One Nation voters are ex-Coalition voters but I honestly think more of them are ex-Labor voters who would vote Coalition if there was no One Nation candidate.

As we saw in Queensland back in 2019, in Capricornia the LNP primary vote increased a little bit but the TPP swing to the LNP was big because of the huge drop in the Labor vote, and that mostly went to One Nation. It was similar in Hunter, where the Nationals came close to winning because of One Nation.

Most One Nation voters are culturally working-class white people and their families who work in blue-collar trades in working-class regions where coal mining was once the biggest industry, i.e the Capricorn Coast of Queensland and the Hunter Valley in NSW. The main cities in these regions are Mackay and Rockhampton (Capricorn Coast) and Maitland and Cessnock (Hunter Valley). They usually don’t do as well in those cities but they do outside in the surrounding rural areas.

@ NP
One Nation voters are culturally working class but typically older, more likely to be asset owners and self-employed. They are actually not the party of struggle street. There is a misconception that ONP voters are from low SES backgrounds but that is not true at all. The UAP does not have a clear demographic base for example Calwell where they did well in 2022 is very different to the seat of Fairfax which they won in 2013.

@Nimalan agree which is why I said blue-collar workers. They usually work in trades and in the mines which are now quite high-paying but back in the day were typical working-class jobs.

@ NP
I agree with your statement yes blue collar workers but are typically wealthier not going to be the party of Mount Druitt or Woodridge.

On the topic of material costs, I recall that some federal UAP candidates in 2022 threatened legal action saying that their funds were reimbursed as promised and also they felt defrauded.

I reckon a big number of Family First’s candidates are also dummy candidates with no profile or photo on their website.

@Nimalan, this also oppositely true for Green Voters where it tends upper middle class but are asset poor however they also do well amongst who live in poverty in the inner city as they are not the same people in poverty to those in the outer suburbs and regional areas.

@ Marh
Agree Green voters are the opposite of ONP vote. There typically very young as well. As you mentioned the Greens do well with some low income inner city residents including people who work as cafe workers, bar tenders, waiters who are unable to get up the property ladder. Other thing is that ethnic working class people in places like St Albans, Dandenong, Bankstown, Woodridge have much less intergenerational wealth as white working class residents in the Hunter Valley, Central QLD northern Tasmania. Even in the UK after Brexit they pointed out once reason why the Right wing vote was growing in the old industrial heartlands and decreasing in cities like London was average voter age and the distribution of home ownership. The right was not making inroads into poor ethnic areas of London, Birmingham etc

Thanks for your response Muzgrob and AlexJ.

Going on last election he should get his money back from the ECQ. ON polled about 10% in this seat.

I was more worried about him incurring a high cost from ON, money he doesn’t have. I don’t have contact with him, but I am pretty sure they contacted him and he must have put his hand up.

@Nimalan the Conservatives made some inroads into the Indian community (same as in Australia). For example they now hold Leicester East and in the city of Leicester 21.5% of people were born in India as of the 2021 census (11.54% also speak Gujarati, 2.40% Punjabi, 0.57% Bengali, 0.35% Hindi (excluding the 1.07% who speak Urdu)). Overall 43.40% of Leicestrians are “Asian or Asian British” (and 34.30% of Leicestrians are Indian).

@ NP
I agree with you. I think the UK Conservatives have made inroads into British Hindus specifically rather than Muslims South Asians. The Hindu community in the UK is quite affluent so it is not really a realignment of poorer people voting rightwards rather it is a community that has become better integrated and affluent. Hindus do not get as much hostility as Muslims and even the far right does not really attack them. For example, Tommy Robinson of the EDL recently said he supported the Hindu community in Bangladesh when they were attacked. Also unlike Indian Australians who are more recent, British Indians are well into the second and third generation. I would also point out that the Tories also held onto Harrow East which has a large Indian community and used to be a bellwether despite losing in a landlides.

Well Neil Flannagan, your ex-relative will get his QEC fees back, gaining over 7% of the vote.