One Nation could collect as much as $633,000 from people who have put their hand up to run in the Victorian state election, with potential candidates questioning whether the party is staging a “cash grab”.
Guardian Australia has spoken to multiple former councillors, mayors and deputy mayors who expressed an interest in running for the party. They claim they went through what one called a “pay-to-play” application process, after which they were rejected.
Those who applied to be considered were required to pay $150 as a “non refundable application fee”, invoices seen by the Guardian show.
One Nation told the Guardian that 1,209 people put in an expression of interest to run in the November state election, and approximately 220 proceeded to the final stage, resulting in an estimated $33,000 flowing into party coffers if all final stage candidates paid this amount.
Applicants were also expected to be party members, with this translating to an additional $72,000 based on the minimum membership fee of $60 a year.
In addition, candidates were advised in interviews that they would be required to pay $5,500 of their own money to run if preselected, even though the vast majority of lower house electorates are not deemed winnable.
While it is not uncommon for the major parties to require candidates to pay an application fee, they do not levy campaign fees on candidates like those being charged by One Nation.
The candidate fee will bring $528,000 into the party’s coffers, based on running 88 lower house candidates and eight for the upper house. In total, the amount paid by candidates could be as much as $633,000.
Sign up for Guardian Australia’s Politics, really newsletter here
Aidan McLindon, a political consultant who worked with One Nation in Victoria last year, said many potential candidates had been left frustrated by what appeared to be a “money-spinning exercise”.
One Nation was “disproportionately focusing on profits over policy”. McLindon said in an interview for episode three of The Populist, out on Monday.
Based on the party’s polling numbers, One Nation is also in line to receive as much as $10m through Victoria’s public electoral funding scheme.
Applicants who spoke to the Guardian have questioned whether the application process was genuine, saying the party had conducted 15-minute video interviews with each candidate before a decision was made. Potential candidates were all required to sign non-disclosure agreements about the process on application.
There is also concern that the upper house candidates were “captain’s picks” selected by the party’s state leader, Warren Pickering, with One Nation overlooking candidates with significant local government and professional experience.
A complaint letter sent to the party by one former Victorian mayor says the process has left many candidates feeling “that we were used, lied to, misled and gaslit”.
“The issue is that the process increasingly looks as though it was used as cover to conceal decisions that had already been substantially made, while creating the public appearance of an open, merit-based candidate search,” the letter seen by the Guardian states.
“Applicants should not have been encouraged to invest their time, energy, reputations and personal information in an elaborate exercise merely to provide legitimacy, numbers or political cover for what now appears to have been a biased and self-serving leadership process.”
Another local government member who had applied questioned whether the process was a “cash grab”.
“They are asking everyday folk, hard-working mums and dads, for $5,500 which is a lot of money,” one said.
“I just think it is a cash grab for the federal election. My feeling is they are just using all of the states to fundraise for the federal election where they want to take power.”
Another said they believed that under the party’s constitution, all funds would be transferred to One Nation’s Brisbane headquarters.
“They will get $800,000 in the kitty for doing absolutely nothing,” one said.
A spokesperson for One Nation said the party uses “a nominal cost recovery model to do police and other checks on candidate nominees”.
“All candidate fees have been paid into the Victorian state campaign account in accordance with the Victorian Electoral Commission rules.
“Application fees and campaign contributions are a standard requirement implemented by all major parties within Australia.”
