No surprise then that parties and their backers have made last-minute efforts to get their messages out before they have to eat into the finite funds they can use before 6pm on October 26.
A slickly produced video ad starring David Crisafulli was the LNP’s last-minute uncapped spending push. On the Labor side,things were a bit more subtle.Nordacious (aka James Hillier)
And those messages are likely to be instructive of the less than seven months ahead,with Labor’s side focusing on cost-of-living relief in the state budget it controls,and the LNP on youth crime.
Residents in some state seats might have seen or heard from,ostensibly a rebadged community campaign by one of Premier Steven Miles’ unions – Together.
The LNP used the most recent parliamentary sitting to criticise this push for “harvesting data” – – and to call for the marginal-seat Labor MPs to renounce it.
“The ability to campaign in a third-party context,we have a greater capacity to do that in the first three months of this year than we do throughout the rest of the year,” Together secretary Alex Scott toldThe Australian of the timing.
“Prior to the 1st of April,there are less limitations.”
The limits he’s talking about are these:from April 2 until polls close,groups registering with the electoral commission as wanting to drop more than $6000 in such as ads,flyers,or polling to influence voting can only do so to a total of $1.03 million.
In each electorate,the figure can’t be more than $90,748. Roughly the same ($95,964 per contested seat) goes forthough endorsed candidates can spend an extra $60,499.
All-in-all,this puts the maximum statewide campaign spending for a party running candidates in every seat at about $14.5 million. Spending before April 2 doesn’t count.
Premier Steven Miles has defended the legacy of his Olympic stadium plan,which he said will be used after the 2032 games are over.
Labor and campaign finance reform supporters (as well as the electoral commissioner,it should be said) say the laws – which essentially include real-time disclosure of both the expenditure and – are in the country.
But questions have been raised about for independent candidates (),and the way the laws were passed in the months before the 2020 vote.
Then-shadow attorney-general David Janetzki labelled the laws a “full-frontal assault on the democratic process” because they allow the state’s many Labor-affiliated or aligned unions to run third-party campaigns,while his () to have a previous ban on donations from LNP-leaning property developers overturned by the High Court.
Back on the 2024 campaign front,in a last-minute effort to beat the expenditure deadline,the LNP produced a slick video ad starring leader David Crisafulli (tapping into his tool bag as a former TV journalist).
In it,the now Gold Coast-based Crisafulli returns to Townsville – where he previously spent time as deputy mayor – to tout the “Making Queensland Safer Laws”,said to be the first brought forward should his team win government.
There’s limited new detail about what such laws might include,beyond what the party has been pushing for,centred on removing the widely recognised sentencing principle that detention be.
(Labor,for its part,appears to be wavering in its opposition,with Miles’ strong rejection of the move as “dangerous” last month softening to seeing what an ostensibly bipartisan recommends,while reiterating that the evidence is against it.)
Other elements of the LNP’s proposed laws,fleshed out in beyond the ad,include automatic case and justice process updates for victims,more focus in sentencing on the impact on victims,and opening the Children’s Court to allow them and their families to “always attend”.
Oh,and repeating the claim that all this “means crime will be lower under an LNP government”.
Miles has said his government will also bring changes to for victims,family and media as part of its response to the youth justice committee’s recommendations,due to be.
Asked about the LNP’s ad last week,Miles referred to recent comments he’d made about the party “politicising community safety for their own benefit”.
“Some people criticised me for saying that,but now they have TV attack ads that they’re getting on the air before the spending caps come in place,” he said.
“So this is a sneaky way of spending more money than the laws allow them to do,or intended to allow them to do.”
Feigning outrage over something your opponents are doing while your side of politics does similar? That’s a classic gag any day of the year.
