Electoral expenditure caps for next local council elections

The opportunity to comment about proposed laws about electoral expenditure caps for local council elections closes on Friday 20th January.

The proposed legislation known as the Local Government Electoral and Other Legislation (Expenditure Caps) Amendment Bill 2022 is currently being reviewed by Queensland Parliament’s State Development and Regional Industries Committee.

The proposed caps on electoral expenditure will apply for the next local government elections due in March 2024, if these laws are passed by State Parliament.

The proposed laws will apply differently in each local government area. For the City Of Brisbane, the proposed cap on electoral expenditure for any mayoral campaign will be $1.3 million but in small shires with less than 30,000 enrolled voters the cap for mayoral campaigns will be $30,000.

For divisional councillor campaigns in local government areas other than Brisbane, the electoral expenditure caps will range from $15,000 to $30,000 depending on the number of enrolled voters. For Brisbane City Council divisions the cap will be $55,000.

Electoral expenditure caps for Redlands

Approximately 118,000 people will be enrolled to vote at the March 2024 local government elections. For a mayoral race with less than 150,000 enrolled voters the proposed expenditure cap will be one dollar per elector.

So the cap for any Redlands mayoral campaign will be about $118,000.

As Redland city currently has ten single councillor divisions, the number of enrolled voters for each division will average 11,800 with a maximum variation of +/- 10%.

The proposed laws say that the expenditure cap for any division with less than 20,000 electors will be $15,000.

Details of actual electoral expenditure for past local council elections is not publicly available. But it is possible to examine disclosures of donations to political candidates published by the Electoral Commission of Queensland for the 2012, 2016 and 2020 local government elections.

For the 2012 Redlands mayoral election, Karen Williams disclosed that she received a total of $138,372.80 in political donations. There were 93,402 enrolled voters for this election so if the proposed new laws had been applying, the maximum amount that could have been spent on this election by a mayoral candidate would have been $93,410.

In her 2016 campaign for re-election, Karen Williams disclosed that she had received donations of $81,605.65. There were 103,783 enrolled voters for this election so if the proposed laws had been in place at this time the spending limit would have been above the amount that Williams received in donations.

Laws for groups and third parties

The proposed laws will set expenditure caps for political parties and groups.

They also include provisions dealing with electoral expenditure by third parties if the
electoral expenditure incurred by or with the authority of the third party during the capped expenditure period exceeds $6,000.

Have your say

To have your say about these proposed new election expenditure laws you can make a submission to the parliamentary committee inquiry.

The closing date for written submissions is 1:00pm on Friday, 20 January 2023.

Redlands2030 – 18 January 2023