Polly can now reveal that three candidates have admitted to breaching the spending cap in their reports submitted to the electoral officer by 5pm yesterday afternoon. Polly has been informed that the returning officer has named Sibella Matthews, Alistair Stephenson and Hiltin Guo as three who have exceeded their cap. In a separate report, Polly heard that one of these candidates allegedly spent over $2000, effectively triple the spending cap.
At this point, no candidate has been disqualified from election, although the returning officer has made it clear that consequences may be more severe for candidates found to have lied in their expenditure reports.
For the three who did admit to exceeding what they were allowed to spend, the following restrictions have been put in place:
A requirement to place a prominent apology on their Facebook group
Forfeit a certain number of T shirts
Not engage in campaigning until just before election day
These penalties are harsh, but don’t preclude any of the candidates from election.
Polly heard chatter yesterday afternoon that Alistair’s campaign were in contact with other campaigns, discussing the implications of their breaches. It’s quite possible that these three campaigns decided to admit to breaches together in the hope that the consequences would be limited.
