Bendigo council election campaign cash: how we discovered election candidate got it wrong in 2024 election - video published December 31, 2024
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00:00So I'm Tom O'Callaghan from the Bendigo Advertiser. I've spent a couple of days
00:04going and looking at campaign donations from the last council election. You might
00:09think that's a few months ago, why are we doing it now? Well all the details have
00:13come out now. What we have found is some pretty interesting things. Of 90
00:18candidates across six local council areas, we had a whole raft of people
00:24giving donations to a whole raft of candidates. One of them got 25 people who
00:29gave donations totaling about $8,000 plus. We also found that 80% of these 90
00:37plus candidates actually said that they got no donations at all, which maybe
00:44that's true. This is local government, people put up their hands and run
00:47shoestring campaigns. But I was able to confirm that one person got confused and
00:54have put in that they got no donations when in fact they got more than that
01:00from a political party. I don't know if that means that there's more people out
01:04there who have got donations but maybe didn't understand the rules, but I guess
01:08we'll find out as we keep digging.