By Sean Nicholls
PAULINE HANSON and her group of independents would need more than 160,000 votes at the election to be eligible for public funding and can only claim back money that was spent on their campaign.
Ms Hanson, the One Nation party founder who is standing as a candidate for the Legislative Council with a group of 16 independents, yesterday defended her reasons for running, saying she would focus on privatisation of state assets.
The Premier, Kristina Keneally, branded her a racist, the Greens claimed her candidacy would drag politics in NSW to the far right and Labor and the Coalition announced they would not allocate her preferences.
Ms Hanson has attracted controversy in the past by claiming public funding under the federal electoral system, which rewards a candidate for the number of votes they receive.
But under NSW electoral laws a candidate may claim back only about 80 per cent of what they spend on their campaign.
An upper house candidate or group of candidates must achieve at least 4 per cent of the total primary vote in the Legislative Council to be eligible for public funding.
About 4 million votes were cast in the upper house at the 2007 state election, meaning Ms Hanson and her group would have required about 160,000 votes. If they achieve the quota, they could claim about 80 per cent of what they spent in the campaign back from the public purse.
In the case of a group, the money is quarantined in a campaign fund, which can be spent only on future election campaigning. If the group is disbanded the money goes to charity, apart from funds personally contributed by candidates.
However, there is no restriction on an individual upper house candidate raising funds via donations within the allowable cap and then claiming reimbursement from the public purse, without spending restrictions, if they or their group achieves the 4 per cent quota.
Because Ms Hanson is part of a group, her name will not appear above the line on the Legislative Council ballot paper. Although she faces an uphill battle to be elected, the ABC's election analyst, Antony Green, believes it is not out of the question.
Mr Green pointed out that despite the quota for election to the upper house being about 4.55 per cent, because so few preferences are distributed by voters under NSW's optional preferential system, it is possible to be elected to the upper house with as little as 2.1 per cent of the vote. This was the case for the Shooters' Party MP John Tingle in 2003.
''With the election result looking a foregone conclusion with Labor set for a crushing defeat, Ms Hanson's nomination will bring more attention and a touch of unpredictability to the Legislative Council election,'' he wrote yesterday.