Months of campaigning will come to an end on Saturday when Victorians will take to polling booths across the state to decide who will represent their communities for the next four years.
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10 candidates have put their hands up to run in the marginal seat in Ripon, with the seat expected to be one of the closest counts in the entire state once again.
Campaigning has been a long and hard fought battle, particularly for the two major party candidates in the running – Liberal Party’s Louise Staley and Labor’s Sarah De Santis, taking its toll in many ways, especially financially.
In 2014 Shepparton MP and independent Suzanna Sheed showed how much financial commitment was needed for candidates not belonging to major parties.
Her campaign cost $100,000, but it helped her become the first fresh independent in Victorian state parliament since 1999.
Candidates in Ripon won’t have spent anywhere near that amount, but it is clear with the advertising in various forms of media as well billboards and posters throughout the region that plenty of resources have been used to campaign for votes.
Both Ms Staley and Ms De Santis declined to give an exact number on how much their respective campaigns have cost. Ms De Santis has been campaigning since late last year when she won pre-selection, making for a long 12 months.
“Representing this community would be a tremendous honour, so I've made some big personal sacrifices in the past year to give it my very best shot,” she said.
Serge Simic is the other candidate representing one of the more major parties, with six others running for smaller parties or as independents. No candidate could put an exact number on how much their campaign cost but all said they were run on quite tight budgets.
How to vote cards have been the main expense among candidates, with either self-funding or donations helping pay for their campaigns.
“I’ve chipped in a bit with some help from the party. You put in money for the little things because that’s what you have to do in a micro-party,” Shooters, Fishers and Farmers candidate Peter Fava said. “These big parties come in and have everything but we are happy to chip in, not big dollars, but we have to do what we can if we want to succeed.”
