More than 120 people running in the New South Wales local government elections have been identified by researchers as possible “fringe” candidates, including conspiracy theorists and people backed by a high-profile anti-lockdown campaigner.
These candidates make up about 3% of the 3,816 people vying for 1,230 council positions across NSW, according to new research. Some could be elected given a NSW Liberals bungle meant the major party failed to nominate more than 100 candidates.
Sixteen councils including Camden, Blue Mountains, Georges River, Penrith and Canterbury-Bankstown either have no Liberal candidates or fewer than they were meant to.
Australian National University politics lecturer Associate Prof Mark Chou said political parties were beginning to view local government as more of a “strategic front” – including those opposed to mainstream ideas or linked to specific ideological positions.
Chou, who has been reviewing the NSW candidates with researchers Benjamin Moffitt, Rachel Busbridge and Luke Dean, described the Libertarian party – formerly known as the Liberal Democrats – as the “most significant fringe group”.
John Ruddick, NSW’s sole Libertarian MP, believes his party could win a dozen positions across several councils including Camden, Canterbury-Bankstown and Penrith, which are all missing Liberal candidates.
“The gods have smiled on us,” Ruddick said of the Liberals’ administration failure.
Ruddick said fringe was not the “most favourable term” to describe the Libertarians, although he acknowledged they looked at every issue through the lens of how to make government smaller.
“We [think] big government is the curse of mankind,” he said. “We’re anti-war … we’re against the war on drugs – that’s government overreach again. We’re radically pro-capitalism.”
The Libertarians claim Smart Cities, a broad planning concept linked to technological advancements, is about surveilling people and monitoring how much carbon they emit. Ruddick conceded this “sounds crazy”.
On its website, the party also criticises drag queen storytime events – typically run by council libraries – as “conceptual rubbish”.
Chou said the rise of fringe groups targeting local government was linked to increasing conspiracy theories surrounding urban planning and controversies over other council responsibilities.
Other groups identified in the research have espoused conspiracy theories including that the World Health Organisation is running a secret tracking program and Covid-19 might be man-made by billionaire Bill Gates.
Drag queen storytime events had become a “flashpoint” for some fringe actors, Chou said.
Earlier this year, Cumberland City council in western Sydney sparked widespread criticism after voting to place a blanket ban on same-sex parenting books from local libraries following earlier debates over drag queen storytime.
The ban, which the council rescinded following a huge public backlash, was championed by the mayor, Steve Christou, a member of the conservative Our Local Community (OLC) party.
Chou said OLC was running 26 candidates in Saturday’s council elections and he considered it to be a fringe group given its previous involvement in “significant controversies”.
Christou said his party was “absolutely” conservative but denied they weren’t mainstream.
“If they’re calling us a fringe party, these people are greatly mistaken,” he said. “They don’t know OLC.”
In the Snowy-Monaro council area, in the state’s rural south, serial political candidate Andrew Thaler is leading seven independent candidates. Thaler, who has been banned from several local venues, was recently the subject of a Sydney Morning Herald investigation that described him as a “serial pest who targets women”.
Chou and the other council researchers identified Thaler as a fringe candidate, something he denied when contacted by Guardian Australia. Thaler said the Herald articles were written “entirely without context” and “no one believes the mainstream media”.
Chou’s research project also linked a handful of candidates to the so-called “Reignite Democracy” movement founded by the high-profile anti-lockdown protester Monica Smit.
A website called Fair Dinkum Candidates is promoting 16 candidates for the NSW council elections. It purports to “identify and support Fair Dinkum Candidates who genuinely care about their community and country”. Most are members of the Libertarian party.
Records lodged with the corporate regulator show Smit registered a company called Fair Dinkum Candidates Pty Ltd in January.
Smit has promoted Fair Dinkum on social media but she is not identified anywhere on its website. She told Guardian Australia on Friday: “Fair Dinkum Candidates is a service, it doesn’t need a ‘face’.”
Fair Dinkum profiles candidates by including their answers to a survey asking about their priorities for council and whether they believe local government should boycott Australia Day and stop using cash.
The Fair Dinkum website does not state that the listed candidates support anti-lockdown measures. Smit said “we have not included questions on that topic in our survey” because “lockdowns are not currently a pressing concern for communities”.
Smit said Fair Dinkum was a “marketing service” to assist candidates with their election campaigns. People who completed the survey had their responses included for free, she said.
“Additionally, we provide paid options for candidates looking for additional support. We offer tailored assistance to candidates through our extensive email databases and social media platforms to help amplify their message and reach potential voters.
“It is not accurate to label a service as ‘fringe’ as it does not align with the traditional definition of the term.”
One candidate promoted on the site, Rodney Fox, is running as a prospective councillor and mayor for Coffs Harbour city council. Fox said he was a member of the Family First party but was an independent council candidate.
Fox said he knew Smit was “somehow affiliated with” Fair Dinkum but “I can’t see the problem”.
“If knew I was going to be branded as fringe, I wouldn’t have gone on Fair Dinkum. The damage is done now,” he said.
“Our group is … about serving the people here and fixing the roads and restoring kerbside rubbish collection. That’s not fringe stuff, that’s the basics of running a city.”
Rodney Tiffen, an emeritus professor in government and international relations at the University of Sydney, said fringe groups often used “anodyne labels” that made them sound “much more mainstream than they are”.
“Everyone’s in favour of being ‘fair dinkum’,” he said.
Tiffen said the dearth of Liberal candidates in some councils meant fringe groups had a much better chance of being elected this weekend.
“Then the interesting thing will be, at the next election, can the Liberals claw them back, or will these new councillors have established themselves as part of the local landscape?”
