UAP won’t reveal Victorian candidates yet

THE United Australia Party (UAP) says it will live up to its pledge of running candidates in every federal seat, but voters in the Geelong region won’t find out who they are for about a fortnight.

UAP chair Clive Palmer announced last month that his party would contest every electorate at this year’s poll, the date of which is not yet confirmed but is likely to be on May 21 or on a preceding Saturday close to that date.

A UAP spokesperson said this week that the party had finalised all of its Victorian candidates, including for the local seats of Corangamite (held by Labor’s Libby Coker), Corio (held by Labor’s Richard Marles) and Wannon (held by the Liberals’ Dan Tehan).

“They will be formally announced in two weeks’’ time after candidates’ functions with their members have been completed,” the spokesperson said.

Locally, Corangamite is theoretically the easiest seat for the UAP to win, with Labor holding it by a notional margin of only one per cent, but the UAP candidate will have to out-perform very active campaigns and considerable election commitments from both Ms Coker and Liberal candidate Stephanie Asher.

Neil Harvey stood for the UAP in Corangamite at the 2019 poll, receiving 2,257 votes (or 2.22 per cent of first preferences), and his LinkedIn profile lists him as the UAP candidate for the electorate from August 2011 until the present day, but the UAP spokesperson said Mr Harvey was not the party’s endorsed candidate for Corangamite at the 2022 election.

Corio and Wannon will be much harder for the minor parties to win, as Mr Marles and Mr Wannon each hold their respective seats on margins of more than 10 per cent.

The UAP’s Senate ticket in Victoria includes property executive Ralph Babet.