From $5525 to $540,000: Ex-radio host’s whopping campaign war chest in third tilt against Liberals

Victorian independent candidate Alex Dyson has amassed a campaign war chest of more than half a million dollars since June 2024, forcing Liberal shadow immigration minister Dan Tehan to stay at home in his electorate and fight to hang on to his seat of Wannon.

Dyson’s website is declaring donations in close to real-time and was at almost $540,000 on Wednesday morning, more than four times what he spent in 2022 and a long way from the $5000 he spent in 2019. The biggest contributor to Dyson’s third tilt at unseating Tehan has been Climate 200, which has given Dyson $249,102 in four tranches – in September 2024 last year, two in December and one last month.

Liberal member for Wannon Dan Tehan (left) and independent candidate Alex Dyson.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen, Supplied

Tehan, the local member since 2010, would not say how much he had raised before the upcoming election, but conceded “I will have to fundraise more” and that he would not be able to match the independent.

Asked about the fact conservative campaign outfit Advance had been sending flyers to households in the electorate warning people off Dyson, Tehan distanced himself and said only, “They’re doing what they do with their [anti]-Greens and teals campaign”.

Former Victorian Liberal premier Denis Napthine, who held two state seats at various times that were both inside Wannon, said Dyson “is a colourful candidate, but he’s a bit of a yo-yo. He floats in every two years for the election and then disappears.

“People like Dan as a person. If they vote for him, they get a good local member and a senior minister if there is a change of government,” Napthine said.

The contest is not playing out as a battle of different philosophies. Dyson and Tehan both nominate improving local roads as their No.1 issue, while also emphasising the need to reduce cost-of-living pressures and improve access to childcare. In contrast to other Climate 200-funded independents, climate change is not a flashpoint and Dyson, like Tehan, has expressed reservations about offshore wind projects.

Wannon is considered one of a handful of seats that could buck the trend in polls that show Opposition Leader Peter Dutton with a lead over Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. It is a diverse seat, home to farmers, surfers, professionals and retirees. It takes in everyone from wealthy landowners to wheat belt residents, port workers and tree- and sea-changers who have moved to the picturesque towns along the Great Ocean Road.

It has been held by just three MPs, all Liberals, since 1955: former prime minister Malcolm Fraser, former speaker David Hawker and former cabinet minister and now-shadow minister Tehan.

In 2019, when Dyson first ran, he had no donors, spent $5525 of his own money and launched his campaign with a video announcing policies on climate, transport and mental health via the medium of interpretative dance. He came third, with 10.4 per cent of the vote.

In 2022, he came second and reduced Tehan’s two-party-preferred vote to 53.9 per cent, the lowest the sitting MP had ever recorded. Wannon is now listed as “at risk” by Coalition strategists.

Dyson did not shy away from the money he had raised, and pointed out that donations were published on his website in real time. At present, MPs only have to declare their donors to the Australian Electoral Commission months after the election.

While his war chest pales in comparison to the millions raised by teals Monique Ryan and Allegra Spender in winning the seats of Kooyong and Wentworth respectively in 2022, it is a significant sum in a small media market and regional area, and close to the $768,000 teal independent Zali Steggall spent at the last election.

Large numbers of election posters and signs have already gone up around the seat. In Warrnambool, the biggest population centre, far more bear Dyson’s face than Tehan’s. Some of Dyson’s orange campaign posters also feature a kelpie – the working dog breed that originated in the western district – which he has adopted as a campaign symbol.

Dyson with one of his campaign signs.Credit: Facebook

Dyson said he has three staff, including a former Tehan staffer, and six shopfronts – in Terang, Warrnambool, Portland, Colac, Hamilton and Ararat – across the sprawling seat, which has an area bigger than Belgium.

Tehan has electoral offices in the port town of Warrnambool and his wheat-belt home town of Hamilton.

Rachael Houlihan, deputy editor of local paper the Warrnambool Standard, said there had been mud-slinging, including an Advance pamphlet that depicts Dyson tearing his shirt off like Superman, displaying a Greens shirt underneath. An almost identical poster was distributed by Advance featuring David Pocock in 2022 during his successful Senate campaign in the ACT.

“Alex does have a groundswell of support, he has local volunteers, but Dan has strong support too,” Houlihan said. “It will be closer than ever I believe. There is some appetite for change.”

A Liberal source in campaign headquarters, who asked not to be named so they could speak freely, said Tehan’s primary vote in the seat had been polled and was improving.

“There were concerns before Christmas but that has lowered. Dan has been in the electorate a lot for the last six months and his vote is firming at the right time of the cycle. Plus three years ago, it was ‘let’s kick the shit out of Scott Morrison’ and that isn’t the case now,” the source said.

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.