The Family First Political party, with policies aimed at conservative Christians, is standing candidates in 59 of the 93 seats up for grabs in the Queensland State Election held on October 26. This more than double the number of Candidates the party put up in 2016.
Since then, the party merged with former Senator Cory Bernardi’s Australian Conservatives in 2017, and it was dissolved in 2019. The Family First Party was born again in 2021 in its home state of South Australia and now has Lyle Shelton as its National Director. Shelton is a former Managing Director of the Australian Christian Lobby.
“With the LNP increasingly shying away from the public fight for values, Family First is pleased to be offering voters a genuine choice,” Shelton said.
Shelton accused Labor and the LNP of “hurting family budgets by increasing electricity prices through their reckless net zero policies.”
He attacked LNP leader David Crisafulli for supporting late-term abortions even in the face of new evidence that babies are being born alive after late abortions and left to die.
“Whatever people think of abortion, most people are deeply uncomfortable with late abortions and the LNP’s commitment to this is deeply disappointing.”
Shelton announced Family First would preference One Nation ahead of Crisafulli in his seat of Broadwater.
The party ran in the 2023 NSW State election after the collapse of Fred Nile’s Christian Democrats, who had employed Shelton before a falling out with Nile. Family First ran informally as a group of independents as it had not yet gained part registration and got 1.1% of the upper house vote.
In 2022, in the Victorian election, the party got 3.05% of the vote in the lower house, where it ran in all the seats, and 2.01% of the vote in the upper house.
That year, the party received 3.05% in the SA Upper House and 3.7% of the primary vote in the Lower House – diminished because Family First did not run in all seats.
The party vote in Qld will be worth watching to see if it can out-perform an apparent approximately 3 per cent ceiling.
Family First is also running in the ACT election, which is held the week before Queensland on October 19. There is a team of candidates for each multi-member seat. The ABC’s Antony Green reports, “The Liberal Party disendorsed sitting MLA Elizabeth Kikkert just before the election. Kikkert was the party’s highest-polling candidate in 2024. The Liberal Party has not filled her vacancy and has only nominated four candidates.
“Kikkert has emerged as a late addition to the Family First ticket in Ginninderra, which has the potential to split the conservative vote in the division and cost the Liberal Party a seat.”