GetUp is burning through at least $600,000 in a desperate bid to block One Nation across five Labor strongholds in Melbourne's southeast. That matches the exact $600,000 war chest the activist group wasted in May during the Farrer by election, a campaign that completely backfired and delivered One Nation a decisive outright victory.
Acting chief executive Paul Ferris launched the Victorian push on Monday night, bragging to The Australian that the group will deploy paid operatives, thousands of volunteers, door knocking, phone banks, and an aggressive media blitz across Frankston, Cranbourne, Carrum, Narre Warren North, and Narre Warren South.
Ferris also claimed to the paper that GetUp forced Labor to end group voting tickets in Victoria this year. That claim collapses under scrutiny, as GetUp's own campaign page remains live online and completely contradicts his boast.
GetUp blew $600k in Farrer and delivered One Nation a historic victory through free publicity
The Farrer seat went to a by election on 9 May following the resignation of Sussan Ley from federal parliament. GetUp poured roughly $600,000 into billboards, digital ads, and mobile text campaigns demanding voters reject One Nation and rally behind Climate 200 backed independent Michelle Milthorpe.
The aggressive blitz completely misfired. One Nation secured 39.53% of the primary vote and surged to 57.55% after preference tallies. Milthorpe collapsed at 42.45% after preferences, while the Liberals were dumped into third place on a primary vote of just 12.41%. GetUp's costly intervention did nothing to stop One Nation electing its first ever candidate to the House of Representatives.
Ferris later tried to spin the collapse by claiming GetUp relied too heavily on advertising rather than direct voter outreach. He admitted to The Australian that the group was not "on the ground", failed to be "out having conversations with voters", and stumbled into the by election "with little time and not enough research, to be honest".
Now the organisation is scrambling to deflect claims that it is repeating the exact same blunder in Victoria. Ferris insisted to The Australian that the Victorian push does not amount to "parachuting in people from other parts of the country into these seats", pointing to more than 5,000 local GetUp members living within the targeted electorates.
Yet GetUp has a clear track record of unintentionally boosting its political opponents. Their high profile stunt dropping a banner behind Pauline Hanson at the National Press Club in June was followed by a surge in both polling and donations for One Nation, as One News reported at the time.
GetUp shields Liberal seats while spending big to target One Nation in safe Labor strongholds
Every single target on GetUp's hit list is a comfortable Labor stronghold, while Coalition seats are given a total free pass.
Not one electorate targeted by the group is held by the Liberals or Nationals, according to Antony Green's definitive election pendulum published on 25 July.
| Seat | Labor's margin | Sitting party |
|---|---|---|
| Carrum | 9.8% | Labor |
| Cranbourne | 9.0% | Labor |
| Frankston | 8.7% | Labor |
| Narre Warren North | 8.7% | Labor |
| Narre Warren South | 8.3% | Labor |
When pressed by The Australian on why GetUp refuses to confront One Nation in regional Coalition seats and focuses exclusively on Labor turf, Ferris dodged, insisting it "isn't about these being Labor-held seats" and that GetUp is simply following wherever One Nation is campaigning.
That excuse ignores GetUp's long history of aggressively targeting Liberal MPs. Ferris dismissed those past operations as actions that predated his leadership, bizarrely claiming that key figures within the Liberal Party still "broadly share the values that inform the GetUp community". Conversely, he painted One Nation as an uncompromising enemy, labelling them "a far-right party" and "a unique threat to Australian democracy".
GetUp's hyper focus on just five Labor strongholds ignores the full scope of the battlefield. Under state leader Warren Pickering, One Nation is launching a massive statewide offensive, fielding candidates in up to 76 of Victoria's 88 lower house seats, a campaign momentum profiled in depth by One News earlier this month.
Paul Ferris claimed a scalp that belongs to Avi Yemini and Monica Smit, not to GetUp
Paul Ferris claimed a scalp for GetUp that was never GetUp's to take, boasting to The Australian: "This year we've successfully pushed Victorian Labor to abolish opaque and undemocratic group voting tickets for the upper house."
GetUp's own petition page is still live online, and it demolishes the credit grab. The petition demands action from "Premier Jacinta Allan", who quit on 27 July, and urges the government to support the Electoral Amendment (Group Voting and Vote Counting) Bill 2026, a private bill introduced by Greens MP Aiv Puglielli in February that dead ended in parliament.
What actually passed was the government's own Electoral Amendment (Miscellaneous Matters) Bill 2026, introduced by Anthony Carbines on 29 July, pushed through the Legislative Council on 11 August, and granted Royal Assent on 18 August. Premier Ben Carroll unveiled the overhaul on 29 July without even acknowledging GetUp.
Labor was forced to act not by GetUp, but by a high profile operation orchestrated by Rebel News Australia bureau chief Avi Yemini and anti lockdown activist Monica Smit. Smit drove a parallel push to register a bloc of conservative friendly micro parties with progressive sounding names, while Yemini went public on 30 April with his "Free Palestine" party to harvest progressive preferences and funnel them straight to One Nation. Their deliberate stunt exposed how easily the group voting system could be gamed, forcing Labor's hand after the government ignored Puglielli's bill for nearly six months.
One News revealed in July how the fake party strategy forced Labor's hand, detailing Yemini's mechanism in August.
Prominent electoral analyst Kevin Bonham, who has opposed group voting tickets for more than a decade, wrote in August that he doubts the petition ever reached anybody: "I'm not sure GetUp!'s petition with 22000+ 'signatures' was ever even presented to anybody!"
GetUp's income falls 60% as a Paris foundation and a fund that won't name its donors top it up
Official public disclosures lodged with the Australian Electoral Commission reveal GetUp as a crumbling shell of its former self, having lost roughly 60% of its annual revenue over seven short years.
In the 2025 federal election year, GetUp declared a pathetic $458,762 in direct electoral expenditure, a massive collapse from the $4,035,207 it poured into the 2022 campaign. Conservative rival campaign group Advance completely wiped the floor with them, declaring $10,108,548 in the exact same year.
Out of GetUp's total $5,446,765 revenue declared for 2024-25, only $1,036,377 came from sources large enough to be legally named on the disclosure return:
- The Sunrise Project Australia, $450,000
- The Australian Taxation Office, $171,132
- Foundation Chanel, $168,025
- Climate Action Network Australia, $121,000
- First Australians Capital, $100,000
- The estate of the late Geoffrey Lawson Hook, $26,220
When combined with $800,000 the previous year, The Sunrise Project stands as GetUp's largest named patron, funnelling $1.25 million across two years. Yet The Sunrise Project won't name its own financial backers anywhere on its website.
Then there is the $168,025 received from Foundation Chanel. No Australian entity exists under that name on the national business register. The only matching entity worldwide is Fondation CHANEL in Paris, the French fashion empire's international foundation that distributes roughly $125 million annually. Both amounts were logged as general receipts rather than gifts for electoral spending, which is why the federal ban on foreign political donations never applied to them.
Ferris bragged to The Australian that GetUp raised $1 million per month directly from members across June and July while onboarding nearly 100,000 new recruits, claiming double their average monthly intake. Voters will have to wait until around February 2027, when the AEC releases GetUp's next official filing, to see whether the numbers back the boast.
Police probe continues 69 days after GetUp's Press Club stunt while its VIC campaign looms
The Press Club stunt that Ferris boasted was designed to highlight "Pauline Hanson's hypocrisy" remains under active police investigation 69 days after the incident on 17 June. ACT Policing told One News in July that it had received a complaint about interference with equipment at the Barton premises, and it has published nothing on the matter since.
David Sharaz, GetUp's media and campaigns lead and husband of Brittany Higgins, was seen filming the stunt and left the room abruptly after the banner dropped. While Sharaz has not been formally charged, and purchasing a ticket to film an event is not a crime, the venue shut the door on him. Press Club chief executive Maurice Reilly told One News in July that Sharaz's membership application was declined and that he is "not welcome at the club in the future".
Undeterred by mounting police scrutiny, financial collapse, and backfiring operations, Ferris told The Australian that success in Victoria boils down to "having successfully stopped One Nation breaking through in these five target seats". Yet in Farrer, GetUp burned through that exact same $600,000 figure, only to watch One Nation take its first ever seat in the House of Representatives.
