11 things you didn’t know about the Federal Election

According to the Australian Electoral Commission, the 2016 Federal Election cost a grand total of $286.6 million, with over $62 million of that in the form of public funding.

Of that public funding, 75 per cent was paid to the Labor and Liberal parties.

But even at almost $63 million, public funding contributes only a small portion of the total expenditure in an election year, and while the exact breakdown of the remainder is unknown, a lot of it would come down to donations.

Looking at donations, the AEC reported the largest single political donor in 2017-18 was the Victorian branch of the Electrical Trades Union of Australia, which gifted the Victorian branch of the Australian Labor Party a whopping $651,900.

They also gifted the national ALP a huge $450,000.

So, it’s pretty clear that there’s a lot of money behind Federal Elections, but there’s also a lot of pencils.

That’s right.

The Federal Election requires over 100,000 pencils.

It also needs over 140 kilometres of string.

Over 45 million ballot papers are printed and over 60,000 ballot boxes are produced.

Here are all the interesting facts and figures behind this Saturday’s Federal Election, courtesy of the AEC:

Make your money work with Yahoo Finance’s daily newsletter. Sign up here and stay on top of the latest money, news and tech news.