The LNP candidate for the federal seat of Fadden vying to replace former coalition minister Stuart Robert says voters are focused on cost of living issues.
Cameron Caldwell, who is the favourite to win the by-election in the northern Gold Coast electorate, cast his vote with his wife, Lauren, at a polling booth on Saturday morning.
Asked if Mr Robert's involvement in the robodebt scandal that engulfed the previous Liberal-Nationals federal government was impacting voters, he said they have other things on their minds, like cost of living and crime.
"Those are issues that are really starting to bite in their households and it's whether people can put food on the table and keep the lights switched on," he told Sky News.
"That's really what's on their mind as they walk into the polling booth today."
Under Mr Robert, whose resignation from parliament in May triggered the by-election, the LNP held the seat with a margin of 10.6 per cent.
Robodebt is the name given to an unlawful debt recovery program that saddled almost half a million welfare recipients with hundreds of millions of dollars in false Centrelink debts between 2015 and 2019.
A royal commission investigation into the scheme released earlier this month laid the blame at the feet of senior public servants and coalition ministers including Mr Robert, Scott Morrison, Alan Tudge and Christian Porter.
Labor has tried to use this to bolster its candidate for Fadden, Letitia Del Fabbro.
But senior ministers have conceded it would be extraordinarily difficult to wrest the seat from the LNP, like the party did in the by-election for Mr Tudge's old seat of Aston in Victoria in April.
Labor has won Fadden only once, which was in 1983 under the election of the Hawke government.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers, who hails from Queensland, will be handing out how-to-vote cards with Ms Del Fabbro later on Saturday.
"Despite the fact that we've got a wonderful candidate in Letitia Del Fabbro, I don't think anybody expects that seat to change hands and that's because by-elections are good for oppositions rather than for governments," he said this week.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese concurs.
"I don't expect anything like the Aston by-election result," he said on Friday.
"That was an extraordinary result the first time in 100 years that the government have won a seat off the opposition."
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has urged voters to "look forward, not back", pointing to Labor's alleged inaction on the cost of living and crime.
A total of 13 candidates are running in Fadden including from the Greens, Pauline Hanson's One Nation and the Australian Democrats.
Mr Robert served as the veterans' affairs, national disability insurance scheme and government services ministers under the Turnbull and Morrison governments.
