A former Australian Army Special Forces Lieutenant Colonel is a late starter running as an Independent candidate for Nicklin.

Riccardo Bosi is the leader of a newly formed political party AustraliaOne. But he said he will be nominating as an independent because the party still has to finalise its registration.

Mr Bosi stood as a New South Wales Senate candidate for the Australian Conservatives at the 2019 federal election. After the election Senator Cory Bernardi de-registered the party and Mr Bosi led a handful of volunteers to create AustraliaOne, a party he said will speak up for the “silent majority” of the Australian people.

Mr Bosi is in the process of moving to the Coast with his family and chose to run for Nicklin because of a groundswell of support from people in the area.

“Win or lose, we’ll be heading up to the Sunshine Coast anyway,” Mr Bosi said. “We’re attracting support from those quiet Australians who no longer trust any of this nation’s major political parties.

“There are a lot of supporters within Nicklin and the surrounding electorate, so we can draw on them to help them win the seat.”

Mr Bosi said incentive for getting involved in politics came after returning to Australia with his family after five years working in the Middle East. “When we got back we realized that Australia was in a bad way. It had just degraded. Little things and big things, and so we looked at each other and said, ‘Look, we’ve got to do something about this’.”

Mr Bosi ran at the Eden-Monaro by-election in March. “Over the last few months since Eden-Monaro, we’ve been getting more and more traction,” he said. “We now have thousands and thousands of supporters who have signed up. That’s how we knew we had a lot of supporters in the Nicklin electorate and the surrounding electorates.”

Mr Bosi believed in limited government and giving power back to the people.

“The whole focus of the party is locals running their local electorates. Leave them to decide what they want, as long as they are working towards what is for the greater good of the people.

“I’ve got no problem with appropriate government involvement. But basically, let’s give the country back to the people. Let them run their lives. If they want vaccines, let them have a vaccine. If they don’t want vaccines then they shouldn’t be forced to take vaccines. It’s literally as simple as that, and that’s why I guess it’s tough for people to get a hold of what we stand for, because they’ve got this left-right construct which is false.

“It’s an interesting position that we take, choose between what is right vs. wrong, and as I said, it’s resonating with people all round the country with thousands of supporters building up in every state that our State Coordinators are signing up.”