Company rubbishes WA election ‘outsourcing’ claim as AEC distances itself from recruitment model

Both sides of politics have aired concerns about irregularities and inefficiencies in the election.

High-profile politicians including former Coalition minister Ken Wyatt and current state Opposition Leader Shane Love described the massive contract as “outsourcing”.

Issues included staff walking off the job, preference counts in some seats not scheduled to start for another 10 days, and staff being called in at short notice.

Booths running out of ballot papers was also a major issue.

Booth workers on the ground who spoke to WAtoday on the condition of anonymity said some booths had run out of spare blank ballot papers, and their pleas with organisers to get more were rejected, so they had no choice but to draw up the ballot papers on A4 sheets of paper.

This is legal if issuing officers initial the corner of the ballot papers, but the workers said they had never seen it happen before.

Their theory was that the WAEC election organisers thought about 50 per cent of the 1.8 million eligible voters would vote early, so ballot distribution on March 8 was worked out under this assumption.

By March 8 only 557,000 people had voted early – 350,000 fewer than expected.

PersolKelly has also been hired among a number of other recruitment agencies to help obtain staff for the upcoming federal election.

An Australian Electoral Commission spokesman said WAEC seemed to employ a different recruitment model.

“The AEC cannot speak to the apparent direct sourcing of staff through a single recruitment provider that the WAEC is being reported to have done,” he said.

“If that is the case, the AEC model is very different to that. The AEC is an entirely separate organisation running a different electoral event and I don’t have the full details of how the WAEC has approached it.”

He said recruitment agencies only targeted specific areas in the election and the commission conducted the majority of its own recruitment directly.

“A large part is our direct outreach to previous staff, AEC communication with different community groups and AEC advertising,” he said.

“People register their interest with the AEC, via an AEC system which is then managed by permanent AEC staff.

“We also use recruitment companies at times and have done for many elections – this can be particularly helpful in areas that are harder to secure staff than others.

“Any categorisation of the small component of the AEC’s recruitment task utilising recruitment agencies as being the outsourcing of the management of polling booths would be incorrect.”

In WA, the AEC has a $38,000 contract with PersolKelly and $37,000 contract with Randstad for the next federal election.