Western Australia’s state election has been described as a “threat to democracy” amid fury over polling day issues and the outsourcing of staffing to foreign-based company PersolKelly, which donated more than $67,000 to the Labor party last year.
Counting is still underway a week after the election, with Labor having won well over the 30 seats required to form government despite seven seats still in doubt, the slow count coming after polling booths ran out of ballots and some voters could not be found on the electoral roll.
Nationals leader Shane Love said his inbox was full and bouncing back emails as a result of complaints about how the election was run, ABC News reported.
“We’re seeing staff who have been under-resourced or under-trained and polling booths where people have been turned away because there simply wasn’t enough ballot papers at the polling booths.
“This is an absolute shit show. This actually is terrible and it is a threat to our democracy.”
Mr Love is now calling for a parliamentary inquiry into the election, and wants the Corruption and Crime Commission (CCC) to look into the $87 million contract to provide a “temporary election workforce” from 2024 to 2029 given to Programmed Skilled Workforce by the WA Electoral Commission (WAEC).
Programmed Skilled Workforce owns PersolKelly Australia, which appears to have carried out the work, but is owned by Programmed Maintenance Services, trading as Programmed, which has donated $67,500 to Labor, including $27,500 to its fundraising vehicle Perth Trades Hall, $13,250 to the Liberals, and $2,500 to the Nationals.
PersolKelly is headquartered in Singapore, and is in turn owned by the Persol Group, which is based in Japan.
Mr Love said the CCC needed to look into whether the contract breached laws prohibiting foreign donations to political parties.
“This is an extraordinary situation. Not only did WAEC outsource its core functions for the first time in living memory, it handed the contract to a private overseas firm whose donation history raises serious questions about transparency and integrity,” Mr Love said during the week.
“It is deeply concerning that PersolKelly, which is headquartered in Singapore, has donated more than $60,000 to the WA Labor Party and its affiliated groups in the lead-up to the election.”
“The WA Labor government must explain how a private, foreign-owned labour hire company with no experience in running WA elections was given control of our democratic process, and why that same company is a major political donor.”
WA Premier Roger Cook has promised to “establish an independent investigation”, and the state government said on Friday the WAEC had not informed them a private contractor was going to be engaged to provide election day staff.
“No minister was involved in the procurement process nor received a briefing on the appointment of PersolKelly once the appointment was made,” a spokesperson said.
“The WAEC has advised that it did not brief the minister for electoral affairs [the retiring John Quigley] about the engagement of PersolKelly to ensure the integrity of the procurement process and to prevent any appearance of interference by the government in the selection of the successful tenderer.”
PersolKelly said it provided 7,000 staff, with numbers determined by the WAEC, and said when it came to training it simply distributed “the specialist training modules provided by the WAEC … consistent with the approach used in previous elections”.
“Previous state and federal elections have appointed recruitment companies as suppliers to supply staff in a similar way,” a spokesperson said.
“PersolKelly is still deploying and rostering workers to complete the project and its focus remains on partnering with the WAEC to complete the count.”
Electoral Commissioner Robert Kennedy has refused to comment, and the commission has said there will be a “full investigation” after the final results are declared.
Header image: WA Premier Roger Cook casts his ballot (Facebook).
