WESTERN Australia’s Nationals and Opposition leader Shane Love wants the Corruption and Crime Commission to investigate the outsourcing of election staffing to a Singapore-based labour hire company PersolKelly.
West Australians stupidly elected their third consecutive Labor government this month, lining themselves up for government by a swill of unaccountable yes men and women occupying 43 seats as against the miserable 9 for the Liberal and National parties, five and four respectively.
The Western Australian Electoral Commission (WAEC) recently signed an $87 million contract with a company called Programmed Skilled Workforce to provide a “temporary election workforce” for polls between 2024 and 2029.
He has also asked the CCC to investigate donations made by PersolKelly’s parent company to WA Labor, which sounds suspiciously like a special deal done for corporate mates.
As Cairns News has reported before, Western Australia is a special sort of “closed shop” from the rest of Australia, where strange things happen to people who cross the wrong people in authority – like the mysterious masonic-style ritualistic murder of Corryn Rayney, wife of the prominent barrister Lloyd Rayney, who was charged with but later cleared of her murder.
The picture that emerged around that case was a state judiciary, police and political establishment riddled with nepotism and old boy networks that will take extraordinary and corrupt steps to protect thier own turf.
So it comes as no surprise that WA’s newly elected Labor Party government and its Premier Roger Cook are implicated in a corrupt deal involving lucrative state contracts being farmed out to mates and party donors.
In the wake of a barrage of election day issues, the state’s Corruption and Crime Commission has been asked to investigate the outsourcing of election staffing and donations made by a key company involved in resourcing the poll.
It has also emerged that this month’s election was marred by all sorts of suspicious issues such as polling places running out of ballot papers, longer-than-usual wait times and some voters claiming they were turned away all together. This sounds suspiciously like some of the poll rigging operations run in the US in recent year.
According to the ABC Premier Cook’s office has now promised an independent investigation will be established “at an appropriate time” but said the current focus should be on counting votes.
Mr Love has already blamed the use of PersolKelly for issues on the day, saying the Electoral Commissioner Robert Kennedy had “outsourced his job”, and that the shift to outsourcing should have been made more public.
“We’re seeing staff who have been under-resourced and under-trained and polling booths where people are being turned away because there simply wasn’t enough ballot papers,” he told media during the week.
Mr Love has written to the Corruption and Crime Commission (CCC), formally urging them to investigate. The WA Electoral Commission (WAEC) has also promised an investigation into the election, but defended the decision to use PersolKell, saying it undertook a “competitive and transparent tender process in 2023 to identify the best solution for our staffing needs”.
Programmed Maintenance Services, a Japanese-based company, owns PersolKelly Australia, which carried out the work. It trades just as Programmed, and donated $66,770 to the WA Labor Party and $13,250 to the Liberals. The Nationals say they also received $2,500.
This is of course “the game” the big parties play and Mr Love deserves some kudos at least for taking up the issue, even if he is part of that political game. But the boys and girls Labor has installed in the bureaucracy will likely ensure a frustrating and fruitless battle for justice.
A major reason for WA’s lame-duck parliament was the bland and not particularly inspiring Liberal leader Libby Mettam. The tragedy has been sealed with the election of four Greens.
