‘Shitshow’: The WA election was a privatised debacle
Corporate interests intruded on the ballot box — just as Western Australians voted to reject them.
The sellout of Western Australia to corporate interests is often cartoonish in its dimensions. So, it was last weekend, when an election day that was partially outsourced to a foreign company turned to chaos: polling booths ran out of ballots and turned voters away, staff walked off the job, and a sitting Labor MP was told her name wasn’t on the electoral roll.
Nationals leader Shane Love called it a “shitshow” and “a threat to our democracy.” Teal independent candidate Kate Hulett said she was considering legal action after “numerous reports of irregularities”.
It turned out Singapore-based company PersolKelly had been awarded an $87 million contract from the WA Electoral Commission (WAEC) to provide, train, and manage staff for this election and the next one.
PersolKelly have tried to downplay their involvement— but private recruiting firms have never been used to this scale in Western Australian elections.
And the plot thickened when it turned out PersolKelly had donated more than $67,000 to WA Labor last year through an Australian subsidiary. Shane Love has asked the Corruption and Crime Commission to investigate whether any donation rules were breached. Meanwhile, the government says no minister was briefed by the WAEC on the contract.
The WAEC says an investigation will begin after the results are finalised — but it seems like that could take some time. More than a week after polling day, the count continues at a crawling pace and several seats are still undecided.
You'd have thought that in this day and age the WAEC would go to great lengths to ensure doubt could not be cast on the outcome of an election. If Western Australians weren’t so happy-go-lucky, there might be a braying mob ready to storm their St George’s Terrace headquarters right now, on the hunt for Electoral Commissioner Robert Kennedy.
I’m not suggesting there was any vote rigging or electoral fraud — no one involved is competent enough to pull that off, even if they wanted to. PersolKelly couldn’t find staff to run the polling booths properly, let alone 2000 mules to stuff ballots. The WAEC is an organisation so badly disorganised it can’t pull off the one main job it has every four years. And the Labor party don’t need to fix votes: they always knew it would be easy to win given the dire state of the Liberals and lingering goodwill over Covid.
PersolKelly’s involvement was the most obvious possible metaphor for the role of corporate interests in Western Australian politics. It’s ironic then that one of the key takeaways from the election result was that many Western Australians voted to reject the tight grip big, powerful companies have over our two major parties. If the trend continues (and it will unless addressed), Labor’s dominance won’t last forever.
There was an overall swing away from Labor of about 18% — but most of those votes didn’t go to the Liberals. They largely went to the Greens, minor parties, and independents.
The Greens say the result was their best ever, and they’ve secured four upper house seats to gain the balance of power.
Meanwhile, Labor must have been spooked by the results in Fremantle, where there was a 26% swing away from Labor and Water Minister Simone McGurk came close to losing her seat to Kate Hulett. The independent ran on a climate platform, foregrounding her opposition to both fracking and the big multinationals screwing us over for gas exports. Voters in what was once Labor heartland clearly aren’t happy with a government that endlessly panders to fossil fuel companies.
Early in the week, McGurk was frank about the result, saying there was “an impatience and there's an urgency to how people feel about dealing with climate change and I think that's reflected in the vote.”
"I don't think we can deny the message we're getting from the voters of Fremantle," she said.
By Saturday, once she knew she’d retained her seat, she was sticking more closely to the Labor script.
“The Government is doing great work in this space but we need to get better about talking about all the things we’re doing,” she said.
“WA is the only State to announce that we are shutting down Government-run power stations. We’ve also invested millions of dollars in batteries and transmission for renewable energy.”
At least she’s not still spruiking a plastic bag ban as the answer to the climate crisis like she was pre-election.
Earlier in the week, McGurk chided Fremantle voters, saying they “sometimes just want to kick against the mainstream” (does she even like her constituents?) — but Freo folk weren’t the only ones who voted with the climate in mind.
Reflecting on the 15% swing against Labor in Jandakot, the electorate’s new MP Stephen Pratt said: “The votes didn’t go to the Libs, it went to the Greens and so the Green vote was quite high in across the board in Jandakot, especially in the newer suburbs … It just shows that people want to see more action on the environment and for the future generations.”
A pre-election Redbridge poll found that WA voters’ fourth and fifth most important election issues were climate and environment, behind only cost-of-living, housing, and health — and ahead of ‘Supporting WA’s mining industry’. WA voters are beginning to reject the captured state. Before the federal vote, the major parties would do well to take note.
This week on the Last Place on Earth podcast, Konrad Benjamin of Punter’s Politics explained his mission to make sure Aussie punters are angry at the right people.
He reacted to the outsourcing of the WA election:
@last.place.on.earth The WA state election has been beset with issues: polling booths running out of ballot papers, long lines, untrained staff, and a slow count. For the first time ever, the running of polling booths was outsourced to a private company. That company just so happens to have donated almost $70,000 to Labor in the past year. Check our newest ep to hear more of @Punter's Politics on what's gone wrong with our political system.
♬ original sound - last.place.on.earth
Listen to the full episode here.
Gerard Mazza
