Senator Michaelia Cash raises concerns about using same recruiters for Federal election after WA booth chaos

Fears that problems which plagued the WA election could occur at the upcoming Federal election have prompted senior Federal Liberal Michaelia Cash to call for an urgent review of a decision to use the same recruitment firm.

WA Opposition Leader Shane Love this week demanded a full-scale parliamentary inquiry into the way the WA Electoral Commission conducted Saturday’s election, following claims of voters being turned away aftef booths ran out of ballot papers, lengthy queues and staffing issues.

Mr Love also questioned the WA Electoral Commission’s decision to outsource recruitment of election staff to private labour hire firm PersolKelly for the first time, after many West Australians said they applied to work but had no response.

The West Australian has confirmed the Australian Electoral Commission has also signed contracts with PersolKelly worth a total of $12 million for “temporary personnel services”.

“The Australian Electoral Commission should urgently review their decision if one of the companies they are using to facilitate the Federal election was used for the WA election,” Senator Cash said.

“Considering the issues that occurred on Saturday, the AEC should do everything possible to make sure similar issues are not repeated at the upcoming Federal election.

“Running out of ballot papers and queues that lasted for over an hour are completely unacceptable in any election. We’ve heard reports some voters were sent home without voting, which is an absolute disgrace. This cannot be repeated at the Federal election.”

A spokesman for the AEC stressed that it was a completely separate organisation from the WAEC and used a different staffing model.

While it used several recruitment providers to fill gaps, that could not be categorised as outsourcing management of polling booths and most frontline staff were directly sourced by the AEC.

“The staff we employ are AEC staff, undertake AEC training and conduct their roles per AEC policies and processes,” he said.

Attempts to obtain comment from PersolKelly were unsuccessful.