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"Our AFHE media releases pointing to weaknesses in the Queensland Electoral laws and the likelihood of 'irregularities' in postal voting, caused one person in Queensland to telephone me with an eye-witness account of a ballot-box rort.
Unfortunately it was about 10 years ago, but it does illustrate what CAN happen! A Scrutineer by the name of Ronald P in the town of Gatton asked for the 4 or 5 ballot boxes to be turned over for inspection. And all could see that one of the ballot boxes (cardboard - remember they used to be metal!) had a flap cut in the bottom of it." Labor Senator Sam Dastyari called on to answer questions over Bill Shorten leadership ballot18/2/2015 "This article below, dated 12 February 2015, is good in that finally a Liberal MP or Senator is waking up with concerns about false ballots due to people changing addresses. In this case the Liberal Senator, in order to score a few points off Labor, questions the legitimacy of the ballot for federal Opposition leader - maybe Albanese won it instead of Shorten? We in AFHE are non-party political and do not concern ourselves with internal manouevrings within a political party - our concerns are in the public arena, for fair, honest and open democracy. But, granted that the ALP has been caught out in several articles in the Sydney Morning Herald in recent months about ALP Branch-stackings for the purposes of preselections and internal ALP business, and granted that electoral funding is granted per vote, is anybody silly enough to suggest that false stackings of the Electoral Roll are merely confined to internalparty matters, and are not going to be also used externally to gain extra votes (and funding) in a State or Federal election, especially in a key marginal seat?! And it would be good if Liberal MPs and Senators would raise concerns about the problems in our voting systems for the noble reasons of our democracy, and not merely to embarass the opposition."
Bill Shorten's leadership ballot under scrutiny Date February 12, 2015 Sean Nicholls Sydney Morning Herald State Political Editor Labor's Sam Dastyari is being called upon to make a personal explanation to the Senate about his knowledge of or involvement in irregularities in the 2013 ballot that installed Bill Shorten as federal Opposition Leader. The call was made by Liberal senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells after Fairfax Media revealed that a staff member in Senator Dastyari's office requested that addresses for 50 ballot papers be changed before the vote. An ALP tribunal found at least 20 of those addresses were changed to the post office box or residential address of Auburn councillor Hicham Zraika. Cr Zraika was recently suspended from the Labor party for six months after the tribunal found he had engaged in "unworthy conduct" including falsifying meeting records of his own branch. Senator Fierravanti-Wells told the Senate that Labor "needs to get right to the bottom of this scandal and take steps to deal with any branch stacking or vote fiddling". "An ALP tribunal may have suspended the middle man who received the redirected ballot papers but what has happened to any others involved in this episode?" she said. "Today's reports of the irregularities in the ballot that installed Bill Shorten as Labor leader cast doubt on the validity of the vote." Senator Fierravanti-Wells noted Senator Dastyari had yet to make a statement to to the Senate "to personally explain this situation and what he knew about the machinations of his staff member. I call on the senator to do so." Senator Dastyari dismissed the call by Senator Fierravanti-Wells as "a joke". "I thought we'd moved past this kind of low rent type of politics," he said. "At no point has there been any accusation of wrongdoing against me by the Review Tribunal or any others." Referring to last year's Independent Commission Against Corruption hearings into political donations, Senator Dastyari said it was "all a bit rich coming from Connie considering a dozen Liberal MPs from her own NSW branch had to resign over real corruption allegations". On Thursday, Cr Zraika said it was "unfair and unjust to be accused of manipulating party membership and stacking when it is clear as daylight who changed those addresses. |
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