By Hamish Hastie and Heather McNeill
Taxpayer-funded electorate officers in WA Labor MPs’ offices routinely carried out political campaigning duties, a Corruption and Crime Commission report has found.
Released on Monday, the report stopped short of finding any corruption or serious misconduct against elected members or their staff because there was no paper trail for hours worked by electorate officers.
It’s understood the nature of the investigation closely resembles the infamous “red shirts” inquiry in Victoria.Credit: Kathleen Adele
Parliamentary rules stipulate that electorate officers must only serve MPs’ constituents during office hours and not do party political work.
“[Electorate officers] were routinely undertaking political campaigning during working hours and were being trained to do so during those hours,” the CCC said.
“The explanation was that the time was made up outside of standard hours. However, there are no systems or records to prove or disprove that explanation.”
The investigation, called Operation Godrevy, resembled the Victorian Ombudsman’s “red shirts” inquiry into Daniel Andrews’ 2014 Labor Party election campaign.
The WA Department of Premier and Cabinet publicly fund the salaries of around 190 full-time equivalent electorate officers around the state.
The CCC said any misuse of these positions was a risk to fair elections, and gave an unfair advantage to the sitting government.
The report found Labor electorate officers regularly used a Labor constituent management software known as Campaign Central and were trained for party political purposes during work hours.
Electorate officers grilled during CCC hearings, and senior WA Labor staff including current secretary Ellie Whiteaker and former secretary Tim Picton, all suggested work conducted by electorate officers for political purposes was made up for out of hours.
The report did not make a finding of serious misconduct because there was no evidence to back up – or disprove – Labor’s claims.
A WA Labor powerpoint slide from a training session for regional electorate offices in September 2021.Credit: CCC WA
“The Commission suspects that significant amounts of electorate officer’s work time in recent years has been diverted from serving constituents to engaging in party-political activities, including campaigning, training to campaign and maintaining Campaign Central,” it said.
“However, there is insufficient evidence before the Commission to find that this allegation of serious misconduct has been proven.
The report recommended the DPC make it “unmistakably clear” that it did not permit electorate officers to engage in party work during work hours.
What it draws our attention to is the importance to make sure that members of parliament continue to act with integrity – and that goes for their staff as well
Roger Cook
The report published slides from WA Labor training sessions including one held at Dumas House in September 2021 with regional electorate officers that said: “Everything we do in electorate offices is campaigning, every time we talk to voters, we are campaigning.”
CCC Commissioner John McKechnie told Radio 6PR the biggest issue with electorate officers doing party-political work was that they were a state resource.
“The state pays for them, and they’re to help members, who, of course, have a large constituency there, to help members help their constituents. They are not there for party political purposes,” he said.
“All we see is a very significant misconduct risk that can affect the fairness of an election, and in the worst case, can be a serious misconduct by people who condone it and going to benefit from it.”
The investigation was triggered in 2022 after Cook’s former staffer Sanja Spasojevic claimed in an unfair dismissal hearing that electorate officers would routinely do party political work during business hours.
WA Premier Roger Cook was delivering a keynote address at a business breakfast at Crown on Monday morning when the report was released.
After the breakfast Cook told reporters while he hadn’t yet seen the report, it did not find any abuse of the system.
“What it draws our attention to is the importance to make sure that members of parliament continue to act with integrity – and that goes for their staff as well,” he said.
When asked about Labor training during work hours Cook said that was a historical issue dating back to 2020.
“That has not taken place for a number of years,” he said.
In November 2022 WAtoday revealed Labor was still running regular campaign training classes for electorate officers during work hours.
A leaked copy of the electorate officer “training calendar” created by Labor HQ in August 2022 revealed the hours staff in MP offices spent on Labor Party business.
“This training will go through the skills required to run a continuous and achievable field campaign,” is how a two-hour module was described.
Another session was on how to continuously campaign to get MPs re-elected.
The report recommended the DPC provide better constituent management software for electorate officers so they did not have to use Labor’s software, and introduce a new system to give better oversight of officers’ hours.
“There is no evidence that any MPs or their electorate officers attempted to use their public position to expedite or procure a G2G pass for any corrupt or improper purpose,” the report said.
WA Labor was approached for comment.
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