Deputy Premier Rita Saffioti says she wasn’t even aware the Corruption and Crime Commission had launched an inquiry into possible rorting of taxpayer-funded electorate staff positions by the Labor Party.
The long-running CCC investigation into the WA Labor’s use of electorate officers for party campaigning purposes will be handed down soon.
The West Australian reported the CCC found Labor MP staffers routinely conducted political work during office hours but did not make any findings of corruption or serious misconduct because the staff said they made up that time out of hours.
It’s understood the nature of the investigation closely resembles the infamous “red shirts” inquiry in Victoria.Credit: Kathleen Adele
When questioned about the existence of the report on Tuesday morning Saffioti said: “Today was the first time I was aware of any inquiry”.
She batted away questions over the reported claims that her party was using taxpayer-funded staff to campaign during office hours.
“I haven’t seen the report, so without seeing it’s very hard to comment on the allegations that are made there,” she said.
When pressed she repeated that she used staff to keep in contact with constituents in many different forms like letterboxing and doorknocking, but that it was “not during work time”.
A preliminary copy of the CCC’s report had recently been handed to senior Labor party figures for responses to the findings and the finalised report was due to be tabled in parliament later this year.
WA Premier Roger Cook’s office declined to comment, but it is understood he has not seen the full report.
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.
In November 2022 WAtoday revealed Labor was 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 revolved around how to run an effective continuous campaign to assist in an MP’s re-election.
There was even a two-hour session scheduled during work hours in November 2022 about fundraising “to prepare for your re-election in 2025″.
WA MP parliamentary guidelines ban electorate officers from doing party political work while on the clock.
Five of the 11 set-date in-person or online training sessions in the calendar were explicitly aimed at teaching electorate officers about how to improve their MP’s chances of re-election or how to hone electorate officer campaigning skills.
At the time, then-Premier Mark McGowan downplayed the concerns.
“Look, the party offers, as all parties do, training opportunities for staff, staff need to be trained, so a lot of it is about providing information to your electorate, about social media, about how to prepare mail outs, that’s what electorate officers do, they do it all the time,” he said.
“We engage with our communities, we inform our communities and our staff need to be trained in how to do that.
“Our advice is the training is highly appropriate for staff ... it’s a very broad role.”
Saffioti said she was “not aware” of her staff undertaking this training.
Liberal leader Libby Mettam said there was a very clear line between the role of an electorate officer in supporting that member of parliament and blatant electioneering.
Greens MLC Brad Pettitt said reported revelations were the thin end of the wedge.
“I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t happen in other parties but Labor has institutionalised it,” he said.
The CCC investigation resembled the Victorian Ombudsman’s “red shirts” inquiry into Daniel Andrews’ 2014 Labor Party election campaign.
That inquiry uncovered a major political scandal where 21 Labor MPs spent almost $400,000 of taxpayers’ money on Labor election campaign staff under the guise of electorate office work.
WA Labor declined to comment.
With Gary Adshead
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