A cross-party parliamentary committee will ask the AEC for a “briefing” to explain a damning report on the Commission’s handling of the 2016 federal election, SBS News can reveal.
A report from Australia’s auditor-general released this week found the AEC misled the public about the security of an electronic system used to count Senate votes at the last election.
The audit also backed up claims from election scrutineers who complained the digital counting system was “impossible” to check for accuracy.
Liberal senator Linda Reynolds, who chairs a cross-party committee on elections, said the committee would request a briefing from both the auditor and the AEC when parliament resumes in early February.
“We will be seeking a briefing from the auditor-general and the AEC on the issues raised,” Senator Reynolds told SBS News on Wednesday evening.
She said her Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters (JSCEM), which includes members from both major parties and the Greens, had already discussed the auditor’s report in a teleconference.
“We will make sure the matters in the report are fully reviewed,” she said.
The committee will hold public hearings in Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne next week, where some of the issues in the auditor’s report are expected to be raised.
JSCEM is already midway through a routine inquiry into the 2016 election and will eventually publish a report with recommendations on how future elections could be run differently.
Senator Reynolds said the committee has “actively considered” reports that election scrutineers found they were tasked with monitoring 15 vote-counting machines each on average, making it effectively impossible to monitor all the screens.
“There need to be processes in place for scrutineers to observe all aspects of the count,” Senator Reynolds said.
She indicated there “will be recommendations” related to scrutineers in JSCEM’s final report.
The AEC is an independent authority and cannot be directly instructed by politicians.
But JSCEM could recommend changes to the AEC’s practices, and could also suggest changes to the Electoral Act, which would need to pass parliament.
In November 2016, the AEC made a submission to the committee that argued scrutineers did have access to the process.
“Scrutineers viewed the scanning, verification and adjudication processes and could challenge at any time,” the submission read.
A spokesman for the AEC told SBS News it was "absurd" to suggest there had been any security failures at the election.
"This was a successful election and the Commissioner and the AEC certainly takes pride in what was achieved," the spokesman said.
