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Manipulated Elections in Australia
 Bob
Bottom OAM, justly honoured journalist for his work
“reporting upon and investigating organized crime”,
and author of 7 books on the subject, turned his attention
to electoral fraud in 2001. His interest was
triggered by irregularities in the 1989 Queensland
election in Bribie Island, north of Brisbane, in the
region where he and his wife, Judy, owned a number
of independent newspapers. As a result of his
previous experience he had been credited with
forcing 18 royal commissions and other judicial
inquiries.
As a result of his investigations he
contacted Dr. Amy McGrath, and offered to write a
substantial special preface, recording his own
deeply disturbing enquiries, if she reprinted her
historical overview
Frauding of Votes 1996.
This, she did, adding a new chapter on the
disturbing policy of persistent denial by the
Australian Electoral Commission that any electoral
fraud of the slightest consequence exists in
Australia.
On the back cover of this reprint,
Bob Bottom declared “the need for a royal
commission ‘not just into the true extent of
electoral fraud, but into the conduct and
effectiveness of electoral authorities, in
particular the Australian Electoral Commission, not
only to guarantee the Australian people free and
fair elections, but a truly impartial regime to
conduct them – without fear or favour.’” He launched
the reprint in the Theatrette of N.S.W. Parliament
House.
In Bob Bottom’s preface, he referred
to the submission of the National Party Electorate
of Fisher, Secretary Graham Smith, to the
Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters on
April 5, 1988.
“I took a personal interest in the
last election, and have been disturbed by comments
by those who should know, that the whole election
was a giant fraud perpetrated on the people of
Australia. I know that such statements will not be
welcomed by the bureaucrats in the electoral office
or by the Government of the day…. Yet, take the
Fitzgerald inquiry in Queensland at the present
moment, and the thread of corruption that links all
levels of society – the judiciary, the police, the
politicians and the leading business etc."
“We would be burying our heads in the
sand if we did not consider that ‘corruption’ could
not apply to our electoral system. It is up to
society to prove that our electoral system is beyond
reproach. It is not up to an individual voter to
have to expose fraud in the system. The electoral
system, like Caesar’s wife, has to beyond reproach."
According to Smith, ‘There is a
considerable body of opinion in the electorates that
the 1987 federal election was rigged from
beginning to end. This has been said to have been
achieved by persons unknown putting 100,0000 dummy
voters on the rolls in the twelve marginal seats.
Even if the 100,000 were an exaggeration, and the
number were only half that, it has to be agreed that
a fraud of such a magnitude could change the outcome
of the election.
In the seat of Fisher is has been
stated by some that 5,000 names were added in the
period just prior to the closing of the roll. In the
rush to get the rolls printed, there was
insufficient time to exhaustively check the validity
of al such enrolments.”
In his six-page submission, Smith
detailed various ways in which he maintained a fraud
could be perpetrated without trace, indicators of
the likelihood that such a fraud did take place, and
grounds for suspecting a cover-up.”
Nearly 14 years later, Graham Smith
was to prove hauntingly prophetic. A major exposure
in the Courier Mail on 4 November, 2000
alleged that rorted votes contributed to the 1987
victory of Labor candidate Michael Lavarch in
Fisher. Written by investigative journalist Hedley
Thomas and Chris Griffith, the exposure relied
largely upon information from a party insider.
The insider was quoted as saying that
he and other party supporters had cast numerous
votes for Lavarch and other ALP candidates at state
and federal elections by illegally impersonating
people. His claims, emphatically rejected as
nonsense by Lavarch and his then campaign manager,
Barry Large, raised serious questions about the
results of a number of elections for marginal seats
since the 1980’s.
For its investigation, the Courier
Mail inspected documentation verifying the source’s
close involvement in the 1987 campaign.
(article from Courier Mail)
Thomas and Griffiths wrote that the
claims also broadened concern about electoral fraud
beyond ALP preselections, as revealed at the then
current Shepherdson inquiry, to the subversions of
public elections. As they reported the insider, a
member of the 1987 campaign team, said the voting
rort involved first compiling the names of voters
who had left the Fisher electorate, but were still
listed as enrolled there… The insider, who did not
suggest Lavarch knew of any wrongdoing, said
supporters never needed to vote at the same booth
twice as there were more than 60 booths in Fisher to
choose from….
“A separate ALP insider, who later
contacted me, also talked of similar happenings as
those disclosed by the Courier Mail,
but on the south side of Brisbane. According to him,
a clique of volunteer campaign workers used manila
folders with printout of electors’ names to lodge
votes at nominated booths, along with names of
certain school teachers working at booths who were
supposedly ‘on side’. They were referred to as
‘pets’."
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"That the electoral system is open to
manipulation is beyond question
... Fraudulent enrolment is almost impossible to prevent."
(NSW Electoral Commissioners, Messrs R.
Cundy and Ian Dickson, NSW Government
Inquiry 1989) |
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