The Chaser Report - AEC Answers Our Questions | AEC

Episode Date: May 17, 2022

As a special guest for our final week of the Election Edition, we managed to score an interview with the Australian Electoral Commission's spokesperson and Twitter mastermind, Evan Ekin-Smyth. Naturally, Charles and Andrew pester the AEC with all your stupid questions for our final "Stupid Questions Only" segment. Plus Andrew gives a review of his favourite government pork-barrels. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In an election that will determine the fate of the entire universe, there's only one podcast holding politicians accountable. Scott Morrison, Anthony Albanese, who will move? Find out on The Chaser Report, election edition. Hello, and welcome to The Chaser Report for Tuesday the 17th of May, just four days to go. I'm Charles Firth, and joining me today is Andrew Hansen. How are you going? Hello, Charles. Look, I'm very excited.

I mean, I've already voted, you know. Oh, really? Yes, I've kind of blown the whole. Yeah, it was an interesting year to vote this one. I don't know if you've noticed the ballot paper this year's quite an interesting one. Oh, yeah, right? Well, I mean, you know, the big one. I'm talking about the huge ballot paper.

The enormous one, right? You know, this is why children can't vote. It's a suffocation risk. Well, you've got labor, liberal, greens, and then 28 versions of the Nazi party. And that seems to be the choice. And then they expect you to order them in the order that you prefer them. So I found myself like, hmm, well, who do I prefer out of, you know, lynch mobs for a whiter Australia or ban homosexuals party? Who should I put it number four?

And number four seems a bit high for either of them. But everyone else is actually worse. But don't they always have names like the Citizens Justice League? Oh, that's true. A lot of them are in disguise. You don't quite know whether they're like, I mean, that sounds like good. Justice is good. Citizens are good.

Citizens are good. That's right. Yeah, the all-round good bloke's party. Yeah, yeah. Oh, no, they're terrible. They're the worst. They actually stand for giving firearms of to toddlers or something like that. Yeah.

But the big news this morning, Andrew, is that to Shane Bazzie, the refugee advocate who got sued by Peter Dutton, and he lost the defamation case and got asked to give $35,000 in damages to Peter Dutton. And anyway, he appealed that, and on appeal, he won. And Peter Dutton's defamation victory has been overturned, and Shane Bessie doesn't have to pay anything to Peter Dutton. Isn't that extraordinary? Well, it just goes to show if a potato has thin skin, it gets peeled.

Very nice. Look, I'm not sure I agree with this verdict because I think this is a bit of a blow for freedom. Oh, yeah. What about the freedom for powerful politicians to sue citizens who make off-handed quips to a few Twitter followers? That's very true. They need that free.

I mean, that's a freedom that they fought hard for as well. Yes, exactly. That's why the Anzaks went to World War II, wasn't it? It was so that a powerful man could sue. over a tweet one day. Yeah, that's right, exactly. And it's not just Peter Dutton, like, there's been tons of men who've sued little people this year

and are failing. Like, this is, like, I think we need some urgent defamation reform, but not to make it easier to speak out, but to protect these poor people who bring these defamation suits and then lose in a blaze of glory. I know, it's really rough on them, isn't it? when you think about the hurt feelings, involved. Yes. Not to mention the, you know, the sums of money.

I mean, Peter Dutton messed out on 35 grand. Yes. And look, he's only got six, well, he's got six investment properties, and interest rates are going up. Yes, how's he going to make the repayments? Yes. What about the council rates? I mean, with six properties, he'd be having to pay 35 grand every quarter in rates.

I'll tell you what. If the housing market collapses, I think we know who to blame, which is the appeals judge who overturned this verdict. The appeals judge. How irresponsible. Trashing the housing market. You should be ashamed. Now, coming up on the show, we've actually got a bit of a special treat,

which is we're bringing back our quiz, which is called No, no, no, it's called stupid questions only, isn't it? I don't know, Charles. I'm not often here. I don't know what your quiz is called. It's called. It's called, it's called Sale of the Century, for all I know, I don't know. It would make sense to have a quiz called No Stupid Questions, but it's actually a quiz that it's stupid questions only,

and it's your questions about the election. We get you to write in on Twitter and Facebook and stuff like that. We've got a whole lot of questions. But joining us today is a real person from the Australian Electoral Commission who will be able to answer your stupid questions. A real person? Yes. What, this podcast is really soaring to new heights, Charles.

You've got a guest who's a real person. My goodness. Because everyone else so far has been fake. Andrew, you have a segment on today's... Have you got to quiz it, what are you? Yeah, yeah, look, I'm going to be asking a few questions. I'm going to be doing a pork barrel review today. Some of the finest examples of pork barreling that have emerged during this election campaign.

All that and more coming up. But first of all, let's go to my election wrap. This is the election wrap for Tuesday the 17th of May. The Liberal Party's plan to solve housing affordability by driving up the prices of houses, has raised concerns that maybe the Liberal Party doesn't understand what the problem is. Housing experts spent much of yesterday saying the only conclusion you can reach from the policy is that the Liberal Party actually thinks that houses are currently too affordable and need further inflationary pressure.

This is like throwing kerosene on a bonfire. The expectation is that it would increase the cost of a home here in Sydney by $134,000. Meanwhile the Greens, which have a policy of building one million extra homes, which would actually solve the fundamental problem, have awkwardly been left in the position of taking the most economically responsible position on housing. Watch out, Adam Bad, you're supposed to be reckless crazy hippies, at least according to this morning's Harold's son. Josh Frydenberg is tipped to win the Olympic gold medal for verbal gymnastics after he was

asked on Radio National this morning why people in his seat see climate change as a an important issue. My focus is on not only delivering better economic outcomes for the people of Kiyong and people of Australia, but also better climate change. Rest assured, his unwillingness to answer a simple question about the priorities of his own electorate doesn't affect his ability to represent them in Canberra. As Josh says, you're voting for him, not for anyone else that he happens to vote in a binding caucus with.

It's my name and my name only representing the Liberal Party that is on the ballot box. Sure, mate. Good luck on Saturday. And finally some good news. New research out today suggests that News Corporation, which controls 73% of Australia's commercial news media, is having trouble swinging the election for the coalition. Professor Rod Tiffin at Sydney University said polls indicated that News Corp's slanted coverage

was having no discernible impact on voters this time round. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. breathe out, maybe this last three years was all just a fever dream. That's the wrap for Tuesday

the 17th of May. Back in a sec. The Chaser Report. Election edition. Well, the pork is in the barrels this election. I really, I mean, you know, there's been some wonderful example. of pork barreling, Charles,

have rolled out in the election campaign so far. Did you know this? I mean, now, first of all, you know, the origin of the term pork barrel is generally thought to be when slave owners would, you know, throw these barrels full of salted pork out to their slaves who would then scramble over the bits.

Right. So very similar to our current economic situation in a way. It's basically, yeah, that's the nation that the coalition wants to forge. That's right. But instead of slaves, it's wage slaves. It's wage slaves. It's parks, car parks in particular.

It's car park barreling. It's park barreling. Now, I looked up some examples, you know, some examples in the media of like really bad pork barreling from recent years. And it's quite funny to look at the American examples that the media have pulled out. Oh, yeah. Because listen to these examples. These are listed by the media as egregious example.

of, you know, wasting public money for boats. And to me, they actually sound quite fine. So, $1.2 million for a naval heritage museum. What's wrong with that? That's all right, isn't it? Or handing over $1.2 million for an underwater exploration center. But isn't the issue that the underwater exploration center will be in Burke or something like that? Isn't the whole book, you look into the detail and you go...

Admittedly, I'm not sure where it is. Oh, but hang on, hang on. Here's one that they thought was bad. 500 grand for a virtual space exhibition in Houston. Now, I mean, this sounds perfectly reasonable to me, right? Yeah, that sounds totally reasonable. Yes, what's the problem? Why are they called...

Isn't that just spending government money on good things? On good things? Yes. But Americans think this is an absolute disgrace. Well, my God, they should move here because the media here have reported some of the new examples that we've got this campaign of the pork barrels. Okay, so I'll hit you with a few of them. Okay, okay.

All right, Labor. Labor have made some very pissy little local commitments. I am. For example, they're going to spend 11 grand on a mural in Pierce. Do you think that's fair enough in order to win votes in the seat of Pierce, which is Christian Porter's electricians. So it's a professionally made. Because every time I've seen a mural

You get your local school to do it It should be free, shouldn't it? Yeah, it should just be, I know, or graffiti, like just some teenagers They provide murals for free, teenagers. My 13-year-old would definitely want to do that. He'll do it for 11 grand. Surely he will. Now, they're going to spend 20 grand labor on a frog bog.

Ah, right. In the seat of Bendigan. And my first question to you, Charles, is what the fuck is a frog bog? Well, I mean, I was going to say it sounds like something that the Greens would want to protect. But the fact that it's Labor means that it must be some sort of, is it a toilet for overweight unionists or something like that? A frog bog. Yes, you've got it in one. A 20,000 dollar toilet for union bosses.

It's just an area for frogs to live in. It's a bog for frogs. That's actually what a frog bog is. Well, I fully support because I love frogs And frogs always die Like the whole story In the last 20 years

Is all the frogs are dying They just die all the time They die so easily So maybe we shouldn't be investing In frog bogs Because it's like They're gonna die anyway It's not a long-term vision

Is it? It should be like The way we treat aged care In this country Which is you just sort of go Well let's not give any money to it Let's not give any resources They're going to die anyway soon

Oh yeah that is a frog bog You're right Yeah The H-K homes of Australia are just frog bogs. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's stupid. That's pork barreling. That's frog barreling.

All right. Here's another one from Labor. 20 grand to give a football club in the seat of Oxley. Some jerseys. What do you think of that, Juz? Is this a good idea? 20 grand. How many jerseys?

Hang on. How many jerseys? They're going to upgrade solar panels and buy them some jerseys. Well, that's very good. I mean, the jerseys is a bit. bit weird because surely that doesn't cost that much money, but solar panels probably Craig's

forced them to do that. Yeah, yeah, it might have been it. It might have been done under duracy. They should put solar panels on the jerseys. Yes, you could have solar-powered footballers. Yes. The players themselves. All right, okay. Well, that's for all fair examples then. Okay. Let's move to

the coalition example of pork, right? Now, described how the media thought it was outrageous that America spent $1.2 million. bucks on a naval museum and 1.2 million on an underwater centre, right? Well, the coalition

has promised about the same amount of money 1.6 million Australian dollars, which is similar. On a BMX track in the seat of Pierce again, again in the seat of peers, the same place that's getting the wall used. But 1.6 million. How the fuck do you spend 1.6 million on a BMX track? What is it going to be made of? Solid

gold? I thought a BMX track was just like the side of a hill. It's already there. It doesn't even have to be built. Well, you did, no, you need to sort of make it so it's got a few jumps and things like that. But that's like... Well, you just have to heap up some sand. My one-year-old doesn't.

You think maybe they wanted some of the sheen of BMX bandits to sort of come off on them. Oh, I see. It's a showbiz. Yeah, right. Because that movie is still, you know, pretty, pretty, it's a bit of a talking point still. Well, I think, you know, Labor had Russell Crowe voicing one of their ads. remember a couple of weeks ago. And they went, oh, we can get Nicole Kidman.

What's the latest film she's been in? And these are all career politicians. They don't know culture at all. They would have gone, oh, yeah, BMX Banders. That was the last movie I saw that had Nicole Kidman in us. She's in this wonderful new film. Yeah, Beam Expandits. Have you ever heard, Charles, of a pump track?

A pump track? What the hell is a pump track? Can you explain? Okay. So I reckon, because this is the coalition of funding a pump track, are they? They're funding two pump track. Not just, oh, no, not just one. Two worth 75 grand each in the seat of Gilmore, if you please.

Okay, so I reckon a pump track is something that you use when the prayer room is busy. Like, it's a track, you go out onto the track and that's where you do your pumping if you can't use the prayer room in camera. You're almost right near Palmer House. Like, that's just quite close, Southern Highland. I see. I see. It's all making more sense.

No wonder they want to pump so much money into the pump tracks. Yes, I think it's where you go to have sex. That's what it's for. Yes. Oh, well, you know what a 75 grand doesn't seem enough. No, I think so, especially if Parnaby Joyce is going to be re-elected. Oh, they'll need millions. Yes.

They'll need a BMX track's worth of money. Yeah. Oh, my God. Okay, I got another question for you. Now, they've already thrown, according to the news, $250,000 to the Nusa Pickle Ball Club to build new courts. Now, what is pickleball, because I must say, I don't know. Well, I thought pickleball was Mark Latham's testicle. Oh, is that what...

Yes, that's what they're going. All right. Why are the Liberals funding that then? I don't know. Well, I suppose he's one nation nowadays. Oh, okay, he's a mate, he's sort of a mate, isn't he? Yeah, and maybe Pickle Ball is actually a medical condition that describes not just Mark Latham's ball, but... Oh, yes, okay.

Well, that's how it's medical funding. Barnaby Joyce's balls. Like, maybe it's... George Christensen's balls. Like, I could imagine a lot of coalition members, you know, sort of... They might have it. They probably need a foundation, don't they? Yes.

Like, with the Labor ones, you go, okay, 20 grand for solar panels, yeah, that sounds reasonable. But for, like, a BMX track, 1.6 million, like, you just go, somebody's getting quite a lot of money out of it. Like, and pickleball, $250,000. Like, I don't even know what it is, and I know that a pickleball court doesn't cost $250,000. It's a lot to spend, you know, on a sport that nobody's heard of in a town that's full of people who are so rich that they'd be able to buy 60 pickleball court. Whoever corruptly asked for it just made it up. Like, do you think it was like, the sport of pickleball? Well, last year we asked for money for, you know, gumbo ball.

What about, maybe this year. Okay. And now this is the last one. Okay. The coalition offered 25 grand to the seat of Boothby to make a gin distillery. Well, I approve of that. I think that's a great idea. You think that's good public money?

Yes. But hang on, is alcohol like the arts? Is it so unpopular that it requires government funding, do you think? You're right, but gin, it's famously profitable, isn't it? Well, now you can get government money for that if you want, but only get in a marginal seat. That will help with the pickleball. Yeah. Soaking their balls in the gin.

My final part of this investigation, Charles, is why is there so much pork about it? And what can be done about it? Well, the Fairfax media spoke to an expert on this. And the answer is, is it in order to stop this, the reason he can't stop it is that somebody has to actually take legal action against the funding. And that action would have to be taken by somebody directly affected by the funding. So effectively, that means only a person who receives the funding would be able to go to court

against the federal government and say, hey, this funding is outrageous. I'm not having a bar of this. That's the only way to stop it, according to the system. It seems like the system has been written by people who like to pork barrel.

It's almost like that, isn't it? It's almost like that. Election News You Can't Trust The Chaser Report. So we promised you something special in our only stupid question segment. And we've got him here with us today, which is the AEC's Evan Eakon Smith joins us today from the AEC. Evan, thank you so much.

Yeah, no problems at all. Happy to answer no stupid questions. No stupid questions. No, no, these are only stupid questions. Yeah, I know. I'm happy to answer those ones too. Okay. And you're in charge of the AEC's Twitter account, aren't you? Yeah, my team looks after talking to media representatives, our social media accounts, a little bit of the website. So, things here and that. You've been quite funny on social media this election. We'll take that feedback, thank you. Do you go out and hire sort of comedians, like just asking for after election, really? What's your hiring process to get all these witty quipsters? You're trying to get a gig at the AEC running social media, right? No, some people think we're funny. Some

people don't. There's a few dad jokes thrown in there. But ultimately, I think we're going all right. So you're not going to tell me how to get a job there? Oh, public service employment. It's a pretty boring process, really. I don't want to bore all the listeners. Okay, fair enough. It's all very mysterious, isn't it? Yeah, I know.

I don't know. How you get in that door? And so has there been any big reports of fraud or anything? Like, is there any big story that we can break on this podcast? There's been a couple of people who, like, candidates who you've referred to the police. Once you've handed it over to the police, is that then out of your hands? or does it come back to you after the election? Because these people are still on the ballot paper, aren't they?

Like, how does that work? Yeah, they're still on the ballot paper. We've got a manual voting system, of course, so there's no unprinting the ballots. We print about 60 million-odd, and they end up all around the country through postal voting, through early voting centres and polling places. You can't strike them off.

So, yeah, we've referred a few matters relating to candidates about enrolment addresses, and some of them have been Section 44 of the Constitution sort of issues. But ultimately, yes, they go into the... the police's hands and they come back to us once I've investigated it. And there's potential criminal action that can happen on the back of that. Now, what's Section 44 of the Constitution? That sounds a bit shady.

Yeah, so the Constitution is that little pocketbook that, you know, guides. It's the foundation document for Australia. In Section 44, it's about disqualifications for being a candidate. So there was a couple of years ago where there was a whole bunch of dual citizens in Parliament. They actually had to resign from Parliament because they fell foul of Section 44 of the Constitution. So it's about that, plus a few other things. I've noticed online, I follow quite a lot of comedians, and there's been a few people who have been putting out sort of false information clearly to provoke you. What's the balance between you're being all entertaining, but then

aren't you sort of encouraging them to then, say, cheeky things that are false? It's a really tricky balance, and we do. We get baited all the time, and some of it we just call out as bait and leave it alone. Some of it, even though it's really a joke, some people don't get it. So they seriously think there's something wrong there. So we've got to strike that balance of, well, I suppose knowing what content's coming at us, whether or not it's really, really obvious to the joke or whether it's a little bit more opaque and treat it on its merits.

So sometimes the best way to actually shoot something down is actually to be a bit funny in response and everybody then gets it a joke. So, yeah, so horses for courses, always. And what about Facebook? I imagine, because, like, my, I mean, obviously I'm not on Facebook. I'm far too young. But, you know, my parents' generation are on Facebook. And there's tons of threads of people just completely spreading untrue information,

especially, like, distant uncles of mine and things like that. You just sort of think that we're in this American-style sort of conspiracy theory land. but they're in the sort of comment section. How do you possibly deal with that style of misinformation? We've talked to a few of your distant uncles. They're causing us a lot of trouble. It's not just on Facebook. It's on a range of channels.

And channels that we're not on either. So we're on what you'd probably more consider to be the mainstream channels of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and what have you. But where you get into channels like Telegram, there's a lot of misinformation going around there about the electoral system. we can only get so far. We get as far as we possibly can with a small team here, correct people as much as we can,

create little videos so that people on those other channels can share them, speak like a human being as opposed to a bureaucrat, that helps get the message across. But ultimately, we're living in a society that has a little bit of information disorder. Maybe a few of your uncles have that. We'd prefer people to be spreading knowledge rather than just information,

actually something that has some substance behind it. Have you considered doing TikTok dances and things like that to get the message out there a bit more virally? My dancing is atrocious. I think we would turn off any form of audience. No, just like everyone on TikTok. Dancing combined with electoral administration information. Yeah, odd.

Yeah. But no, I mean, we have thought about going on channels like TikTok and it might be something that we evolve to in the future. We'll just have to see how we go. Right. So you're not on TikTok at the moment. That's where everyone is. I know.

I know, and we ponded it carefully in advance of the election, but decided not to for this one. We do have a partnership with TikTok, so we've got an election hub on there. We get a lot of content referred to us, and we got a relationship with TikTok and take some action where we need to and get others to communicate on our behalf. But no, we're not on there ourselves. Rigging elections since before it was called the Chaser Report. Okay, well, let's get on with the lovely, stupid questions-only quiz. And we'll go with the first one, which is Tyler Hamilton, asks,

Is there a time limit for voting, or can I arrive early in the morning and stay in the booth all day? That's a pretty stupid question. That'd be a particularly informed vote, wouldn't it? I mean, some of our Senate ballot papers, if you're living in New South Wales, they run over a metre long. You might need half the day to actually have a look at it. But we'd encourage you to be a bit quick than that. come to the polling place a little bit better informed don't stay half a day or a full day apart from anything

you'll make everybody else queue up behind you so that's not very nice but you are allowed to if you want to right there's no time limit on voting really and what if what if the booth is officially closed what happens yeah like do you get booted out like out of a pub is it like closing to or are you allowed to just stay in there last votes last votes yeah we stand there next to the sign we ring a bell yeah no actually if somebody's in the queue at 6 p.m

we make sure that those people get their votes. So we effectively put a marker there. One of our polling officials actually goes out and stands at the end of line at 6pm. Anybody else who comes after that, sorry you've come too late, but everybody who's there at 6 gets their vote. Okay. Andrew, do you want to ask the next question? I'd love to ask it.

Can I ask a question? Why not? Now, this is from a listener named No Prize 1, who asks, why are the voting forms, Evan, such boring colours? Yeah. I've asked that myself. It's actually in electoral laws. They've got to be the colours that they are.

The House of Reps has got to be the green. The Senate's got to be the white. And in fact, if we have a referendum, the colour for a referendum ballot paper in the legislation is buff. That's the colour. I'm pretty sure that's a creamy sort of colour. But buff is the referendum ballot paper.

So if one of those comes around, you'll be getting a buff ballot paper. It's at least got a nice name. When I first started voting, I'm pretty sure the Senate ballot papers were pink. I thought you said you were. too young to be on Facebook. So how do you remember that that far?

I assumed it was because to a government bureaucrat, the colour light green and white, are the most exciting things that they could think. It's like rainbow to anybody else. You can't get anything better than a really long document that is plain white. I mean, that's just brilliant. Okay, next question, which is from Margaret Rutherford, who asks, if everyone votes early, can we kick the government out before Saturday? Well, that's a bit of a loaded question.

It's a bit of a loaded question. It would depend on what's on the ballot papers, of course. I don't think everyone is going to. I just saw the figures there. I think we've had something like 2.6 million people go through an early voting center. We've got 17.3 million people on the electoral. Geez, they'd have to get a move on. And talk about cues, they'd be massive if they're all getting through the early voting period.

Technically, we still wouldn't count them anyway. Laws wouldn't allow us to. We can only start counting at 6pm on election day. So we'd have a lot of very empty polling places with tumbleweeds and our polling officials standing around doing absolutely nothing before we even started counting. And you're not actually allowed to vote early anyway, are you, without a valid excuse?

There's got to be a valid reason, but we can't follow up on it. It's a self-declaration that you are entitled to vote early. If we could follow up on it, I would probably be infringing on some level of privacy, you know, going into their workplace, making sure they're rostered on the Saturday or looking at their travel plans. So it's a self-declaration. How interesting. So you need an excuse, but no one will check.

I think there's a sort of wink, wink, wink, nudge there, isn't it? To a certain extent. But it's a serious self-decloration. I mean, it is a law, but no, we're not going to follow up. Practically, we just couldn't. Well, you heard it here first. Look, I reckon this is an encouragement for people to come up with the most hair-brained excuses of all times, I mean, if you're not going to check,

you might as well, your excuse could be anything. I don't believe in using my right hand on Saturday. That's right easy. I've got a swollen buttock. Yeah, see, I don't think there's a list of eligibility criteria. I'm pretty sure, I'd have to review it, but I'm pretty sure swollen buttock is not on that list. Now, the next question comes from, well, various people, actually,

several listeners have asked, do we have to use Arabic numerals? You can use whatever you like. Like, as long as your intention is clear, I mean, we have people using Roman numerals. We've had people in the past who've actually drawn out their numbers with little dots, kind of like how you see it on, you know, the plane dice. But why would you, would be a question? You'd probably fall into the category of one of those people who ends up there all day in the voting, but wasting everybody's time.

But also, gee whiz, counting jobs hard enough. We've got a lot of ballot papers to count. We don't need to sit there looking at your Roman numerals. Let's just use normal numbers, please. How far does your expertise spread in this regard? I mean, like if somebody decided to number the forms in cuneiform writing from Babylonia, you know, I mean, can you translate those numbers? Do you have experts at hand? Our polling staff are all trained up on that.

No, I don't know. Look, our polling officials, if they saw something highly unusual but looked quite elaborate and deliberate, we'd probably put that one aside to try and determine what it is and have a look. It sounds odd, but that's the lengths we go to to try and actually reflect people's intentions. I'm impressed. But does anywhere use numbering systems other than Arabic now? Like, isn't that globally? I'm just trying to think of, are there any countries in the world?

Like, I'm just imagining somebody coming over to Australia, gaining citizenship, but not, and so being an eligible to vote, but they're not knowing the Arabic numbers system. I don't think anybody uses a number system other than the standard one in any other way than trying to be clever or funny I think that's the intention rather than anything Time traveller, time traveller?

Yeah, haven't come across one of those. What are they doing voting in 2022? They don't live here. Okay, so the next question is from Filthy Dancer. Do I imagine you've already met up on? We've corresponded with Filthy Dancer via Twitter, of course, Do AEC workers and volunteers get to take home the voting boxes as furniture after the election? What are you thinking I'm sitting on right now?

Yeah. Interesting with our cardboard furniture, it's a little less exciting this time. We used to spray it with sort of white and purple garb, but it's all raw cardboard this time so that we can recycle it. So we give it off to other electoral management bodies to use it. We recycle it. Sometimes schools use it for school-run elections. but our staff taking it home, no, it's not part of the setup. And just actually, as a follow up to that, are there such things as AEC volunteers?

Aren't they, isn't everyone who's involved in the process paid? Yeah, they're all paid. Temporary workers, yep. So often colloquially are referred to as volunteers, but no, absolutely it's a paid gig. I have a question here for you, Evan, from listener Karen, who asks, and come on, surely you can tell us, where are the secret counting location? The secret ones. Well, that's the great thing about the Australian voting system.

None of them are secret. We've actually got warehouse facilities. So most votes on election night, they're counted in the polling places. But we've actually got warehouse facilities where we count all their early votes and postal votes. You'll have a whole bunch of staff congregated around tables. And they're not secret because we've got a party and candidate appointed scrutiners, looking over our shoulders, literally looking over our shoulders as we can, all the votes and challenging different votes. So not secret.

But they're the sort of where. house facilities that you wouldn't necessarily expect. I know we've done it in an old Bunnings warehouse one time, and it's basically any empty premises that fits the bill that we can get. Well, I used to scrutiny, and it used to be out of the showground before it became Fox Studios. It was fantastic. It was so much fun. But I read somewhere that actually the last time a ballot is seen by only one person

is when you actually put it in the box, that essentially there are. after, the entire process means that there's at least two people watching it at any given point throughout the whole process. Absolutely. And a chain of custody, I tell you what, we have that many forms. You talk about bureaucrats being excited by pieces of paper and forms. We love our forms of the AEC. You sign over custody every time the ballot paper goes from one particular person to another.

Everybody's always got custody. It's always countersigned by that second person. We've got ballot paper storage zones and secure zones. and every colour vest under the sun that identifies people and who they are and what access they have, it's a remarkable undertaking when you actually think about the scale that we do it too as well. And the thing is, and the thing that I'm quite interested in is there's all these fringe party people who have these conspiracy theories, like my sort of distant uncles.

And one of the great things about the system is that anyone who's involved in those parties can volunteer to be a scrutiny for that party at their local booth or whatever. And the moment you go and see the process and how open it is and how people from all different candidates are standing around and you can watch everything that you want to see going on but you can't touch anything, you sort of suddenly go, oh right, this is completely un... Like anyone who's been part of that process goes,

oh yeah, there's no way you could commit fraud. That's why I think part of the brilliance of our system is it's so decentralized that you can actually. actually see that it's sort of, it's impossible to imagine some sort of conspiracy theory location. And not, not to mention just our staff. We have one of the biggest temporary workforces going around. We've got 105,000 people who work for us.

These are the people who are undertaking the count. If something was not on the up and up, these people were right there. They'd be saying things, not to mention the party in candidate appointed scrutiny, not to mention all of the processes. So that sort of talk, we get some talk about, you know, pencils, all there can be rubbed, out or you know counters are using lead under their fingernails is one that we've heard before it's all ridiculous and if you understand the process like you said if you've ever been in accounting centre you'd know it's just not possible let's uh end with one final question uh and

this is from ai draws ospole who asked you say your volunteers have seen everything and we should focus on the voting that said what is the funniest thing you've seen or heard it were counting votes Well, look, it's probably not funny. It's probably more disgusting. But in a recent by-election, you know, all the ballot papers are folded, right? When people put them in the ballot box, you go to unfold them. And sometimes you see some things. Sometimes it's drawings, which is unoriginal most of the time.

But hey, whatever folks you don't. But sometimes you get material. In a recent by-election, there was feces. I don't know if it was. human or dog or what it was. Maybe somebody came in with a little doggy bag. Who knows? But there was no denying what it was because it wasn't just what you could see. It's what you could smell as well. And did you have to count? Did you have to count? I can't remember whether it actually had numbers on it or not. But if it did, we would have

counted it. Would you? So that doesn't invalidate. Well, what we actually did, because I wasn't at the counting centre, right? I saw the photos. But what we did, is we put it in a little plastic baggy so that we could try and have a look at the numbers, which is a bit ridiculous. Oh dear. It may have been an honest mistake, though. I mean, those sort of cubicles that you've set up there,

I mean, somebody whose vision isn't very good might well have thought, oh. We're not cutting holes in the middle of them, so I think we're going, okay. Or perhaps just an enormous sign that says this is not a bog. I'll take that suggestion back to the electoral commissioner. So, Evan, you've, Big days on Saturday, and then presumably you've got to next few weeks, you know, counting,

especially the Senate, takes a while to count. Then after that, do you just sit around and do nothing until the next election? Yeah, oh yeah, I'm going to take two and a half years of the holiday. This election thing's pretty easy to stand up on no dramas whatsoever. Now, I mean, that's the question we get at barbecues, right? If you're an AEC staff member, what are you doing in between elections? There's a bit. It just doesn't get as much publicity.

We might have to run some by-elections, we might have to run a referendum, we maintain the role, we redraw boundaries so that the election set up, and then always prepare for the next one. And they're ridiculously huge logistical things to try and organise and who knows what we're faced with. I mean, this time it's floods and COVID and whatever else, one of those difficult and expensive elections in our history. Who knows what's coming around the corner that we need to prepare for? And the other thing is we don't know the date. We could have run this federal election as early as August last year. So we've got to be ready a lot earlier than potentially we get called on. Okay, well, anything else?

Andrew, do you have anything more? Buggerall? No, no. Look, I've been flooded with information here from the AEC. I think it's absolutely fantastic. I mean, if I was going to ask one other thing, Evan, I've already voted, right? I voted early. Does it ever happen that people ring you up and say that they change their mind about who they voted for?

And can you find the paper and I can just redo it? Because I stuffed mine up a little bit. Well, you should have thought about that at the time. Stiff is our answer. No, we can't. It's a secret ballot. Yours goes into the box with everybody else's. It hasn't got your name on it.

It's all over, Red Rover. You can't have any different say. It doesn't reflect my views. I've changed my mind three times in the last three days. Maybe your mind will change. I'll come back around. Well, I might go and vote again a couple of times then. Yeah, nah.

Evan, thank you very much. And if you, presumably, Whenever somebody comes on this podcast, we've got to plug their, whatever they're selling. So go and vote on Saturday. If you're out and about, go and vote. You've solved democracy. Everybody's going to flood our polling places now. That's great, yeah.

Come and support voting. And is there somewhere you can book tickets to vote or just turn up? Just rock up. We accept all comers. Go to our website, have a look. If there's a cue, be patient and just be a normal individual. It's not a toilet gift. typical, just cast your vote.

Thanks very much. Cheers. See, Evan. Our gear is from road microphones and we are part of the ACAST creator network. See you tomorrow.