VEC at its limit, push for new laws

THE most senior figures at the Victorian Electoral Commission have warned the organisation is at its limits and faces critical risks unless laws are urgently updated.

Commissioner Sven Bluemmel and his deputy Dana Fleming, who acted in the top job at the last poll, sounded the alarm in a review of last year’s State election tabled in Parliament on Tuesday.

“It is apparent that the operating model for the [Victorian Electoral Commission] is at its limits,” they wrote.

“The critical risks the existing election timeline creates can only be addressed through legislative change.”

The report made 12 key recommendations, including making it an offence to harass or disrupt electoral workers and making it illegal for anyone removed from a voting centre to return.

It also wants a ban on anyone other than the commission from distributing postal vote applications, removing certain how-to-vote card requirements, modernising campaign material laws, a holistic review of the Electoral Act and to allow election managers to issue cautions over less serious breaches of the act.

The cost of running the 2022 state election totalled $97.94 million.

The report highlighted a “workforce crisis” that forced the commission to use labour hire agencies for the first time to fill staff shortages and exposed difficulties in finding suitable location for early polling places.

It also revealed the organisation was subject to more intense scrutiny than ever before.

“The [commission’s] processes withstood this high level of scrutiny, but some parties and candidates, media and members of the public perpetuated mis- and dis-information, as well as general scepticism of electoral processes,” the report said.

Several controversies arose during the 2022 election campaign, including a legal challenge from three teal candidates against the commission over their how-to-vote cards and confrontations involving candidates at polling places.

The report also defended the decision to refer then Opposition Leader Matthew Guy to the anti-corruption watchdog nine days out from the vote, repeating a statement that it was required to do so.

Mr Guy was referred over allegations his chief of staff Mitch Catlin asked a billionaire Liberal donor to make more than $100,000 in payments to his private marketing company.

Mr Guy has maintained his innocence.

The commission has committed to increasing the number of early voting centres, ensuring its website is up to date, investigating computer counting for lower house races and electronic roll mark-off to protect against accidental or intentional instances of multiple voting.

– RACHAEL WARD/ AAP