Staff shortages bedevilling everything from restaurants to hospitals could extend to the Australian Electoral Commission as it battles to fill more than 100,000 short-term positions in what will be the country’s most expensive federal election.
With Australia’s jobless rate at its lowest level since the 1970s, the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) is competing with other employers to recruit an army to manage voting across about 7,500 polling places in an election made more complex because of the Covid pandemic.
“We become one of the nation’s largest employers, but only for effectively a day,” Evan Ekin-Smyth, director of AEC’s media engagement, told Guardian Australia. The commission may need up to 130,000 people for the election, compared with a permanent crew of about 700.
“There are areas where we don’t need anybody and we feel sufficiently stocked, but there’s areas where we still need people to sign on,” Ekin-Smyth said. “We’ll pull out all the stops at the last minute if we’re struggling with it. Typically, regional is a little trickier than metropolitan areas.”
The 2019 poll cost about $300m, excluding payments to political parties, with about a third of that used to pay staff. This election’s bill is likely to top a record $400m, he said.
Entry-level staff can expect to collect $25.48 an hour, or 7.7% more than at the 2019 poll. The top rate for more senior roles has risen to $48.28 an hour, or 4.8% more than the $46.08 rate paid three years ago.
The AEC is banking in part on being able to tap about 50% of the short-term staff from previous elections. Many of those are university students, retired teachers or public servants.
Monday is also the last day to enrol for the 21 May poll.
With hours to go before today's deadline, we've added almost 63,000 new voters to the Electoral Roll.
— AEC ✏️ (@AusElectoralCom) April 18, 2022
The number of voters who'll be 18 on election day has increased by 35,000, but we need more!
Don't miss out - enrol by 8pm today. https://t.co/4GCGhmattA pic.twitter.com/iGZEvp0jeJ
The pandemic, though, will add to this election’s challenges. For instance, each polling place will have a hygiene officer, and the AEC has to be ready in case local jurisdictions impose last-minute restrictions to cope with spikes in Covid cases.
One goal is to try to shorten the time people spend in queues. More than three-quarters of voters spent less than 15 minutes casting their ballots in past polls.
“We’ve got more people handing out ballot papers than we’ve ever had before,” Ekin-Smyth said. Even so, “there’s certainly the potential for queueing to be longer this federal election that it has been in the past due to Covid”.
The AEC will also need a large number of people on standby in case staff expected to be present have to isolate because of Covid.
“We don’t have a set benchmark for Covid reservers, but rather we are working hard to have as many registrations of interest as possible to enable us to call on people as needed,” Ekin-Smyth said.
“We’re continuing to have discussions about exactly what the close contact requirements will be in each jurisdiction, both for our workers and for voters as well,” he added.
A shortening of the pre-polling period this election from three weeks to two at least means hiring stints may be shorter for some employees this time around. The AEC has increased the number of early polling sites to more than 500.
The proportion of Australians voting prior to election day has risen over time. Including postal votes – which have been steady at 8% for the past three elections – about 40% of people cast their vote before election day in 2019.
For those who do turn up to vote on 21 May, the AEC is hoping modelling work done with Victoria’s Deakin University will help expedite voting by reworking the layout of voting booths.
“Overall, we’re feeling confident in our ability to staff the election,” Ekin-Smyth said. “But that’s not to say that it’s not tricky and there’s not a lot of work still to go.”
