Last month I posted about Pauline Hanson’s court challenge to the NSW Legislative Council election result.
Her claims in support of a recount are twofold:
1. An allegedly internal NSW Electoral Commission email leaked to her which suggests that at least 1200 votes for her were found in the blank ballots pile.
2. That the randomized preference distribution system is unfair.
Now that the evidence has been tested in court, the email on which she based her first claim appears to be almost certainly a fake. In fact the hoaxer, Sean Castle has admitted to being the “Michael Rattner” who sent Pauline Hanson the email in the first place, as well as to being the fake Daily Telegraph journalist “Michael Wilson” who obtained embargoed progressive vote tallies from the NSW Electoral Commission chief information officer, Ian Brightwell.
The email purports to be advice from Ian Brightwell to chief communications officer Richard Carroll, telling him:
“Just stonewall them (the media) as much as possible when it comes to Hanson and her issues with the count. Do not mention there is any possible provision for a recount.”
“We know the media are looking at the blank ballots and are trying to get them all rechecked because one of her scrutineers was meant to of found some of her votes in among the blanks (I have heard through the chain that there could be as many as 1200 across the state that are in with the blanks as there were a few dodgy electoral staff on, but don’t offer that).”
Both men have stated that they did not send or receive the email. The admissions by Sean Castle strongly support their claims.
Indeed, the “email” is highly defamatory of Ian Brightwell and he should certainly sue Sean Castle, who should also be charged with fraud.
To me, the most surprising aspect of this circus is the sheer dimwitted incompetence of Pauline Hanson’s no doubt expensive legal team (her own incompetence is taken for granted).
It is only in the last few days that the name Michael Rattner has been made public, as well as those of the “Daily Telegraph journalists” Michael Wilson and Sean Castle. Consequently, the rest of us have had only this time to do what Pauline Hanson and her lawyers should have been doing in the weeks they have had this information: checking their facts.
I initially thought “Rattner” was a misprint. Ratner is a Jewish name, normally spelt with a single ‘t’. There are no Rattners in the Whitepages listing in all of Australia (in fact, there are only 11 Ratners). There is no Michael Rattner on any electoral roll in Australia.
A reasonable conclusion from about 10 minutes of research is that whoever sent the email has done so via an alias. This should at least raise suspicion of the possibility the email is a fabrication.
If after this fairly routine research, Hanson’s legal team still believed there was a significant probability the email was genuine, it is evidence of a serious criminal offence. They should have referred the matter to the police and sought a court order to obtain all NSWEC email correspondence for the period in question.
An interview with Ian Brightwell would have produced a denial of ever having sent the email. His denial should have been easy to substantiate via records from the NSWEC email server.
Additionally, the interview should have quickly uncovered the names Michael Wilson and Sean Castle (a real person and the real identity of “Michael Rattner”), along with the fact that neither is a Daily Telegraph journalist.
It’s all starting to look very fishy and really not that difficult to uncover. Given the seriousness of the matter, the investigation should have been conducted with some urgency, particularly due to the possibility of evidence being destroyed.
So why did it all take so long? These facts shouldn’t have taken more than a week to reveal. It’s Pauline Hanson and her legal representatives who have had the email all this time, so I suggest it’s their own fault they’ve been made to look so foolish.
A particularly bad outcome in this case is that Hanson’s second claim is correct ie. that the randomized preference distribution system is flawed. Now this valid point will not be tested in court, completely obscured as it will be by the farce of her claim regarding the “misplaced” votes.
Also disturbing is the conduct of Ian Brightwell in passing embargoed progressive vote tallies to a fake journalist. He is the NSW Electoral Commission chief information officer, not some inexperienced clerk. Taxpayers might well ask whether he should continue in this position of responsibility.
It is common practice to release information to journalists which is embargoed until a certain time, to allow them to prepare their story and release it immediately at the agreed hour. Of course, this is all done on trust, which is precisely why Ian Brightwell should have rung the Daily Telegraph to check the bona fides of the two “journalists” who contacted him, since he could not previously have met them.
In the previous post on this matter, I accused the Greens of hypocrisy because of their elected candidate Jeremy Buckingham’s implication that Pauline Hanson should not be allowed to challenge the result and should just accept it.
This remains correct. The information available at the time to Jeremy Buckingham and almost everyone but Pauline Hanson and Sean Castle was that hard evidence possibly existed of an email implying votes for Pauline Hanson had been misplaced and further, the situation had not been rectified.
These are ample grounds for contesting the result and at that time, Jeremy Buckingham had no evidence disproving the claims. Additionally, the second claim relating to the flaws in the randomized preference distribution method remains valid, although now extremely unlikely to be tested.
So, based on the then current evidence, Pauline Hanson had every right to challenge the result and yes, Jeremy Buckingham was and still is a hypocrite, even more so because he seems to think she should pay his legal fees.
Why should she? She should pay her own and perhaps some NSWEC costs, but she did not accuse Jeremy Buckingham of anything. It was the Nationals’ Sarah Johnston who would have lost her seat to a successful Hanson challenge anyway.
That he spent money on legal advice is his own choice. If he incurred any legal costs trying to prevent Pauline Hanson’s challenge, he should pay these himself (or his party should). What public benefit is there in preventing claims being heard and independently tested? Why would he have wanted to stop her challenge being heard, given he could not disprove it at the time? What was he so afraid of?
The judge hearing the application for costs gave his opinion that Pauline Hanson had no choice but to challenge the result in court. She would certainly have needed a court order to access the NSWEC email data. One might reasonably ask why her lawyers couldn't have obtained such an order within a couple of days of her receiving the original email, given the seriousness of its implications. A swift judicial examination of the email and evidence surrounding it may well have revealed the hoax much earlier.
Additionally, Hanson still has reasonable grounds to have the second part of her claim heard: that the randomised preference distribution system is flawed. Sadly, this will not now be examined by a court, but it is a valid grievance and so quite reasonably she should not pay costs for this part of the claim.
My view is that, aside from the costs of Hanson's preference distribution claim, which should be borne by the state, either everyone should pay their own legal fees, since each has incurred the majority of these costs unnecessarily or through poor judgment, or alternatively the hoaxer, Sean Castle should pay the lot.
Additionally, I said in the previous post that IF Pauline Hanson’s claim turned out to be true and 1,200 votes had been “misplaced”, the chances it was deliberate would be high and moreover, it would be lefties who were responsible.
As it turns out, it is very unlikely that 1,200 votes have been miscounted. Good.
However, had they been and an internal email discussing the fact existed (which was certainly possible – not everybody is honest, Pollyanna), then even if the initial misplacing had been accidental, the non-rectification of the error was not … and if this was the case, it wasn’t going to be Australians Against Further Immigration supporters, was it?
Although conversely, given the way the left fight amongst themselves, if 1,200 Green votes “went missing”, it could just as easily have been supporters of Socialist Alliance or the ALP as the Liberal Party.
Any confected outrage at the suggestion votes could be "misplaced" or "miscounted" by Electoral Commission staff is absurd. I don't believe it to be a regular event, however to pretend that nothing dodgy has or could ever occur is naive. There is some dishonest and corrupt behaviour in almost every large organisation.
I know of one case in a marginal seat, many elections ago now, in which an attempt was made to deliberately overstate votes for the ALP.
Votes for each party were put in bundles of 50. One counter's ALP bundles were checked and about every second one came up short ie. was 47 or 48. When this fact was discovered and an accusation made, the counter feigned offence and protested the discrepancies were all accidental. Of course, had it been just inaccurate counting, the errors would have been evenly distributed on the positive and negative side.
The perpetrator was in this case an old school, cardigan wearing unionist, trying to manufacture a few extra Labor votes. I've no doubt the odd Liberal supporter tried a similar trick.
The point is, if particular people with the right access wanted to subvert the vote count, they could, so any accusations of such conduct need to be taken seriously. Conversely, accusations found to be vexatious or otherwise without merit need to be punished.
Note that an allegation later determined to be false is not necessarily without merit: at the time, there may have been reasonable grounds to make the claim. A claim without merit is one where a competent investigation and examination of the available evidence would lead to the conclusion that there is negligible chance the claim is true.
As for Sean Castle, who it appears has created the false email which kicked off this circus: get a life, you sad, little man.
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