
Love probed whether the former Electoral Affairs Minister John Quigley should have been aware of the PersolKelly contract, which Michael replied: “I do not believe so”.
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Michael then rebuffed a question from Love on why the mention of the contract was not included in the WAEC’s annual reports.
“Obviously, I will not give the member my opinion on these things. It is not my opinion time; it is budget estimates. Electoral commissions use contract labour all the time,” he said.
Love and Michael then clashed over whether PersolKelly was a foreign company, with Love arguing the Australian-registered company that won the contract was wholly owned by overseas interests.
Michael said it was an Australian company.
“There are many companies like this. If the member thinks about the big accounting firms that are used across government to do audits, a lot of them have overseas ownership and these kinds of things,” he said.
“Obviously, Arc Infrastructure, which runs our rail network, is headquartered overseas.”
Michael later revealed WAEC Commissioner Robert Kennedy, who took leave after the election, was still being paid.
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