By Alesha Capone and Charlene Macaulay
An investigation into last year’s Wyndham council elections has revealed that two people were unaware they had been nominated as official candidates.
The long-awaited report from the Local Government Investigations and Compliance Inspectorate, which was handed down last week, also found that two candidates had been deceived into nominating on the “premise of a benefit”.
The circumstances surrounding the pair’s nomination is still being investigated to determine if a prosecutable case exists.
The inspectorate’s office received 21 formal complaints related to the activities of candidates in the Wyndham election.
Out of the 95 candidates who stood in the October 2016 election, the inspectorate identified 10 candidates across two loosely aligned groups who were considered to be non-genuine – or dummy – candidates due to unusual preference arrangements, dubious residential entitlements, no active campaigning, or attending no information sessions or training. None of the 10 candidates were elected to the council.
The inspectorate believes one group, which contained a number of dummy candidates, worked together solely to secure the election of a principal candidate, dubbed “candidate A”.
From this, the inspectorate’s investigation revealed two cases of “suspicious entitlements”, where candidates nominated using residential addresses associated with candidate A.
In each case, the candidates updated their residential address only days before the deadline, and also maintained other residential properties that were “a significant distance from the municipality”.
One of the candidates, a former employee of candidate A, claimed to live in a small bungalow behind a larger residence.
The report said that the inspectorate believed this candidate was running in support of their former employer, with no intention of being elected.
The second candidate claimed to live in a property that “was found to be in a dilapidated state with no electricity or water connection and considered uninhabitable”.
Both of these candidates listed candidate A as their second voting preference, in their candidate statements, and both exercised their right to not be interviewed by the inspectorate as part of the investigation.
Despite strong circumstantial cases, the inspectorate did not have enough evidence to lay criminal charges for false nominations for either candidate.
Meanwhile, the second candidate group remains under active investigation with “a strong likelihood of serious charges for the principal candidate of this group”.
The investigation included the examination of campaign material, media articles, social media posts, documents and interviews with 90 of the 95 Wyndham election candidates.
