Certainly.
I should put on the record that this was a legislative change that was mandated for the Electoral Commission by the Australian Parliament, not a desire for us to do that ourselves. I'm not making a judgment either pro or anti; it was just a requirement.
There was debate in Australia about the Senate voting system at the last election. Again, I'm just reflecting. There was a concern that some members of the Senate were elected with quite a small amount of the primary vote, so a system was implemented to change the way Australians vote.
The Senate paper is very long. I think it's over a metre long. There is a line, and above that line are party names and boxes, and below the party boxes are the individual candidates for each of those parties. Previously Australians could cast a valid vote just by voting “1” above the line, and then their vote was allocated according to a pre-lodged ticket by the party. We did a very complex preference allocation according to the party's wishes.
It changed at this election. For a valid vote, a citizen had to number at least six boxes above the line or 12 boxes below the line.
In the 2013 election, 97% of Australians chose the option of just putting a number “1” in their preferred party box above the line, and only 3% of Australians voted below the line. That made the count for us significantly simpler. The count is done by state. The Senate is a states House. In New South Wales, our largest state, it meant that only 100,000 people voted below the line, but each of those 100,000 votes then had to be taken to a place we call Central Senate Scrutiny in each state and individually double-data-entered to make sure that there were no errors. It was very complex. For 100,000 ballot papers, it took a lot of time.
This time, just in New South Wales, it meant that every Senate ballot paper had to go to Central Senate Scrutiny, so it meant that we had to physically count 5,000,000 ballot papers in the one spot, just in New South Wales, with a very complex series of preferences.
I had two options. We did a big project for this. Our assessment was that for me to be able to enter the data in time to return the writ to the Governor-General, we would have to have 900 data entry operators working virtually 24-hour shifts to come close to making it—just in New South Wales—or we could implement a semi-automated solution involving scanning, but still with human involvement. It has meant that right now, as I'm speaking to you, we have, just in New South Wales, 19 scanning pods with custom-made scanners and some 300 data entry operators, who at times have been working 24-hour shifts, to enable us to double-data-enter, for integrity reasons, the Senate ballot paper.
Given that there was a change to the voting system, we ran a very large public education campaign to educate the public about how to cast a formal vote. That took TV, radio, Internet, and a whole range of other forms. It was very extensive. I would have to tell you that it was very expensive. I have not yet provided a public costing for it, so I can't provide that to you today, but it was in the many, many millions of dollars. It was to educate the public to ensure that the rate of informality remained low.
The other change, for us at least, was that for the first time ever it was a requirement for us to register party logos and for party logos to appear on the ballot paper. Again, all of this, the entire project, had to be done within four months. The figures I gave you were for one state, for New South Wales. You need to multiply that around Australia, which means that we needed to scan essentially 15 million ballot papers or thereabouts, and be able to produce an outcome from that.