11/09/2024
“A private research consultancy working for the Australian Electoral Commission allegedly fabricated survey data purporting to represent the views of regional Indigenous communities during last year’s failed referendum process, according to text messages and documents seen by Guardian Australia.
During the landmark Indigenous voice to parliament campaign, the AEC relied on multiple consultancy firms and subcontracted field researchers to survey Indigenous Australians about the referendum process.
But an employee for one of the subcontractors used by the AEC, McNair yellowSquares, says he was instructed to attach false location data to interviews he conducted with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in inner-city Sydney to make it appear as though they were from regional areas and suburban Adelaide. He made the claims in a set of internal and external whistleblower disclosures.
The whistleblower, a research interviewer for McNair, says the fabrications occurred on an AEC-commissioned market research project designed to gauge awareness of the referendum process and the effectiveness of AEC advertising. McNair is taking the allegations seriously and an investigation is ongoing.
In a series of text messages seen by the Guardian, the research interviewer was instructed to use regional location coding or the postcode for Salisbury, a suburb with the second-highest proportion of Indigenous residents in South Australia, while conducting face-to-face interviews in the Sydney suburb of Redfern.”
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Is there a government department out there that isn’t crooked?
The manipulation of the truth never ends does it.
