A government contractor found to have fabricated data on Indigenous communities during the referendum quietly commissioned an independent investigator to probe the integrity of its work for the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) in the past two federal elections, internal documents reveal.
Guardian Australia revealed earlier this year that McNair yellowSquares, a market research firm and frequent government contractor, had fabricated data purporting to show the views of Indigenous communities in regional areas and suburban Adelaide.
It did so while engaged by the AEC on a project to gauge public awareness of the Indigenous voice referendum process and measure the effectiveness of AEC advertising.
The conduct came to light when a whistleblower – a face-to-face research interviewer employed by McNair – alleged he was repeatedly asked to attach false location coding to interviews he’d conducted in Redfern, in inner-city Sydney.
The interviewer also alleged data had been fabricated by McNair on a project evaluating an Australian defence force (ADF) recruitment campaign.
An independent investigation by forensic accountancy Warfield & Associates has since substantiated the whistleblower’s allegations involving both the AEC and ADF projects.
But internal documents, obtained by the Guardian using freedom of information laws, show that McNair asked Warfield to go much further in its investigations.
Two weeks after they initially instructed Warfield to investigate the allegations, McNair’s lawyers sent a letter requesting the investigation’s scope be broadened to examine McNair’s work for the AEC during the 2019 and 2022 election campaigns.
McNair was engaged by the AEC during the campaigns to benchmark and track the effectiveness of AEC advertising.
In a letter to Warfield, dated 26 August, McNair’s law firm requested that “your investigation’s scope be broadened” to include projects relating to the “federal election 2022” and “AEC 2019 election jobs”.
“The officers of McNair shall furnish you with the relevant source records in relation to those jobs,” McNair’s lawyers wrote.
It is not clear whether McNair was just being overly cautious in broadening the investigation’s scope, or whether it had reason to be suspicious about the earlier work. McNair did not answer questions about what the investigation into the 2019 and 2022 election campaign work found.
The AEC says it was left oblivious to McNair’s decision to broaden the investigation.
Until approached by Guardian Australia, the AEC had not been told McNair’s 2019 and 2022 election work was being investigated.
An AEC spokesperson said it remained “incredibly disappointed in the alleged conduct of McNair”.
“I can confirm the AEC was not aware the private investigator commissioned by McNair was looking into any specific AEC research projects beyond the 2023 referendum campaign effectiveness research,” the spokesperson said. “It obviously follows that the AEC to date has not received any reports on the outcome of investigations outside the 2023 referendum campaign research.”
The FoI documents showed that, as the allegations were made public, government officials scrambled to work out the extent to which McNair was engaged on advertising contracts.
The documents, released by the finance department, showed McNair left the government blind to the allegations, despite receiving a formal disclosure from the whistleblower and his lawyers at the Human Rights Law Centre in November last year.
The finance department redacted some material from the FoI that related to legal advice it had sought from an external organisation.
It is not clear what advice the department sought. A finance department spokesperson said it had not sought to take any legal action against McNair.
The spokesperson said McNair remained suspended from the management advisory services panel, which it uses to procure a wide range of consulting work.
The spokesperson confirmed that the Warfield investigation had substantiated the allegations about the ADF project but that the “behaviour had negligible impact on the evaluation of the ADF Careers campaign”.
A spokesperson for McNair said it had completed its investigation and was now “working with stakeholders to share findings and learnings”.
“It takes time to complete a full and thorough internal and external investigation, particularly where complainant confidentiality is required,” the company said.
“We’re focused on moving the organisation forward with trust, confidence and transparency, and we are certain that the improvements we have implemented will make this possible.”
