One Nation WA State Leader Rod Caddies has raised concerns following the release of the Corruption and Crime Commission report into allegations of misuse of taxpayer funds by major political parties, saying it did not pass the pub test.

“The CCC has found that there was a very high risk of serious misconduct in electorate offices and that using taxpayer resources for political party campaigning was undemocratic” said Mr Caddies.

“They found that staff were using office hours to campaign, and be trained to campaign, entered confidential information into party campaigning databases using government resources and claiming to make up the time spent on doing so after hours”

The CCC report went on to state that they could not prove or disprove if staff did actually work outside of office hours to then do electorate work.

“The CCC has seen the evidence that major political parties use taxpayer funded resources for campaigning work, and to just accept the word of the accused that they made up the time after hours; this does not pass the pub test” said Mr Caddies.

Mr Caddies welcomed the recommendations of the CCC report to make significant changes to the way electorate offices operate.

Those recommendations include the Department of Premier and Cabinet making it unmistakably clear that it does not permit electorate officers to engage in party-political work, including campaigning and training to campaign, during electorate office hours; and providing a data management system for constituent matters. It also recommends a procedure is implemented by DPC to track the use of time by electorate officers.

The CCC also stated that the improper use of electorate officers for political campaigning is a risk to fair elections and that a sitting candidate who uses the State resource of electorate officers for political campaigning has an unfair advantage over other candidates who do not have access to that resource.

“The fact is that the major political parties operate huge databases where they collect data for campaigning, and that they have used taxpayer funded resources to build those databases” said Mr Caddies.

“This is how the major parties remain in power, they have massive benefits that they give themselves to have an unfair advantage in our democracy”.

“The CCC should look at what information has been collected by political parties using taxpayer resources, and ban them from using the data collected at the next election”

One Nation WA will contest the 2025 WA state election, and is hoping to gain a share of the balance of power in the Legislative Council which would enable it to hold those in power to account.

Read the CCC media release here.