Printers cash in on repeat Senate election

Western Australians will grudgingly go back to the polls tomorrow for a re-run of the state’s federal Senate election, but printers aren’t complaining, raking in almost $650,000 in government work alone.

Four printers are cashing in on the unexpected $645,891 windfall after the Australian Electoral Commission lost 1370 votes from last September’s poll and the result was invalidated by the High Court.

The mountain of extra work from AEC contracts does not include the thousands other printers will make from how-to-vote-cards, flyers, direct mail advertising, and posters as political parties jockey for the six open Senate seats.

[Related: More printers getting government work]

Perth firm Advance Press is the biggest winner, banking $460,000 for printing ballot papers and group voting ticket booklets for the more than 1.4 million enrolled WA voters.

Advance Press director Paul Meloncelli says this is the third federal election his firm has printed for and the extra money is a nice bonus.

“Extra income is always nice, particularly in the early part of the year,” he says.

He says the extra work is a renewal of the contract for last year’s election the company won in a competitive tender, and printed around the clock for a week to meet the tight turnaround.

“The key to winning these contracts is proven ability to deliver. It’s a huge amount of work in a short time frame and we’ve delivered every time,” he says.

“Every big contract like this helps our image in the eyes of other potential clients. It’s a good, successful outcome.”

Advance Press used Heidelberg XL and Heidelberg 102 A1 presses to complete the huge task on time.

Computershare netted $80,000 to print and distribute postal voting packs, which include a ballot paper, postal voting certificate and reply paid envelope, to more than 128,000 voters who requested one online.

The company’s Australian communication services managing director David Hynes says Computershare used Canon IP500 thermal inkjet printers at sites in Sydney and Melbourne to churn out the ballot papers as they were ordered.

“It was already set up from the main election so it was easy to just crank them out again,” he says.

[Related: More Computershare news]

Perth digital document printer Fineline Print & Copy Service gained $55,000 for printing certified lists (copies of the electoral rolls that are in polling places for polling officials to mark off voters names before they give them their ballot paper), and $28,391 to produce training material for election workers at WA’s more than 700 polling places.

Finally, Toll Transport made $22,500 for the printing and distribution of ballot papers and associated materials for overseas voters popping in to the AEC’s 13 overseas voting centres in cities from Vancouver to Ho Chi Minh City.

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