The Liberal Party billed taxpayers $2,000 to conduct robo-calls to voters in the seat of Black, at the same time the party charged the public $25,000 to conduct secret polling ahead of the by-election in the southern suburbs seat.
Former Liberal Leader David Speirs signed off on the payment of $2,001.51 from taxpayers to the Liberal Party of Australia for an "Integrated Voice Response Community Survey".
According to the invoice, the survey was conducted on 9 October 2024, just four days after Mr Speirs announced he was quitting Parliament after being charged with drug supply offences.
Yesterday, it was revealed taxpayers had been slugged $25,000 to pay for secret Liberal polling conducted by Sydney-based Freshwater Partners, a research firm co-founded by former Liberal Party chief pollster Mike Turner.
Both the $25,000 for polling and $2,000 for Liberal Party robocalls were charged to David Speirs's Global Allowance, with Mr Speirs certifying that the expenditure complied with the Global Allowance Guidelines.
Those guidelines specifically prohibit expenditure of the Global Allowance on election expenses, other than postal vote applications.
Taxpayers were slugged almost $40,000 for polling, public relations support and letters to constituents endorsing the Liberal candidate in the upcoming by-election.
This compares to a total of just $11,000 in the 3 months prior.
The revelations comes as the independent Electoral Commissioner forces Vincent Tarzia and the Liberals to withdraw inaccurate and misleading election material which falsely claimed the State Government had introduced a "lettuce tax".
As put by Stephen Mullighan
This extraordinary scandal gets worse.
Vincent Tarzia's Liberal Party seems to have no problem racking up huge expenses on the taxpayer credit card in the lead up to an election.
Not content with billing taxpayers $25,000 for party polling, the Liberals have actually taken the unprecedented step of issuing its own invoice to taxpayers for $2,000 robocalls.
This is an outrageous use of taxpayers' money by the Liberals, who have clearly concocted a scheme to avoid for paying for these political costs themselves.
The Liberals must pay this money back to the people of South Australia.
