Royce Millar and Nick McKenzie report:
The ALP [Australian Labor Party] has secretly recorded the personal details of tens of thousands of Victorians – including sensitive health and financial information – in a database being accessed by campaign workers ahead of this Saturday’s state election.
In a rare insight into personal profiling by the major parties, The Age has gained access to the database used by the ALP to tailor its telephoning and door-knocking of individual voters in key marginal electorates.
The Coalition has a database capable of similar profiling of voters, but has refused to comment or to divulge any details.
[…]
It shows how Labor campaign workers have access to details of private lives of voters, including information people may have intended to share only with the offices of local MPs. Database entries seen by The Age include details of a family’s concern about an East Malvern man’s prostate cancer, a man’s financial problems after he purchased a gaming agency, a Brighton family’s complaint about superannuation payments, and details of a woman’s victims of crime compensation claim.
The major parties have different versions of the software – Electrac for the ALP and Feedback for the Liberals – enabling the creation of detailed, cross-referenced files on constituents.
Read more in The Age.