By Patrick O’Beirne, Director, Six O’Clock Advisory.

7 May 2025

As a firm, we’re not quick to crow about our work publicly, often because our briefs are confidential and we’d rather spend our time profiling the feats of our clients. 

This one rings a little different, though, both for us and for the client in question.

Last weekend, a team of consultants from Six O’Clock were deployed to every capital city across the country to support the Australian Electoral Commission manage media interest in the running of the 2025 Federal Election. We also captured content for the AEC’s highly regarded – and popular – digital and social media channels and supported the campaign to attract 100,000 temporary workers. (This was Six O’Clock’s third federal electoral event, having worked with the AEC since 2020.)

The work we did was typical of a proactive strategic communications brief – from media training the AEC’s leaders and broader team of spokespeople, to the design and delivery of a national media relations program, to the running of a government-to-business communication project and a major thought-leadership event for stakeholders.

But what became apparent to the team by the time election day came around – particularly to those who were new to a scope of this kind – was that the work we were carrying out really mattered.

It mattered to the AEC and, by extension, it affected every Australian who relies on the proper working of our democracy. 

On Election Day, from every corner of our country including Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Hobart/Launceston, Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane and Darwin (via sub-contractor True North), Six O’Clock consultants provided an extra arm to the AEC’s national network as we engaged editorial media for the largest – and arguably most challenging – election it has ever staged.

“It mattered to the AEC and, by extension, it affected every Australian who relies on the proper working of our democracy.“

The privilege wasn’t lost on Six O’Clock Co-founder and Director Jim Stiliadis who, after thirty-plus years working as a corporate affairs professional, hasn’t missed much. Except for 300 purple-vested temporary AEC staffers sitting on plastic seats at trestle tables within a huge suburban Brisbane warehouse to count votes for the federal electorates of Lilley, Ryan and Brisbane.

“The very manual, labour-intensive counting process is impressive not only for its sheer scale and organisation, but for the fact that it makes our voting system so hard to compromise.”

This was reinforced by Nathan Clarke who recalled the comments of an AEC Divisional Returning Officer in Sydney… “you can’t hack a pencil, mate!”. Nathan had just organised one of most popular pics on Election Day – a row of surf-life-savers voting at Bondi Beach wearing only their ‘budgie-smugglers’.

Over in Perth, Paul Clifford, from Kerry in Ireland, got a dose of democracy ‘Straya-style, spurred on perhaps from his Irish counterpart’s best wishes to the AEC. Where Paul and Art O’Leary come from, voting isn’t compulsory. “There are so many options to vote, wherever you are and whenever you choose – it’s a stark difference to back home,” Paul said. “Mandatory voting, too, is such an asset for modern-day democracy – less than 60 per cent of the electorate turned out to Ireland’s election of 2024, and if you were overseas, you missed out.”

Down in Tassie, Cathy Prior was taken by the spirit of election day, with media outlets offering her a ride in the crew cars that were moving from electorate to electorate to capture candidates voting.

Sam Sinclair, a lover of a good plan, relished the approach taken in Adelaide. This included dividing and conquering with the local team so that 28 polling places could be covered in one day to enable media’s insatiable interest while also ensuring there was no interference to South Australians casting their votes.

And, therein lies the observation of Siobhan Gleeson, a mainstay on the AEC account who was based at AEC HQ in Canberra: “Australia’s editorial media understand how important their role is in helping protect electoral integrity, so much so that they, too, get excited about the one event that truly stops the nation every three years…for goodness sake I met one journo who was sporting sausage-in-bread earrings.”

As for me? Well, I stayed put in Melbourne and, with the help of Piper McDonald, got around to various polling booths before heading to the Dandenong South Counting Centre where the resident DRO marshalled his troops with aplomb in front of a pack of national and international media.

None of my day was remarkable, save for the Member for Kooyong getting poo’d on. But I’m probably well-hydrated on democracy having had the privilege to dive into important issues with the AEC’s Digital & Media Engagement and Executive Leadership team these past five years.

As we decompress from another election run and won, we find ourselves marvelling at the operational excellence, story-telling capability and explaining capacity of our client. There’s no drawing breath this week at the AEC, however, with its job only half-done. After enabling up to 18 million Australians to vote here and abroad, the counting and recounting of those votes continues in earnest across the nation.

The electoral commission’s fierce focus on integrity is nothing short of inspiring, and certainly infectious. We admire the commitment to and intensity with which it goes about protecting Australia’s precious democracy, everyday…pleasingly with an occasional and welcome dose of Aussie sense of humour.

Above: photos captured by Six O’Clock team members showing highlights of Election Day and pre-Election Day activity from Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Launceston, Canberra, Adelaide, and Perth.