Election Officials Are ‘Pulling Out All Stops’ to Drive Up First Nations Voting Enrolments

The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) will launch a campaign targeted at First Nations people of Australia who aren’t yet registered to vote, encouraging them to enrol, as the government gears up to call a referendum on an Indigenous voice to parliament. 

The campaign, the Commission said, will try to reach the estimated 101,000 First Nations people of Australia not yet enrolled to vote using TV, radio and social media spots between now and mid-December.

Electoral commissioner Tom Rogers said that while Australia’s estimated Indigenous enrolment rate currently sits at about 81.7 percent—the highest it’s ever been—he wouldn’t be satisfied until the Commission has driven the rate closer to the broader national enrolment rate. 

“There is clearly the likelihood of a referendum soon with a topic specific to First Nations Australians, making high levels of enrolment and engagement even more important,” Rogers said in a statement on Monday.

“Given its importance, I’ve asked the Deputy Electoral Commissioner, and the AEC’s Indigenous Champion, Mr Jeff Pope, to lead the agency’s continued efforts to have First Nations participation as high as it can possibly be,” he said. 

Prime minister Anthony Albanese made a constitutionally enshrined Indigenous voice to parliament central to his election platform in the run up to May’s federal election. 

When he delivered his victory speech from Sydney, he doubled down on its importance and committed to taking it to a vote before his first term expired. 

A couple of months later, he took his first material steps towards it, and in doing so gave the “Yes” campaign a valuable boost of momentum.

Giving a landmark speech at Garma festival on Arnhem Land in late July, Albanese said Australians would be asked a “simple and clear” yes or no question at the referendum. The question, he suggested, could be: “Do you support an alteration to the constitution that establishes an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voice?”

If Australia answers “yes” to a voice, the constitution could undergo three changes, which Albanese said would offer Australians a “starting point” for dialogue. The change could see the addition of three sentences to the Australian constitution. They might be:

• There shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voice.
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voice may make representations to parliament and the executive government on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
• The parliament shall, subject to this constitution, have power to make laws with respect to the composition, functions, powers and procedures of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voice.

Since then, the Albanese government has refused to be drawn on further detail, other than to suggest that Australians can expect to head to the polls some time during the 2023-24 financial year. 

A voice to parliament was the first of three major policy suggestions made in 2017 by the Uluru Statement From the Heart, a written address to the broader Australian population. In it, hundreds of First Nations people converged to acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded, and call for three major reforms. 

The first reform it recommended, a voice, would empower Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to form an advisory body that would consult policymakers on legislation that impacts Indigenous communities, a framework already underway in Norway, Sweden and Finland. 

A variation seen in New Zealand, meanwhile, goes further and sees seven parliamentary seats held for Māori representatives at every election. 

The AEC’s campaign will draw to a close ahead of the federal government’s official campaign, which is expected to begin early next year, as part of a bid to address concerns over absent details related to how the proposed framework would work in Australia.

Earlier this month, Uluru Statement from the Heart co-chair Pat Anderson used a National Press Club address to call on the federal government to move faster, and announce a referendum date soon, before the “Yes” campaign loses much-valued momentum. 

That momentum took a hit on Monday, when Nationals leader David Littleproud announced that the party will officially “not support” the Voice to parliament, and wouldn’t rule out actively campaigning against it. 

In the meantime, Rogers said the AEC will take all steps necessary to get the Indigenous enrolment rate as high as possible. To do so, the AEC has simplified the enrolment process for voters who might not have an accepted form of identification.

In the past, verifying ID has proven a major bugbear for driving up First Nations enrolment, Rogers said, because voters without ID have been required to print out a form, and get another voter who’s already enrolled to vouch for the applicant’s identity in writing. 

“We’ve listened to feedback from voters that this was cumbersome and a barrier to enrolling,” Rogers said. 

“Now you’ll be able to have an enrolled voter vouch for your identity entirely online—no printer required.”

Deputy electoral commissioner Jeff Pope said the Commission will be “pulling out all the stops” to make sure the massive growth seen in Indigenous enrolment continues to rise beyond the record growth seen last year. 

“In the past few years I have been to a range of remote Indigenous communities and heard from community elders about the societal challenges that understandably result in electoral participation not being front of mind—but it really is just so important as one way for those voices to be heard,” Pope said. 

“It is critical that enrolment for all Australians is as high as possible for the proposed federal referendum but this is also a body of work the AEC has been focussing on for many years, and that’s reflected in the roll growth.”

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