Automatic system to update Australian electoral roll disregards parts of regional, remote NT

A federal system meant to help people’s electoral details stay up to date doesn’t work in remote and regional areas of the NT.

SYSTEMS to automatically update the Australian electoral roll disregard remote and regional parts of the Northern Territory, placing already under-represented Indigenous communities at a disadvantage.

It comes as a damning annual report for the Northern Territory Electoral Commission (NTEC) found one in three young Territorians were not enrolled to vote in 2021.

The NTEC also estimated 24,243 eligible Territorians were not enrolled to vote.

“The Northern Territory’s participation rate in relation to enrolment and voting has averaged between 10 to 15 per cent below that of most interstate jurisdictions and the national average,” the NTEC conceded in the report.

The NTEC suggested highly transient communities and the remoteness of the Territory were behind the lagging figures.

Of particular concern was that only 63 per cent of Territorians aged 18 to 25 were enrolled to vote in 2021, compared to 84.5 per cent of the same age group enrolled nationally.

This year’s figure is also a decrease on 2019, when 66.4 per cent of Territorians in that age demographic were enrolled.

When asked about the results, NT Electoral Commissioner Iain Loganathan said federal efforts to update the electoral roll had long been unavailable for the Territory’s remote Indigenous communities.

“The main enrolment program Federal Direct Enrolment Program (FDEU) run by the (Australian Electoral Commission) uses external data to automatically update the roll,” Mr Loganathan said. “This program does not apply to regional and remote areas of the NT.”

Currently, the NTEC does not receive funding to help enrol more people to vote.

NT Labor Senator Malarndirri McCarthy said cuts to the Australian Electoral Commission in 2017 had also hampered federal efforts to raise voting participation in the NT.

“The Coalition Government decimated funding to the AEC in 2017 which resulted in the Darwin office reducing its staff from 15 to three and relocating many of its functions to Queensland,” Senator McCarthy said.

“With a federal election just months away, I call on the Morrison Government to prioritise voter enrolment in the NT with additional funding and staff, rather than trying to keep our population silent.” In response to questions from the NT News, the AEC said enrolment rates, especially among Aboriginal Territorians, remained “unacceptable”.

But it also defended work to raise Indigenous voting rates, saying: “the estimated national Indigenous enrolment rate of 79.3 per cent has never been higher”, which was 5 per cent higher than in 2017.