Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Trade and Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

I've just explained that we are making it easier for people to get on the roll. One of the features of a referendum coming up, of course, is that the AEC does ramp up its effort to ensure people are enrolled and correctly enrolled. The previous government withdrew enrolment funds from the Northern Territory. We have restored that money, and the AEC is already having significant success in increasing enrolments generally and Indigenous enrolments in particular. I am confident that, between now and the vote, we will have significant extra people on the roll.

In terms of the total population, we're now at roughly 98 per cent of Australians being registered to vote. Now, I don't think that, outside of a dictatorship, there is any other democracy in the world that has that level of enrolment. That's not reflected in Indigenous enrolment. We need to ensure that more Indigenous Australians are on the roll and entitled to vote. That was a policy we took to the last election. We have been implementing that and, as I say, the changes I recently made will not only helped total enrolment but will particularly help Indigenous enrolment.