Polling for the upcoming Voice to Parliament referendum kicked off this week, in remote communities around Australia with two weeks left before the voters are tallied.
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TVTranscript
00:00 This is a huge effort, Michael, like massive 750 locations that the AEC has to get to because
00:09 a lot of our population does live in remote or rural areas.
00:13 So this is probably the largest kind of remote polling that we've seen in a long time.
00:17 So you remember at last year's federal election, there were some concerns about whether or
00:23 not Indigenous voters were getting the kind of access and the information that they needed
00:28 from the AEC.
00:29 So the AEC has said it's done a massive effort since then to try and get out there, ensure
00:34 that people have accurate information about when the polling is happening.
00:38 But this is huge.
00:39 I mean, the AEC has to use car, boat, helicopter.
00:43 A lot of our population live on islands.
00:45 So they've got to get out to the islands to get this information to Aboriginal and Torres
00:49 Strait Islander residents, because arguably this is one of the most important votes a
00:54 lot of people have seen in a generation.
00:56 So it's important that people get the right information.
00:59 Look, one of the challenges is that I think this was mentioned earlier in the program
01:03 is that sometimes when there's sorry business, when there's been a death in a community,
01:08 it's really difficult to get the engagement because people are mourning or they've got
01:12 a lot going on in their lives.
01:14 So this is a consideration and we do hope that Aboriginal people, that the voting rate
01:19 for Indigenous people is high in this referendum.
01:21 It's so important.
01:22 [BLANK_AUDIO]