20% 0f Indigenous Australians not enrolled to vote
The Claim
It’s not rocket science to know what happened here. They ripped resources out of the electoral commission. There was a deliberate policy of the former government to restrict people voting in the territory. They tried to abolish the seat and we fought very hard to get two seats in the territory. They restricted the numbers of people who were working for the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) to get people on the roll.
It was an outrage what occurred and then there was a lack of resources to enable people to vote. We have one vote, one value in this country. It’s an important principle of our democracy and the fact that 66% of people voted, it means that one in three people in the electorate of Lingiari didn’t get to vote. That was a part of the former government’s design. It wasn’t by accident and they should be held to account for it.”
Did they restrict voting?
In October 2021, the Coalition introduced a bill to require the electoral commission to ask voters for identification.
Turnout in Lingiari is down from 73.70% in 2016, to 72.85% in 2019, to 66.8% in 2022 (although this may increase slightly as final declaration votes are counted).
Verdict
While some criticism of the Coalition’s attempted voter ID bill is justified,
Source: Did the Morrison government try to suppress voting in the Northern Territory? | Australian election 2022 | The Guardian
olddogthoughts 