- 4 hours ago
Annabel Crabb's Civic Duty - Season 1 Episode 1 -
Fairness
Fairness
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00Inventions, but in real life, the creator of Alice in Wonderland was a highly eccentric mathematician called Charles Dodgson, who taught at Christchurch College in Oxford.
00:11In his spare time, he wrote novels and dreamed up an elaborate series of inventions, but mainly, Carol's remarkable brain pulsed with the idea of fairness.
00:22He designed a fairer system for the Wimbledon tennis tournament. Ignored. A fairer way of charging for sherry in the Christchurch common room. Drunkenly ignored. And he thought Britain's first-past-the-post voting system was desperately unfair.
00:41Off with his head!
00:43Voters only marked one box on the ballot, meaning that a candidate could win a seat with nowhere near 50% support.
00:51Will you all just give me just a little bit of a fair go, eh?
00:54Dodgson devised a system of preferential voting, where voters would rank candidates from first to least preferred, rather than just choosing one.
01:03This way, he argued, they had a better chance of electing someone they didn't actively hate.
01:09He was so enthused by the idea that he printed a pamphlet at his own expense and tried to whip up some interest.
01:17The verdict? Ignored.
01:19I haven't understood anything you've said.
01:23Dodgson died in 1898.
01:27What he never knew was that 20 years after his death, there was one place where the radical idea of preferential voting caught on.
01:36One place that still uses it to this very day.
01:41Oddly enough, it's the place where Alice feared she might end up, if she went too far down the rabbit hole.
01:48So where the bloody hell am I?
01:50Australia.
01:51The only nation on Earth to use full preferential voting from coast to coast.
01:58It's not Dodgson's exact model, but we agree with his reasonings.
02:03We use it because we reckon it's fairer.
02:07As Australians, we tend to take our voting system
02:34as australians we tend to take our voting system for granted filling out every box on the ballot
02:40paper the snow drift of how to vote cards as we rock up to vote on a saturday the sausage of course
02:49the fine should you neglect to show up at all the beige omnipresence of the australian electoral
02:56commission there to make sure that the process works exactly the same way no matter where you
03:02vote but none of this is normal no other country on earth does things the way we do shaped over more
03:10than a century by visionaries opportunists scoundrels and the great australian people ourselves
03:18democracy down under is a curious creation indeed what do you think are the most remarkable elements
03:26of the australian electoral system so what have we got we've got compulsory voting preferential
03:31voting one of the very first countries to have a permanent electoral administrative body in the
03:36australian electoral commission the secret ballot we have a secret ballot and compulsory voting which
03:41really makes our democracy robust it stuns people when you say voting in australia is compulsory
03:47they are absolutely shocked and horrified we have universal suffrage the invention of the australian
03:53ballot the segmented polling booth the design of the ballot paper with the little squares that's a
03:59pretty good mix there are some quirky bits that people don't quite understand being able to buy
04:03a sausage at your polling booth well we have preferential voting um it's not very well understood
04:09oh my god explaining the preferential voting system is the hardest thing in the world particularly when
04:14you're trying to do it in layman's terms what are the long-term effects of our having an independent
04:21electoral commission one of the reasons why australians continue to trust
04:26at a really really basic level their democracy is that the thing is set up neutrally independently
04:33there's a sense that the rules of the game are fair it's one of the best things about this country
04:38and we never talk about it here is an address to the nation by the prime minister here's another
04:44unusual thing about the australian system as you know i've been to see the governor general this morning
04:49we have elections roughly every three years but the exact date is at the exclusive whim of the prime
04:56minister and today i seek a mandate from the australian people to move australia forward cool if you're
05:03the prime minister less so if your electoral commissioner jeff pope who faces a mammoth task plan the nation's
05:12most fiendishly complex single day event without the benefit of what most would agree is a fairly
05:19relevant detail the date oh my god this is a giant shed jeff how many of these sheds do you have
05:26uh we have just over 60 of these but this is actually medium size there's one there's
05:31there's one in sydney that actually is at least twice the size of this it's huge so this is all of the
05:36the boxes and the chairs and the ballot papers and the pencils and the no ballot papers oh because
05:46they're under lock and key elsewhere well because we haven't started the process i feel like i just
05:49gave you a heart attack a little bit of a heart attack there are no ballot papers here this is all
05:54of the materials to run a polling place okay but for the ballot players jeff we're all looking at
06:01election dates right and watching the prime minister's face really really carefully i assume you're doing
06:05that too absolutely i i get no other indicator than the prime minister's face and his announcement
06:10is your job a bit like planning a wedding when nobody's actually proposed to you yet yeah uh at
06:16a venue that you don't know where it's going to be you don't know really who the guests are going to
06:20be you don't know how many are actually going to turn up so yeah it's probably not a bad analogy
06:24actually but you know you're going to need five million pencils i think we've got 250 000 pencils to
06:29service the election all around the country you're sure that's enough pencils we reuse them and at the
06:34end of this we actually look at what materials we can also donate is it annoying to have to book all
06:40these places and make all the calculations when you don't actually know when the election's going to
06:45be oh look the hardest part is you know 7 000 polling places all around the country 580 early voting
06:52centres all around the country probably also working with defat to get all the materials like what you see
06:58here out to 111 australian embassies and and posts and missions all around the world and then of course
07:05sourcing and employing 100 000 fantastic people that want to come and work with us are you a logistics
07:12person by temperament look i'm pretty damn good at planning you know that comes from my operational
07:18policing background i've planned things to the nth degree because you were a cop for a long time
07:23weren't you yeah just over 20 odd years do you run to many baddies in this job you come across some
07:29from time to time you know the threats of foreign interference um are really growing threats to every
07:36election in western democracies right around the world it's weird isn't it that when your full job
07:42is to not be noticeable right that's right you want to disappear and you want democracy to be
07:47functioning without anyone even realizing that you've got 60 sheds full of boxes and pencils and
07:54magnifying glasses and stuff going everywhere yeah i mean despite this pink vest i'm mr calico right
08:00i was really interfering with your page mr beige mr boring is what i aspire to doesn't sound
08:06particularly inspirational although as an organization we aim to be boring and we aim to be not in the
08:12headlines you need to have a word to your best guy correct yeah jeff i don't want to freak you out
08:20by reminding you that this is your first federal election as the electoral commissioner yes everything
08:24seems to be going well yeah so far uh you know but we haven't had contact with all of australia just
08:30yet so that's when it's going to be a little bit challenging but look i'm loving it i love the
08:34organization i love the people that work for us and i gotta say i actually find polling day a bit emotional
08:41you know it's you just get so proud of what the organization has delivered but also
08:48australia's democracy is just so special and when you look at what's happening right around the world
08:52i think it's becoming even more special and more precious and more treasured
08:58the 2025 poll a logistician's dream of carefully managed stationary and foldable booths is very
09:06different from the first parliamentary elections ever staged in australia which kicked off in new
09:11south wales to elect city and regional representatives on june the 15th 1843. british rules were applied
09:21in order to vote you had to be a man and a man with property at that the great fear in the 19th
09:27century was if the mob had the vote then you'd get tyranny weirdly there's this inverted idea of
09:34democracy that only educated people and only people with property uh would respect the rule of law
09:42voting took place in public meeting spots which in colonial australia often meant the pub
09:50well i think voting in colonial times is pretty wild you think a democracy sausage
09:55is cause for celebration but if you were a voter in 1843 oh my god voting day was just wild and it
10:03was run in the same way that elections were run in britain at the time that is there were public events
10:09there were marching bands there were parades there was a lot of alcohol both for the people who could
10:15vote but also it was a spectator sport so there were people cheering and booing and drinking and then
10:22the voter would walk up and have to say his name and the person who he was voting for which means
10:29that everybody could hear who you were going to vote for it was like democracy circus here in australia
10:36they would just be getting people completely pissed and it was actually one of the reasons that people
10:42oppose women's suffrage because they said you can't expect delicate women to come out on the street
10:48to exercise their right to vote when these are the scenes that they're going to be confronted with
10:55adding to the cocktail of boozy confusion in sydney's election was the fact that most of the
11:01candidates were called william and they were very unlike british candidates william charles wentworth
11:08was the love child of a highway robber and a clothes thief who'd made good in the colonies as an explorer
11:15and newspaper owner his running mate william bland was a convicted murderer deported from england for
11:23killing someone in a duel bland also features in what's believed to be australia's first photograph
11:30hello sir no photographs survive of the third william william hustler all we have is his campaign
11:37material which consists exclusively of terrible poetry that he paid to have printed in the newspaper for
11:44your rights the most trifling you'll find me a tussler once you've elected yours w hustler voting day
11:52quickly spun out of control as william wentworth pulled the head in the count they kept a running
11:58tally and so the candidates could say oh well not enough people are voting for me i better give them
12:03more drink and there ended up being a lot of fights a bunch of drunken sailors ran to a whaling vessel
12:09and got a harpoon the sailors were subdued by police but across town a man called daniel finney
12:18was bludgeoned to death and at the end of that time governor george gipps wrote back to the colonial
12:24office in london and said the election had gone off very well william wentworth was elected as was
12:31william bland who also designed australia's first airship and gave his name to the bland shire in the new
12:38south wales riverina which otherwise could never have inked its historic 2013 sister city arrangement
12:45with dull in scotland and boring in oregon colonial australian voters didn't mind electing felons but
12:56they really did not love the idea of their bosses landlords or even their friends watching how they
13:02voted of course the thing that marks out true democracies is the secret vote giving people the
13:08right to vote in private and not have someone else dictate how they vote in quick succession in the
13:15mid-1850s victoria tasmania and south australia introduced a new form of voting a paper ballot
13:23filled out in private early models listed candidates names with voters ruling out the ones they didn't like
13:31and somebody in victoria comes up with the idea of the segmented polling booth so that a number of
13:38men can be all voting at once australia's electoral innovations might have stopped there
13:44had a young man called william boothby not been dragged from london to live in adelaide
13:52the reason william's father benjamin boothby had been appointed as a judge in adelaide by the colonial
13:58office and he brought along his wife and 12 children of whom william was the eldest william
14:05as luck would have it nursed a passion for electoral design and he got the job of running the first
14:13elections in south australia and he has to do it by scratch they have to get an electoral role they then
14:19have to run them and so who's going to actually set up the electoral role local government is very
14:24underdeveloped there's not much of a police force many of the able-bodied men are over in victoria
14:31hoping to find gold and so he decides that the only solution is to have paid public servants
14:38building the electoral role and running the elections after barely two years in the colonies
14:44william boothby the accidental immigrant had pioneered the idea of an independent permanent
14:50electoral authority he ran every election in south australia for nearly 50 years and he had a bright
14:58idea for improving the secret ballot instead of having to cross out the names and to just have
15:04little squares next to the ballot you just could tick the one you wanted and that became known as the
15:10australian ballot and it spread throughout the world and it's one of australia's great contributions to
15:16global elections oh boothby was also very interested in olives and pioneered the idea of growing them
15:22in prisons for their oil very sensible he wrote a book about it we do take it for granted i think in
15:26australia the ability to just say the most radical thing which is you want to throw out the person who
15:34has power at the moment and you don't have to set fire the place to do it you just put a one next to
15:41somebody else and they get kicked out we've had parliament commonwealth parliament going for over
15:46120 years they haven't changed any of those elements that he originally put in place all those years
15:53ago so is booth being a bit of a rock star for electoral nerds well he's certainly one of mine
15:58that's for sure i think his legacy is just so enduring and still such a core feature of how we function today
16:05the australian concept of the secret ballot spread to america and then to britain but they still don't
16:16vote like aussies do which is to say triennially on a saturday pencil and paper bang down a snag
16:22and you're good to go civic duty done thank you for the sausage democracy is different everywhere even
16:29our closest relatives can't agree on a day in america it's tuesdays using everything from a paper
16:36ballot to electronic voting machines in britain it's thursdays and you're only allowed to vote in
16:42your designated local polling station and no you absolutely will not get a sausage india the world's
16:49biggest democracy staged its last election over 44 days with 15 million election workers traveling by road
16:58boat and elephant to record close to a billion citizens choices between 744 political parties
17:06represented on ballot papers by symbols including brooms and ceiling fans these are the kinds of
17:13innovation that a democracy demands when a quarter of its participants don't read and write in gambia
17:20people vote for a candidate by dropping a marble in the relevant barrel in estonia you're allowed to vote
17:26online and has been for 20 years what is a democracy it's a trickier question than it sounds
17:34you've got to watch out for non-democracies in drag like russia where complicated and inscrutable voting
17:41machinery somehow manages to produce a majority for the status quo every time or north korea where voting
17:50is compulsory turnout is close to 100 percent and the ballot paper features a single name australia is
17:59unusual in having a single electoral authority for every election that's conducted the rules are the
18:04same whichever polling booth you step into the ballot papers look exactly the same and it's all
18:10a handwritten ballot and you know that the person who will be counting that vote
18:14is independent and is doing it as a civic service everyone's voice matters how everyone votes matters
18:24and in having a level of confidence across the australian body politic from the far left to the
18:30far right that and everyone in between that this is a fair electoral system run by fair-minded electoral
18:37officials that is worth its weight in gold you are not going to worry about and you are not going to be
18:46encouraged to think that this election or that election is corrupt the contest is the same
18:51everywhere if you look at the american election there's a blizzard of different rules from state
18:55to state from county to county uh and the rules are just so complex and so difficult
19:00case in point the beautiful baffling american city of bristol which sprawls across the border between
19:09trump voting tennessee and virginia which in 2024 opted for the democrats the state line runs down the
19:18middle of the main street abortion is legal over here but not over here possession of marijuana is a
19:26criminal offense on this side but not if you cross the street it's presidential election day though
19:33when things get particularly confusing if you're voting on this side you'll need photo id and you're
19:39welcome to bring your gun along over here they're cool if you show up without id but the firearm not allowed
19:47in tennessee a ballot selfie could get you 30 days in jail in virginia do your hair snap away
19:54touch screen voting paper and pencil this is america where the rules and regulations of voting depend
20:04entirely on which state you call home
20:09so mark we're in virginia right now yes that's correct yes bristol virginia you are the mayor of
20:16bristol tennessee which is the other side of the street right on across that yellow line right there yes
20:21are you okay being on this side of the street are you going to be challenged absolutely not uh we
20:27have a great relationship with our sister city and uh we get along quite well and bristol virginia has
20:33its own mayor and bristol tennessee has its own marriage is you that's right yes same police force
20:38no we have two city councils two police force two uh fire departments all of that sort of stuff so if i've
20:44been chased by your cops on that side of the street can i just cross the street and lose them no they'll still
20:50get you yeah yeah we've worked all that out i think in years past you could have done that but not
20:55anymore also you seem to have more of the cool bars why is that you know it's just um it's the thing
21:00about tennesseans i think we're known for uh producing the very best whiskey in the world and
21:05so uh some of that's just part of the how things have played out over the years so yeah so is it
21:11business on this side party on that side i think so yeah if you want to have fun you come to tennessee
21:15yeah absolutely okay all right i feel unprepped should we move to the fun side of the street
21:20oh absolutely yeah i'd love to
21:31when a presidential election happens you're all voting right every state has its own voting rules
21:37and regulations right seems confusing to us as australians because we just have the same rules
21:43everywhere yeah it's all different and in fact in the state of tennessee it's uh we have election
21:47commissions in each county and those uh election commissions can determine whether or not they're
21:53going to do a paper ballot or if it's going to be electronic and then some states have electoral
21:59officers who are themselves elected right this seems unusual to me the commissioner of elections is
22:05appointed right but he's also appointed by you know a partisan state government that's right so talk to
22:11me about districting in australia we have an independent electoral authority but in many states in the u.s
22:19the state government will do the redistricting electoral boundaries yes so tell me how you can
22:28maneuver that advantageously you know people uh do all kinds of things when it comes to those boundary
22:34lines and right work some things to their own ends so when i was on the county commission everybody
22:39was a republican and so if they wanted to redistrict that would have been a pretty easy thing but is it
22:44the general rule in american politics that if you can get away with gerrymandering then go for it
22:52you know uh rule number one is don't get caught rule number two is lie if you do right no that's not
22:57that's that's not right mark's joking about this of course the truth is you don't even need to lie
23:05the politically profitable art form known as gerrymandering redrawing electoral boundaries to ensure
23:11your party wins is perfectly legal in america it is the process in which people draw lines so that the
23:19election is really being determined by those who draw the lines not the voters who vote in the election
23:25you end up with districts that look like this the system here results in some of the most
23:33preposterously drawn districts you've ever seen in your life mark's republican colleagues in nashville
23:40recently managed a tactical triumph by splitting the city's black population into three and stuffing the
23:47bits into republican dominated districts the result the democrat leaning black vote is diluted
23:54and nashville no longer sends a single democrat to congress
24:01it's not just doodling this stuff has an effect america's lower house is huge 435 seats but they're so
24:10rigged that in 2024 only 17 of them changed hands three percent whereas in australia
24:19it's a fairer fight because our electoral boundary process is completely uncolored by politics
24:27jeff tell us how you beige it up there's effectively a two-step process so for me to truncate it
24:33the there's a redistribution committee that is formed that is chaired by me as the electoral
24:38commissioner we open up for public submissions come up with a proposal about how to adjust the
24:43boundaries to equal representation we possibly can put out for comment we take comments and we come up
24:48with a final proposal about how we're going to try and change those boundaries then the second step is
24:55that proposal then goes to the augmented electoral commission chaired by a person who's appointed by
25:01the chief justice of the finance also got australia's chief statistician from the three of us
25:06then do effectively the same process here's a proposal open to submissions consider everything that's in
25:11front of us make the decision based on all of that as to what we feel is the best outcome i think i
25:16lost consciousness while you were describing the full process is this the conspiracy that while we fall
25:23asleep when you explain it you do something corrupt it's all open and transparent why do you have
25:31to read raw boundaries you know we've got growth corridors in australia where population is exploding
25:36and we've got to try and even that out so we redistribute every seven years
25:42in western sydney another of jeff's vast collection of sheds is being whipped into shape by aec veteran
25:50melanie so what's with all these locked cages i mean what's in there oh well that's where we're
25:56going to put all our ballot papers when we get them yes so very important and very important that
26:01we keep them secure right authorised personnel only authorised personnel only you could be wearing a
26:06particular vest and in a particular role pink vest get you in there no really what color vest do you
26:12need to get in there uh the red vests that our division returning officers and their materials
26:16stuff we're so elite absolutely mel's being modest in her 20 years at the aec she has worn the proud
26:27red vest of the dro the divisional returning officer responsible for one of australia's 150 federal
26:35electorates these days she's a trainer she plays yoda to an army of purple vested luke skywalkers
26:44the dro's of the future melanie what sort of people want to come and work for the aec at election
26:51time people who come to work for us are often people who just love elections whether it's um
26:56whether it's the the process or whether it's just the theatrics of it or um but people who just love
27:02uh the fact that it's a contribution to democracy as well right so you're you know playing a civic
27:06role so you've been a divisional returning officer which is when you run a whole seat
27:11yes right is that nerve-wracking yes when you uh when you're essentially the person who is
27:18responsible for delivering the election for that seat absolutely um my first time as a divisional
27:24returning officer was 2016 and that was a hectic it was a hectic election it was a three-way contest and
27:30and and that meant it was really hard to tell how it was going to fall how relaxing very relaxing how
27:37often do you cry when you're a dro uh in 2016 i cried every day for three weeks less in 2019 um
27:48that was my that was that was my objective in 2019 cry less than 2016 success
27:52so looking out on this does it make you feel inspired or panicky
28:00inspired to see everything looking as ready to go as it is and be nervous once people get involved
28:08people get involved yes exactly uh you know once the elections would run a lot more smoothly if
28:14there were no humans involved it was just ballot papers yeah sometimes i think that but um in general
28:20the people are amazing breaking news in canberra the exact date of the federal election is about to
28:30stop being the prime minister's special secret my fellow australians this morning i visited the
28:38governor-general and her excellency has accepted my advice that an election be held on saturday 3rd of may
28:462025 the pm's next five weeks will be a modern pentathlon of chaos steps up a gear for the election is
28:55on this election is a choice about who can better manage our economy we go beyond the talking points
29:00in a bizarre election campaign controversy they use every moment and chase every last vote
29:06but jeff is governed by legislation that was written in 1918 and the onset of an election obliges him
29:18to observe a series of stately duties and we'll start with the writs for the house of representatives
29:24a call upon the governor-general for the issuing of the writs basically they're the paperwork for the
29:31election thank you very much thank you thank you a physical printout of the electoral roll for every
29:38single seat now the northern territory that one's solomon each of which jeff must certify with his own
29:45fair hand all right well
29:51the names of nearly 18 million 100 000 people in front of us and the role is now ready for the election
30:01of the election but the aec's process hits an intoxicating height of complexity and antiquity
30:09when it comes time to determine the order of candidate names of the ballot it's done with scrupulous fairness
30:16in public on the same day at high noon in all 150 electorates this one's the western sydney seat
30:26fowler it's now 12 o'clock we'll begin this declaration of nominations according to the electoral act
30:33electoral staff must section 213 paragraph one sub clause one compile a list of candidates and
30:42sub clause two read it out i'm now required to declare the names and nomination details of all
30:48candidates then sub clause three place numbered balls in a spherical container i think there's
30:55something like two and a half pages in the electoral act are devoted to that act of rolling
31:00the cage sub clause four rotate the container and permit any other person present who wishes to do so
31:09to rotate the container i mean you could just get a computer to randomize the order couldn't you
31:15where would the fun be in that when you've got this fantastic artifact that is so transparent
31:21people are invited to come up and rotate the bar and they do and they love doing it
31:25under sub clause four i wish to rotate the container
31:37sub clause five cause a person who is blindfolded and has been blindfolded since before the rotation
31:44of the container in accordance with sub clause four ethan will perform this duty to take the balls
31:50or cause the balls to come out of the container one by one and as each ball is taken or comes out
31:58to pass it to another person who shall call out the number on the ball number one
32:06jared athlete if we had a randomized computer process i can guarantee you there will be conspiracy
32:14theories and complaints about the code and about the assurance of the system number four
32:20every jacob howard and the bias that sits in the code that sits behind that as to how a particular
32:26candidate came out on top of a particular ballot paper or how they might have come out on top twice in
32:32successive elections it's about avoiding those traps and pitfalls vivek singha this completes the draw
32:39for candidate positions thank you
32:43di lee is the incumbent here in the western sydney seat of fowler
32:48di is one of the swarm of independents who ambushed the major parties in safe seats around
32:53the country three years ago and she's hoping to hold on okay dice you've drawn number three is that
33:00good i just think it's great that labor is below me right okay not this time last time they were
33:06above me last time you were number four so you're kind of creeping up with the ballot paper um were
33:11you worried about when you have the same surname as the labor candidate were you worried that you'd be
33:16next to each other no not really i mean at the end of the day she has um a labor logo whereas mine is
33:24independent and i've been out in this community since you know i settled uh and i think we have
33:32transformed this community to people knowing that they can vote for an independent and the world will
33:37not end
33:44standing by in the aec's canberra nerve center graphic designers now have just hours to lay out
33:51hundreds of unimpeachably fair ballot papers spacing spelling font size placement it all has to measure
34:00up there's a lot of time pressures on us to get the ballot papers created and to the princes that very
34:09night why is it such a tight deadline because there's a lot of early voting that goes on right and so
34:15we have one day to get everything right 100 and that just means that the moment we get the data it's
34:21all systems go
34:25and when the presses roll they roll for days in a facility guarded 24 7.
34:33the smell of the ink in the air is kind of amazing isn't it it really gets up the nostrils and
34:38uh gives me goosebumps like it's it's incredibly excited or excitement both that's good we're
34:48actually in the final stages of printing the ballot papers printing 20 million ballot papers here they
34:53started at midnight on friday and it's now tuesday we're nearly at the end so they've been going 24 7.
34:59nationally we're doing about 55 million ballot papers
35:03from bradden in the act to ballarat to bernie to the barossa valley to bunbury to barunga to
35:11thunderburg to byron bay to berlin to bogota these ballot papers are servicing australians
35:18i hope there's no spelling errors in that lot
35:22there won't be i can guarantee you the amount of eyes and processes and assurance measures in place
35:28there won't be you're big nerds we love it
35:43this is a cool machine yeah so it's getting batched batching into a hundred yeah a hundred into a box
35:50probably a box of ten thousand much quicker than doing it by hand and you have to keep track of
35:55every single one of them right yeah absolutely because it's bad if a box goes missing somewhere
36:00right it's not bad like it's horrendous okay um so they're batched and each batch is absolutely
36:10tracked so the security measures from here in the transport process from the printer through to our
36:17transport provider through to our account centers they are all tracked it's a massive accounting exercise
36:23balancing numbers printed numbers out numbers in the ballot paper is absolutely sacrosanct like
36:31you know we treat it as if it's a blank check every eligible voter in australia is entitled to one of
36:39these blank checks in 2025 an eligible voter means an adult citizen which seems fair but for the first half
36:47of our federation's life the definition did not extend to the continent's first inhabitants the
36:54system our democratic system has excluded aboriginal people for so long and and i think that's really
37:00critical because australia really prides itself on its electoral commission on our fairness and voting
37:08but that's that's not how it's played out you know looking back and joining the dots in australian history
37:14it really um it's really remarkable how many times there's been one truculent passionate individual
37:24who has stymied a particular move or sometimes facilitated a particular move that has had these
37:31long-standing ramifications in our democratic history when the first ever leader of the senate richard
37:41o'connor jovially introduced the barton government's franchise bill to the upper house in 1902 its terms
37:48were radically simple it was an extraordinarily broad and generous standard of franchise effectively no
37:57one was excluded from it unless you were under the age of 21. if you were an adult a british citizen
38:02and you lived in australia you could vote had the legislation stayed that way australia would have
38:08become the most democratic country in the world but it didn't stay that way complications began in
38:16the senate when alexander matheson a wealthy businessman who served as senator for western
38:21australia declared it was an insult to white women that their upgrade to full voting status should be
38:28shared with aboriginal women he moved an amendment that prevented the enrollment of quote aboriginal
38:34natives of australia and those of the half blood and i was really fascinated to find that there were
38:40actually many members of that first parliament who were arguing in favor of aboriginal australians
38:48retaining the vote chief among them was senate leader o'connor who argued it would be a monstrous thing
38:55an unheard of piece of savagery on our part to stop aboriginal people from voting in their own country
39:02simply on the basis of their race o'connor makes quite a passionate speech he says you know we've
39:08taken the land of these people and we're not even going to let them vote in their country o'connor
39:13stripped out the amendment but matheson struck back with fresh claims western australia he told the
39:19chamber was full of impressionable aboriginal people who could easily be coerced by wealthy graziers
39:25to vote a certain way he was worried that certain landowners would just gather up all of their blacks
39:34and truck them to the polling booth the federal parliament will be swamped by aboriginal votes
39:41matheson thundered and it worked over days of debate support for matheson's amendment grew
39:49o'connor feared that if he continued to resist it the entire bill might be lost
39:54reluctantly politics being the art of the possible o'connor chose to give way the franchise act
40:02that made australian women the most fully enfranchised voters in the world also disenfranchised
40:09indigenous people and that is how the majority of aboriginal people were deprived of the vote for six
40:16decades a brief and ill-informed debate inflamed by the heated views of a determined individual
40:23for the lifetime of our democracy for almost half of that period we've excluded aboriginal people
40:32i mean that's not an insignificant thing we were unable to contribute to debates about
40:40laws and policies that absolutely subjugated our people whether they were land laws whether they were
40:45child removal laws whether they were stolen wages it's certainly not something that we talk about a lot but
40:54it's a fact and that has had the most profound impact upon our people
41:08four thousand kilometers and five generations away from those bruising old debates
41:15a remote voting team is executing the aec's remit to collect the votes of australians wherever they may be
41:22this chopper is carrying just dozens of votes from a remote arnhem land community cut off by floods
41:35they're continuing to yirrkala right on the tip of the gove peninsula in the marginal seat of lingiari
41:42it's a tiny township with an immense place in australian history
41:47that will set up down the back here this old church was freshly built back in 1963
41:57when it witnessed the gathering of yongu leaders coming together to sign the historic bark petitions
42:05today the church is a polling place we're doing for time for nine minutes
42:16duncan thank you for taking a break from duties of democracy what is it exactly that you do for the aec
42:23i'm not a full-time aec employee i'm one of the the tens of thousands of australians who put their hand up to
42:29participate to work for the aec during these elections this campaign i've been lucky enough
42:33to be part of a very small team that's been going out to remote communities in arnhem land and
42:38i put up my hands each election i just love the process love being here what do you love about it
42:44oh look i just love getting out to the remote communities i love seeing almost a carnival atmosphere
42:50when people come together to vote is there anything particularly special to you about conducting
42:57the pre-poll in this church in this community it's an incredible community of incredible history
43:04history that's important for for australia as a nation to come to this church and to be welcomed
43:10into this church to run the polling it is so special you get to tick a few superstars off the roll too
43:16right oh and this this community is renowned for it for its leaders for its community leaders so you
43:21might have people like yalmai yinipingu or withiana marika coming in to vote and they are they are heroes
43:28in the northern territory and across australia we need people to put a number in every box number one
43:35consecutive numbers number one two three and you can come over and help them too in in language
43:42you can change your voting federal election voting
43:58yongu people find themselves existing in two systems of government one that's been around for thousands
44:04of years plus a newer one that's only included them for a touch over 60 and moves to a vastly different
44:12rhythm how do you feel about voting in this system when you're also part of a much older system yeah
44:20as a yoonu person um we have our own government system you know we we have our own laws but
44:27it's said that australia don't recognize that your law our law doesn't change it's never changed it's
44:38always the same you know it's still the same today um but when it comes to the ngabaget law
44:47or the australian law you know it changes all the time
44:51is it unusual to be invited to join a democracy 60 years after it started
45:03we have what my uncle galarui unupingu's younger brother mandawi would remind us
45:13that we have double power because then we have to think both ways
45:19the union way of thinking and the balanda way of thinking and how
45:26do we put these together how does the yoonu system work
45:31not in three-year cycles right no no it's every day almost
45:38almost every day so the labor party so yeah yeah you can look on the back this is for lisa
45:46lisa severt so if you want to vote for her you put number one down the bottom there so the turnout
45:51in this electorate is lower than it is around the rest of australia is that because of the logistical
45:57difficulties or what do you attribute it to we've still got issues in some areas and we need to work
46:03on that annabelle i think more resources from you know the australian electoral commission because it
46:09needs to be impartial i think it's really important for aboriginal people to feel part of this system
46:17not excluded from it this one there's two options you're voting above the black line we put numbers
46:23one to six in your choice order or we do numbers one to twelve on the bottom
46:31this is the northern territory so i think i'm actually contractually obliged to ask you if you've
46:36ever been threatened by a croc whilst conducting a remote voting no but i have a dingo's threatened
46:41the voting once and attacked other other dogs you know that were members of the community and this
46:47was in central australia tables were upended is it your job to deal with the dingo a lot of ballot
46:53papers was thrown on the ground to scare the dingo off on that occasion which is you know not what
46:58you do in terms of best practice dealing with with ballot papers but every ballot paper was accounted for
47:04oh good wow did the dingo respond the dingo took off and tables were re stood up and the voting
47:12continued lots of stories like that from the remote teams across the northern territory in northern australia
47:22so when you've flown out all the way to a remote community and you're working there all day
47:26you come home with a dozen votes tell me why that's worth it oh look i think it's still really
47:32important because the the electorates and the the outcomes are getting very very marginal there's
47:37not many safe seats left anymore in the northern territory so every vote counts well there's no
47:42such thing as a safe seat anymore anywhere is there it's becoming that way it's the era of disruption
47:49welcome to pebble beach this is the west wing of the white house the influencer invasion feels quite
47:55elitist as though influencers aren't citizens of this country we live in a democracy and influencers
48:01have become players in that political game shattering the conventions of the past you could just go down
48:09to the prime minister's office and say i've got this story that's going to kill you what do you say
48:14about it next on civic duty
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