Calls for Indigenous voters to harness electoral power in tight marginal seats

Australia Broadcast Center

30-04-2025

Indigenous policy has been largely absent from this election campaign.
It's a marked difference to the 2022 poll when Labor promised a referendum on the Voice to Parliament.
The past week of campaigning has been more about Welcomes to Country than Closing the Gap .
"The only incursions into Indigenous policy in this election have really been about punching down on Aboriginal groups," said Euahlayi man Bhiamie Williamson.
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Mr Williamson is a senior lecturer at Monash University and has previously researched Indigenous voters in marginal electorates while at the Australian National University.
"Indigenous peoples have electoral power around the country in some places that will surprise people,"
he said.
"We've heard the narrative that Indigenous peoples are only 3 per cent of the population … the case of the 97 per cent lion and the 3 per cent mouse.
"That view is inaccurate, and it doesn't engage with political geography of Australia."
Bhiamie Williamson says Indigenous Australians have a "sleeping" electoral power.
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Mr Williamson's ANU research indicates that, numerically at least, Indigenous voters could decide the result in marginal electorates.
"Seats where you have this sleeping Indigenous electoral power… they exist in all of corners of the country, not just the Northern Territory.
"What we've found is that Indigenous voters [in] up to 15 seats around Australia, make up a greater proportion than the swinging margin in those electorates."
Opportunity in Gilmore
One of those seats is Gilmore on the New South Wales South Coast, which sits mostly on Yuin and Tharawal country.
It was won by Labor at the last election by just 373 votes.
Batemans Bay is in the electorate of Gilmore.
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ABC analysis of census data found there are an estimated 5,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander eligible voters in Gilmore.
Mathematically, if not necessarily politically, it's a big enough number to be influential in the seat if it runs as close as the last poll.
Liberal candidate Andrew Constance is taking on sitting Labor member Fiona Phillips in one of the tightest seats in the country.
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Walbunja woman from the Yuin nation, Ros Carriage, is the CEO of the Batemans Bay Local Aboriginal Land Council.
"I'm actually scared that the [Coalition] would get in because they've never been traditionally the friend of Aboriginal people," she said.
"I don't trust Dutton because he never comes across as genuine to me.
"I don't know that he's done anything for Aboriginal Australia at all.
"The scare campaign that they put out with the referendum disgusted me, I was just absolutely horrified."
Ms Carriage said she will be voting Labor.
Ros Carriage fears federal funding could be cut under the Coalition.
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The Batemans Bay Local Aboriginal Land Council received federal funding this year to expand its Indigenous ranger program.
Rangers conduct wildlife counts of endangered species and use traditional 'cool' controlled burns to protect temperate rainforests against bushfire.
The Coalition's plan to audit government spending, especially on Indigenous programs, has left Ms Carriage anxious about the future of ranger work on her country.
"I'm not sure that the LNP are going to continue that funding, or they may even cut the funding," said Ms Carriage.
"But we need it to look after the country."
Ros Carriage and Indigenous ranger Andrew Stewart at the site of a traditional burn on Yuin country.
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Like any electorate there are a broad range of views political views in Gilmore, not least among First Nations voters.
"I voted no [in the Referendum], and unapologetically," said Trent Thompson, a Wangaaypuwan man from the Ngiyampaa nation.
"I believe that the Voice was nothing more than virtue signalling."
Mr Thompson lives in Nowra in the north of the electorate and plans to vote for Andrew Constance, despite currently being a member of One Nation.
He's a full-time law student on a $600 fortnightly Abstudy allowance, while his wife Tamara is on a disability support pension.
"Cost of living, it is crippling, electricity alone is costing us $400 a fortnight," Mr Thompson said.
"Luckily, [the pension] is a bit more substantive. That's keeping us alive."
Trent Thompson will be voting Liberal at the election.
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While cost of living has been a major deciding factor in Mr Thompson's vote, values considerations have come first.
"Peter Dutton, I trust him much, much more," Mr Thompson said.
"I'm disgusted with what this country's become and the [Labor] politics that are running it."
Mr Thompson said while he will be voting Liberal at this election, but he's unhappy at the overall lack of debate around Indigenous policy.
"It makes me annoyed, we're supposed to be closing the gap," he said.
"We can't do that when there's no policies."
When it comes to local issues in Gilmore, Mr Thompson is worried about the lack of public housing combined with a rise in homelessness.
"We are told all the time that we live in one of the luckiest countries in the world, a rich country," he said.
"If you live in such a rich country, how can there be so many homeless people and how can there be such a drastic population jump in the last three years?"
Power in numbers
Based on ABC analysis, there are an estimated eight electorates where the potential number of First Nations voters exceeds the winning margin at the 2022 poll.
How the data was analysed:
The ABC collected data on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander potential eligible voters living in each electorate from the 2021 Census.
This number was then compared with the winning vote margin from the 2022 election, sourced from the Australian Electoral Commission.
The AEC does not provide enrolment data at an electorate level, so that metric has not been included in our calculations.
For example; the Nationals won the New South Wales seat of Cowper by 5,172 votes, where there are an estimated 7,400 Indigenous people of voting age.
In Tasmania, there are an estimated 4,000 Indigenous voters in the seat of Lyons, where Labor won with a margin of 1,344 votes.
The ABS estimates that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations are under-represented in their data, making the calculations conservative.
A further six seats are likely to have this same 'sleeping' electoral power, including Peter Dutton's seat of Dickson which is held by a slim 1.7 per cent margin.
Every state and territory except the ACT has at least one electorate where First Nations voters have the potential for power in numbers.
A map of the marginal seats across the country where the number of Indigenous voters is estimated to be greater than the winning vote margin at the 2022 election.
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The challenge for independents and the major parties is to convert a numerical advantage into a political one.
But Mr Williamson says it should be an opportunity for communities, not parties.
"Indigenous voters undoubtedly, like every other community around the country, would vote in different ways, they'd have different priorities," he said.
"However, Indigenous voters and Indigenous communities undoubtedly have common interests.
"If in some areas, you could bring and organise an Indigenous vote together as a bloc, they could wield extraordinary political influence and have a say in who wins in their local electorate."
Mr Thompson has engaged in the political process in the past, having previously been a young Liberal and a member of the National Party.
He said that there is untapped political potential in Gilmore in the way Mr Williamson's research indicates.
Trent Thompson and his wife Tamara, with children Beatrix, Georgia and Endellion.
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"[It] would require the leadership and guidance of the elders to become engaged, not just with the communities, but with each other, to come to a consensus position.
"If that could happen, then, yeah, absolutely [they] could form their own movement and move forward that way."
Ms Carriage said while the problems facing Australia's First Peoples are complex, getting Indigenous people to vote together starts with some simple propositions for politicians.
"Let the Aboriginal people know that you're there for them and you're not just that face that's on the TV every now and again.
"Put your shorts and T-shirt on. Come sit down. Have a sausage sizzle with us," she said.
"And truth telling, please! Let us see that you're actually doing something … we want to see action, we want to make them accountable."
With additional reporting by Madi Chwasta.
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