On a remote island off the tip of the Northern Territory, Paulina Puruntatameri is studying candidate leaflets for the battleground seat of Lingiari.
The artist and cultural leader says her vote is up for grabs, even as she lines up outside the council boardroom turned polling booth for the 250-odd voters in the community of Pirlangimpi in the Tiwi Islands.
The Labor pamphlet features a beaming Marion Scrymgour, a Tiwi woman who holds the sprawling outback seat with a 1.7% margin, who is promising cheaper groceries and 3,000 remote jobs.
The Country Liberal party contender, federal police officer Lisa Siebert, pledges to “fight cost of living pressures” and be “tough on crime”. She is pictured on flyers chatting to supermarket workers and standing shoulder to shoulder with NT senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.
Puruntatameri is unmoved.
“Haven’t decided yet,” she says. “We want people who can help us.”
The Indigenous vote could be crucial in the key electorates of Lingiari, Durack in Western Australia and Leichhardt in far north Queensland, where the Indigenous voting population far exceeds the previous winning margins.
But while the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people on the electoral roll is at a record high, the proportion of people turning up to vote has dropped – the power of the Indigenous vote will hinge on getting people to the ballot box.
In the next fortnight, 70 remote polling teams will venture to 480 locations across Australia by light plane, helicopter, four-wheel drive, barge or dinghy.
As the acting electoral commissioner, Jeff Pope, pulls into Pirlangimpi with a carload of reporters, there are promising signs.
“That’s exactly what we wanted to see,” he says, surveying the dozen people lined up outside the polling centre.
The Australian Electoral Commission worked hard to lift the Indigenous enrolment rate before the voice referendum, after both sides of politics labelled diminishing voter numbers “a national scandal”. In 2021 two Indigenous men lodged a discrimination complaint accusing the AEC of voter suppression, after remote communities were excluded from a move to automatically enrol urban voters using government information.
Pope says this has since been resolved and more than 90% of Indigenous people are now enrolled, for the first time in the nation’s history.
As for turnout, he says there are a “melting pot” of factors to consider, including community leadership and political engagement.
The duration of the remote polling team’s visit – usually a day or two – depends on the size of the community, and the teams try to loop back if numbers are hampered by sorry business or bad weather. Voting information is distributed through community organisations, radio stations, social media and in shop windows.
“I’m not sure what more we could do,” Pope says.
The people of Pirlangimpi have a day and a half to cast their votes. On the first morning of pre-polling, many are getting in early – despite an obvious disdain for the country’s leaders.
“The government didn’t do nothing over the past five, 10 years,” Tiwi traditional owner Dennis Tipakalippa tells reporters.
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Some in Pirlangimpi are giving Scrymgour another chance, in the hope a Tiwi woman will finally bring much-needed change to the islands. Others are fed up and switching to the CLP. One local man, handing out CLP leaflets, says he trusts the conservative party because they helped build roads and a bridge near his home town in Arnhem Land.
Away from the council chambers, supermarket worker Charlene Puruntatameri is sitting with a group of women and children at a dilapidated picnic table.
She says life is “pretty hard” in the remote community. Rents are increasing and houses are overcrowded. The mostly-dirt roads connecting the island become muddy and impassable during the wet season. There are no jobs for young people when they return home after finishing boarding school on the mainland. People can’t afford groceries.
“Every time we vote for these people and nothing’s really getting done,” she says. “We’re still suffering.”
Nearby are three women in their 20s. One of them, a 22-year-old, admits she has never voted before. She tried to enrol years ago, but didn’t have any identification – her licence was due to arrive in three weeks.
“I just didn’t bother going back,” she says.
As the temperature inches towards 35C, Pope and his NT counterpart, Geoff Bloom, hold a press conference to talk up the AEC’s remote polling efforts.
Behind them, a young man in a motorised scooter pulls up at the polling station, unable to mount the two steps inside. After a few minutes, electoral staff are alerted and bring the necessary paperwork for him to cast his ballot outside.
Bloom assures reporters that there are measures in place for people with a disability where polling places lack accessible infrastructure.
“I don’t think there’s a ramp in this particular situation,” he says. “So we make sure that we can provide that service so that everyone can participate.”
As the afternoon wraps up, the reporters are escorted back to the tiny airstrip by a local mechanic, who’s been excused from work to chauffeur the group in his Toyota HiLux.
One asks whether he has voted yet.
“Nah, I don’t really vote,” he says.
