Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As we heard this morning, this is a very significant week for Aboriginal Australians, for the NT's first nations peoples and for our entire nation. This Friday marks 20 years since the tabling of the Bringing them home report, and soon we will mark the 50th anniversary of the 1967 referendum.

But this week also marks a little-known act by this coalition government, two weeks after the Turnbull-Morrison 2017 budget. I speak of moves to further disenfranchise Aboriginal Territorians and of the loss of jobs in Darwin.

In the Northern Territory, only 82.7 per cent of eligible voters are enrolled to vote, with over 28,000 people not registered on the roll. So what does this government do in response? In the budget, it downsizes the Darwin Australian Electoral Commission office, including the Indigenous Electoral Participation Program. It sacks 10 staff, including four working specifically on improving enrolment, leaving just three employees. This echoes 1996, when John Howard targeted and abolished the AEC's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Electoral Information Service.

I ask the member for Wentworth, the Prime Minister, to reverse this decision. And I ask him: what would those present in our chamber this morning think about the downsizing of the AEC office in Darwin in the Northern Territory?