Electing an Aboriginal Voice in Australia – Who Will Get to Vote in Elections for the Proposed Advisory Body?

The Aboriginal people of Australia have put forward a proposal for a Voice to be created whereby elected representatives from the Aboriginal community can advise the federal government and parliament on matters that affect the Aboriginal community. Although the Voice was proposed in 2017, little detail has emerged about its composition, how it would function and how it would interact with the federal parliament and cabinet. One of the questions to be resolved is who would be able to vote in elections for the Voice and how would disputes about voting eligibility be resolved? This question raises complex issues of defining the Aboriginal community, association with and acceptance by a community, the right to free association, the right of a community to determine its membership and separate electoral systems for indigenous people vis-a-vis the rest of the population. Australia would not be the first nation to create special institutions for indigenous people and useful lessons can be drawn from comparative arrangements abroad. This article considers the statutory frameworks and policies with regard to the Sami in Finland and the Maori in New Zealand to develop potential guidelines for the Voice in regard to who could vote for the Voice and how disputes about membership could be resolved. Consideration is also given to the now-abolished Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), which for many years represented the interests of Aboriginal people in Australia. The article reflects on how courts have approached the question of eligibility to be part of a community and concludes that a separate electoral roll should not be used for Aboriginal people to elect the Voice, that individual self-identification should be the principle basis of voting in an election for the Voice, and that disputes about eligibility should be resolved on the basis of three primary criteria: individual self· assertion of membership, descent from an ancestor of the community, and community acceptance.