TRANSCRIPT:
Preparations are well underway for the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum on October 14.
Aircraft, boats and four-wheel-drives will head to the most remote parts of the country from next week to enable the first votes to be cast.
61 teams will be on the ground, eventually covering 750 remote voting locations in the lead-up to the October 14 vote.
For voters overseas, 160,000 ballot papers have been dispatched to over 100 missions around the world.
All in all, more than 17 million people are now on the electoral roll at home and abroad for the referendum.
Among them is Olivia Cleal, a 22-year-old student at the University of Sydney.
"It's a chance to change something permanently and to enshrine it in the Constitution. Political leaders and political parties, they come and go at every federal election, whereas referendums they don't come around that often. In fact, we haven't had a referendum in this country in the since 1999."
Young voters like Olivia are on the rise, with a registration rate of those aged between 18 and 24 sitting at just over 90 percent [[91.4 per cent]].
First Nations voting registration has also hit an all-time high of 94.1 per cent.
Wiradjuri student Harriet Thomson says that the referendum is generating considerable debate.
"It's one of the most important time - or the most important thing that I'll ever vote on I think. And I think that there's been quite a lot more dialogue around it, and a lot of both information and misinformation. So I think it's also been a time where people are trying to convince each other a lot more than a usual election. There's a lot more dialogue; people trying to persuade and yeah, share different sides of stories, which I think is great."
But while participation levels are breaking records, concern remains around misinformation as the referendum approaches.
The Australian Electoral Commission says it is facing an uphill battle to get social media companies to remove an increasing amount of false claims.
Commissioner Tom Rogers.
"We've referred 54 pieces of content to social media organisations more broadly. Seven related to by-elections and the remaining 47 related to the referendum or general threats about A-E-C staff. Sixteen have been acted on by social media organisations, one is pending, and the remainder were not acted upon."
Social media and community expert Lilly Vongratsavai says that the freedom of social media platforms is one of its pitfalls.
"I think it is a place where misinformation can spread really quickly. I think in places like Tiktok you can post anything and then the algorithm just pushes it up. I think it also plays on the fears of Aussies, and it's just creating chaos."
The Australian Electoral Commission is also concerned about a sharp increase in threats and abuse as the vote approaches.
Tom Rogers says there has been a jump in the number of threats particularly to A-E-C staff.
"We've seen higher levels of - I'll use the term vitriol online than we've ever seen for any electoral event. Now just before we go too far with that, this is the first social media referendum in Australia's history, and so there are things that we're seeing in social media more broadly that are then washing into this event. We've certainly seen more threats against A-E-C staff that we've seen previously, which I think frankly is a disgrace."
The A-E-C says it is too soon to say if a result will be known on the night of the referendum.
Tom Rogers says it depends on the volume of postal votes, and the closeness of the voting on October 14.
