Over 8 and a half million Australians have already cast their votes whether through postal or mobile voting, overseas ballots or at pre-polling centres. Some 10 million people, however, will be queuing at polling booths today and may even be partaking in the traditional Australian democracy sausage after casting their vote.
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TVTranscript
00:00We're really pleased that we were able to run the pre-polling period without too many
00:05queues though and then there were some here or there because of the big increase.
00:10The other sting in the tail as well with pre-polling of course is the count.
00:14If we have some really big pre-poll counts, maybe 20,000, 25,000 odd, those results can
00:19drop quite late tonight so we're calling for a little bit of patience with the counting
00:23process.
00:24I want to come back to that in just a moment but let's talk about what's going to happen
00:27today.
00:28What message do you have for people who are heading to the polls today?
00:32What should they keep in mind?
00:33Yeah, well the polls are open in a lot of places, open 8am till 6pm local time.
00:40Make sure you plan your vote, you can go to aec.gov.au, put in the location where you're
00:44going to be and it brings up all the polling places that are near you.
00:48If you are interstate, you have to go to a specific interstate voting centre so make sure
00:52that you're careful about looking for those details and if you have any specific requirements,
00:57we have all the accessibility criteria, you've just got to click through on your venue and
01:01there's a full outline of what we have at each of those venues.
01:03Evan, there's also been reports recently of incidences of skirmishes or some violence
01:10and intimidation at pre-polling centres.
01:13Obviously you may have stepped up security around polling booths today to ensure that voting
01:19goes smoothly.
01:20It's really disappointing, isn't it?
01:23I think it has been isolated.
01:24It seems to be in those areas where there's a particularly heated sort of campaign, where
01:29there's lots of campaigning going on, some of the marginal seats.
01:32It's not really what Australian elections are famous for.
01:35We're famous for respectful campaigning, the fact that people can have high passions, absolutely,
01:41that's what you should have in an election, be passionate about your causes and your candidates,
01:44but you still should be able to have a yarn outside a polling place to someone who has
01:48the opposing view and not have an issue.
01:51So we have good relationships with local police forces, they're watching what's going on,
01:56the Electoral Integrity Assurance Taskforce is there and we can utilise agencies under that,
02:01but I don't think we want to get to a situation in Australia where we have security guards
02:04at polling places.
02:05That's not what Australian elections are about.
02:07So everybody, please behave respectfully.
02:09Let's talk about this campaign in the lead up to today, of course.
02:12There are these reports of a possible Russian chat bot that's been trying to influence the
02:18campaigns as well.
02:20Have you seen much AI influence or interference in the campaigning?
02:25No, we really haven't.
02:27We've put information out for voters to help them navigate through the information environment,
02:32help them stop and consider what they're seeing.
02:35Generative AI has been a point of conversation in the lead up to the election, but I think
02:39most people are using it for satirical purposes, so obviously false, just making a point but
02:44not actually trying to fool people.
02:47And while the information environment is quick, it's rapid fire and that's kind of the danger,
02:51so is the contextual clarification that comes on the back end or the correction.
02:55So we need to keep that in mind.
02:57And that particular instance that you're talking about, the task force looked at that and they
03:00found that the sort of influence that it's having is very minimal.
03:04And that particular thing is, it's important.
03:05I think it's possible that you don't have to be able to go to the end of the time.
03:06This is really important.
03:07Okay.
03:07So, I'll take the captioning in the comment section.
03:09One, two, three, five, five, six, seven, seven, seven, seven, seven, seven, six, Six,
03:10nine, seven, seven, eight, nine, seven, seven, eight.