Latest / 360 with Katie Woolf / Australian Electoral Commissioner of the NT Geoff Bloom gives us a wrap up of the federal election, and what still needs to be done

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Australian Electoral Commissioner of the NT Geoff Bloom gives us a wrap up of the federal election, and what still needs to be done · 360 with Katie Woolf

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Well. Joining me on the line right now from the
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Australian Electoral Commission, it is Jeff Bloom.
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: Good morning to you, Jeff, Good morning, Katie, Thank you
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: so much for your time.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: How are you and all your staff feeling after what
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: would have been an incredibly busy weekend?
• 0:15
  Speaker 3: Oh, very busy weekend. I'm in the Darwin counting center
• 0:18
  Speaker 3: at the moment. We've got somewhere between sixty or seventy
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: people today still counting Senate ballot papers being counted today.
• 0:25
  Speaker 3: But yeah, very big weekend, a lot of tired people,
• 0:28
  Speaker 3: but everyone's still got enough and engineers to get this
• 0:30
  Speaker 3: job done.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Now, how many people ended up turning up to vote
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: in the Northern Territory do we know yet?
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: We don't know the final turnout yet. And one of
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: the reasons is that we don't have all the declaration votes.
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: Of the declaration votes are the ballad papers that are
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: in the envelopes. We've still got many envelopes to come
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: back to us here in the Northern Territory. So for example,
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: people that use to secured telephone voting service, we don't
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: have those numbers back yet. There are also territory voters
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: that voted at an interstate location yet to come back
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: to us. That's typically between three and five thousand votes
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: to come back to us there, and of course postal votes.
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: So we are around eight thousand people on the territory
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: applied for a postal vote for this selection, and we
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: only have around four thousand of those back with us
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: at the moment, so plenty more envelopes to come back
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: and go into the count.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: So Jeff talk us through what happens now.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: For Let's go firstly with the seat of Solomon, which
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: does seem as though it's much more clear cut.
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: Well, that's right. Of course, we're not making any direct
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: declarations about the lower or upper House seats. We can't
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: do that until we've counted the votes. So I know
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: there's other commentators out there and parties and candidates that
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: are making their own declarations, but of course it's a
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: very different process for us. Our job now is to
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: count all of those votes, including the ones that we
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: don't have at the moment. So that'll take us through
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: this week and certainly into next week. Typically we would
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: be in a situation where we could declare both our
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: upper House in the third week after Holing weekend.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: What about in a seat like Lingiari, though, which is
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: looking a much closer seat and a much closer race.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: I understand, are you like what happens next? You need
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: to go the preferences or are you going through the
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: postal votes?
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: What's the process?
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: So it is about these declaration votes that we as
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: I said, we don't have them yet, and there's many
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: thousands of those votes still out there. So the margin
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: isn't wide at the moment in that division, as we know,
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: so of course all eyes on the division of Lingiari
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: at the moment, we certainly wouldn't be brave enough to
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: make any predictions about which way it's going to go.
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: And those boats need to come to us. We need
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: to put them through the count. We'll see whether the
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: margin stays the same, gets wider, or in fact comes
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: back to be a closer outcome. So there's plenty more
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: to go. There's still some interesting Lingiari, and it'll take
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: us certainly the next two weeks or so before we'll
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: know them more.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: What happens if one of the seats is incredibly close,
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: do you have to sort of do a recount or
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: anything like that?
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: Well, we do, so the recount would be if a
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: division is within one hundred votes, so the top two
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: candidates within one hundred votes, that would constitute a recount,
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: an official recount. Then of course we go right back
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: to the very beginning of the count, every account that's
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: already been conducted, so the ordinary votes that were taken
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: and all of those declaration votes. So that's quite a
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: long process to go through the whole thing again, but
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: that's what's been required for a margin of less than
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: one hundred.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: Well, it sounds like it's going to be a busy
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: day and indeed a busy couple of weeks for you guys.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: And still so at this point in time, do we
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: have any idea if we had a good voter turnout
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: in some of those more remote areas or still too
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: early to tell.
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: Look, it is really early days. At the moment, we
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: have counted the votes from the remote area mobile polling
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: teams and those numbers are already up on the Virtual
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: Telly room, so I've got a good indication there. Of course,
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: turnout and participation are two different things. So for people
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: who voted in their own community, that would be part
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: of the turnout figure, but participation would also include people
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: that voted in another community or in a regional location,
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: so they might not have been in their community when
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: they voted. So we need to pull all that together
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: before we get a better idea of overall participation and
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: turn out.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: Well, So, Jeff, busy day, mate.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: What's the next step for you guys there at the
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Electoral Commission today?
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: Look, I think it's as a matter of keep on
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: keeping on. It's all about Senate counting today, is so
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: the Senate counts are for the early voting centers. So
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: we've got some fifty thousand votes to count today in
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: the Senate space. No new House of Representative counts today.
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: That's from tomorrow and beyond as part of that declaration counting.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: Well, Jeff Bloom, it's going to be a busy one.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: Good luck to you and all the staff out there
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: at the Australian Electoral Commission here in Darwin.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: Thank you very much for your time today.
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: Thanks so much, Katie, thank you