vote talk
The Vote Talk program involved broadcasting inlanguage conversations to inform and empower CALD communities to enact their right to vote in Australian government elections. ECCNSW delivered Vote Talk in partnership with the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) and NSW Electoral Commission (NSWEC) with funding by AEC and NSWEC.
Vote Talk engaged and resourced trusted and recognised members of CALD and Indigenous communities to broadcast and podcast impartial and accurate information to make voting in Australia easy to understand.
Based on demographic research, data reviews and consultations, ten language groups were targeted: Arabic, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Chinese, Spanish, Hindi, Assyrian, Tamil, Urdu, and English (an Indigenous focus and a youth focus).
The Vote Talk model involved:
Community consultations (over 100 individuals from the selected language groups).
Training bi-lingual facilitators (BLF) on civics, podcast development and broadcast skills.
Recording podcasts on community attitudes towards voting and election processes. These included factual information aimed at dispelling misconceptions that could result in votes being “informal” (and therefore not counted).
Live on-air radio conversations (163 hours total) scripted by ECCNSW, AEC and NSWEC to ensure accuracy and political neutrality.
Vote Talk achieved significant capacity building of bi-lingual facilitators and radio hosts. Feedback from communities was also overwhelmingly positive:
“We (the radio station) were receiving calls from people asking why they did not receive this information during other previous elections.”
“People stopped me (BLF) while I was shopping to say they enjoyed the updates on radio and found it very interesting. They even organised carpooling for election day to ensure they would accurately submit a formal vote, not a donkey vote.”
“On radio we discussed politics around the world and in my country and how privileged we were to be here in Australia and have the freedom and right (democracy) to have a say about what happens in this country.”