With an upcoming federal election, the Australian Electoral Commission is reminding people to ensure they're registered to vote.
But, for many people from migrant and non-English speaking backgrounds, it's not that easy.
With just two months to go until Australia goes to the polls, the Australian Electoral Commission is reminding people to enrol to vote.
Citizens have until 8pm on Monday May 23 to check or update their details, or join the electoral roll for the first time.
The AEC says nearly a million Australians are missing from the roll.
Joe Caputo, head of the Federation of Ethnic Communities' Council of Australia, says he believes a good portion of this is likely to be people from migrant communities.
He says while most want to be part of the voting process, many don't realise how to go about it.
"I think some of the reason is purely not knowing where to go or they've missed out on getting the appropriate information. I think most people, once they know they're on the roll, they're quite keen to vote and to be a participant in our democratic electoral system. I think that in some areas, particularly in the Senate and other areas, in the past it used to be very difficult to vote, but now with the new Senate system I think it will be the right moment for the Australian Electoral Commission to really undertake a major community information program to ensure (there is) no one in our communities that are not part of the democratic electoral process."
CEO of the Multicultural Council of Tasmania, Anna Reynolds, agrees that many new Australians are eager to get involved, but that current resources aren't up to the task.
"Our experience is that people that do become citizens are pretty aware of the fact that voting is one of the benefits that comes from being a citizen. It can be exciting but it can also be a bit confusing, and people may not even realise the difference between state and federal, and different houses of parliament and different boundaries. I think that there is certainly room for there to be more citizenship education for new citizens. We'd love to be doing more work with our members around understanding the Australian electoral system, but we haven't really had the resources to do that."
Spokesman for the commission, Phil Diak, says there are a range of services available, including in different languages.
He says the system is designed to be as user-friendly as possible.
"The AEC is still concerned that younger Australians, in fact, all Australians who haven't enrolled to vote, that they do so. It is compulsory, and it is easy to do. Newer Australian citizens may have enrolled at the time that they became Australian citizens and went to a citizenship ceremony. But they should make sure that they're correctly enrolled to vote. If they're not sure they can go to the AEC website, there is information there in other languages, or you can call the AEC and you can have a 3-way telephone call with an interpreter."
However, FECCA's Joe Caputo says there's no point having options if people don't know about them.
"Unless the message gets to them that they can actually do it, even if there is a three-way system where they can speak in their own language and what have you, they will not contact the commission. There needs to be more than just having that facility. They need to get the message across and say 'look, we are here', and that has to be done through a multi-pronged strategy where you contact the local communities, you put ads in the different language newspapers, you do inform multilingual radio programs, and so through various mediums you are likely to get the greatest majority of people."
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