Appealing for the vote of First Nations citizens and their allies is obviously sidelined in this election campaign. The major parties are ignoring the potential in this vote at their peril.

Paige Taylor writing for The Australian ("Indigenous Australia shuffled from front and centre to forgotten people" 13/4/2025) argues that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese took such a battering over the Voice that discussing Indigenous policy only benefits the Coalition.

The PM visited the seat of Leichardt to support the new Labor candidate and there was no reporting in the media of meetings with First Nations people, communities or organisations.

The seat of Leichardt is currently held by the LNP with a margin of only 3.4 per cent and is recognised as a bellwether electorate. The pattern of polling places with a majority of First Nations electors, that have come in strongly for the LNP, defies assumptions of a strong First Nations vote for Labor.

Leichhardt is not alone. A strong turnout of First Nations voters, many of whom are only recently on the electoral roll, can heavily influence the outcome of this election.

In 2022 Markham and Williamson of CAEPR published research that highlights potential Indigenous electoral power. Seats like Macquarie, in commuting distance to the Sydney CBD, was won by the ALP with a margin of only 216 votes. This same electorate had a potential 1,161 First Nations voters, not enrolled at that time.

Lingiari, in the NT, was won by the ALP on a margin of only 4073 votes. There was a potential for more than 18,000 new First Nations voters.

Meanwhile, the leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton took Senator Nampijinpa Price with him to campaign in Perth WA where she receives "a rockstar welcome" and pledges to "make Australia great again". She is appealing to a constituency that does not include First Nations people and their allies. Nothing she said was designed to appeal to them. This will not deliver any increase in this vote for the Opposition, anywhere in Australia.

This strategy is ineffective given the strong Indigenous voting bloc. The WA seat of Cowan is seen to be a safe Labor seat but even there, the potential increase in the First Nations vote, of more than 1200 people, could change the outcome. The margin in 2019 was a hundred votes shy of this.

Durack is a marginal Liberal-held WA seat with approximately 16,000 votes between the two major parties and 25,000 eligible First Nations voters. Of these, almost 13,000 had not voted in the 2019 election.

This is where the rubber hits the road. That is, to get these voters out on the day to vote. The evidence for turnout on voting day is shocking, 56 per cent Indigenous as compared to 92 per cent for the total of Australia in 2019.

It is obvious that Aboriginal people are not often tied to any particular political party. Their concerns are local, they want to see improvements on the ground in their communities. They have had the opportunity to observe the difference between rhetoric and reality. There is a cynicism about the activities of governments, borne of long-term experience and observation. And we don't like the conflict that marks western political rhetoric.

Dr Victoria Grieves Williams is Warraimaay from the midnorth coast of NSW and an historian.