This report examines the administration of the upcoming referendum to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the Australian Constitution through an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.

This report includes summaries of the evidence received about the motivations for foreign interference, the forms that it can take, the elements of social media platforms and their usage that foreign interference attempts often seek to exploit, and the social and cultural features that foreign interference attempts interface with.

Digitisation of elections in Australia induces new vulnerabilities that malign foreign entities can exploit to subvert our democratic sovereignty. Despite this threat landscape, according to this paper, Australia’s digital-analogue hybridity safeguards federal elections from hard cyber security risks that might seek to directly tamper with votes and data.

This occasional paper seeks to address the question - how should Australia address foreign influence that falls short of interference, but is nonetheless inconsistent with Australian values, interests or sovereignty?

Over the past decade, state actors have taken advantage of the digitisation of election systems, election administration and election campaigns to interfere in foreign elections and referendums. This research identified 41 elections and seven referendums between January 2010 and October 2020 where cyber-enabled foreign interference was reported, and it finds that there’s been a significant...