The plaintiff's submissions contained many assumptions as to whether it would be possible now to narrow the franchise on the basis of race, age, gender, religion, educational standards or political beliefs, questions which no Australian legislator has ever dreamed of or is likely to dream of. Resolution of the present case does not call for any of these assumptions to be either made or tested [footnote omitted]; and certainly none of them were tested. It is enough to say that narrowing the franchise in any of these ways may be highly undesirable; it does not follow that it is unconstitutional.

Heydon J inRoach v Electoral Commission and the Commonwealth2007 (para 179)

The Commonwealth Electoral Act was amended to extend the right to enrol and vote in Federal elections to all Indigenous Australians in 1962. However enrolment and voting were not made compulsory for Indigenous Australians until 1984.

The words "directly chosen by the people" in Section 7 and section 24 of the Constitution have been said to entrench an implied right to vote. But is it a right to universal adult suffrage or would it be possible to limit the vote (also called the franchise) on the basis of race as it had been in the past? In your answer you should review the decisionin Roach v Commonwealth[2007] and have regard to any other cases you think may be relevant to how the Court would answer these question? You should consider whether the words "the people" refer to people of all races and who gets to decide? You must also consider the scholarly literature on this topic.