Since being enforced federally in 1924, compulsory voting is now seen as a community event — a common, civic enterprise and one in which Australians are happy to participate, even if it is compulsory, writes history editor Dr Glenn Davies.
Tag: Compulsory Voting
We might really be at the Polling Booth to get it out of the way on the way to the Democracy Sausage stand or beating the rest of the local population to Mrs Brown’s rather excellent chocolate fudge at the cake stall outside, but at least most of us have a say. If nothing else, it ensures fringe opinions of the lunatics from both the progressive and conservative sides stay on the fringe. Our system is not perfect, but there are certainly advantages in compulsory voting. What do you think?
Source: Avoiding the lunatic fringe – » The Australian Independent Media Network
The Labor Party’s victory offers a blueprint for diminishing the global influence of the Fox News founder.
Rupert Murdoch, who oversees a global media empire that includes Fox News, doesn’t like losing, but he just tasted defeat in Australia’s election. Despite years in which Murdoch’s media properties vociferously backed conservative Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Labor leader Anthony Albanese won the May 21 contest. Australia saw a wave of climate-friendly, independent candidates and Greens politicians take power in a thorough rejection of the culture wars around trans rights and “religious freedom” unleashed by Morrison and his backers in the Murdoch media.
Source: In Australia Election, Rupert Murdoch Was a Surprise Loser
If compulsory voting is no escape from voter ignorance. What then is the driving force on who swinging voters will choose to elect but then as we have seen not work for them? Morrison, Palmer, and the Corporate Oligarchs believe it’s soley Media and Advertising. In fact the LNP have risen to be currently the biggest advertiser with their $680M spend and coupled with the dismantling of the ABC over the past 8 years. There has been a masked long-term quid pro quo arrangement with the Murdoch’s business model and IPA to produce “cool” not “hot” News. We have lived, seen and experienced the quo for the past 8 years and it will be amplified again as the election draws closer but we are beginning to see the enormity of the quid in the government’s arrangement. Palmer, is part of that “spending surge” a tsunami of factless propaganda delivered on an uninformed electorate compelled to vote and that’s the only thing Morrison is now relying on. Maybe what we see happened in Warringah will happen in all marginal seats with a difference.
The ALP always has to come from behind but “It’s Time Again”
What was dismal in the exercise by the national broadcaster was the happily conceded ignorance of the punters, who, with the exception of one “voter”, seemed to have gone for the whole political spread in their electing history. In other words, they were swingers, fidelity adjustable. This ignored the fundamental point that Australians remain, even now, hostile to eclectic coalitions and representatives unaligned to the major political parties. On the issue of whether the Labor Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese would be a suitable leader, let alone prime minister, no illumination was offered, only a blanket of ignorant darkness, occasionally rented by observations that “he might be a decent bloke” who hated Tories and loved his beer.
Source: Benefits of Australia’s compulsory voting system largely illusory
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