Nick Minchin has a hide claiming the recent “high” level of informal voting is the reason we should ditch compulsory voting. There’s nothing “recent” about Minchin’s advocacy for dismantling a system that has delivered 81 years of stable democracy – a system, we might add, that has delivered more years of conservative rule than it has Labor “regimes”.

No, Nick’s been relentlessly banging this can for decades – I remember hysterical press releases on the issue spewing out of his office back when John Hewson was yelling “Fightback” down magaphones. In fact, Nick himself admits he’s been fixated on the issue since he was just a young libertarian longhair handing out how to vote cards for John Singleton’s Worker’s Party in the mid 70s. (What a turncoat!)

Meanwhile where are the staunch traditionalists and arch-conservatives shouting “if it aint broke don’t fix it!!”. C’mon Kerry Jones, don’t let the side down now, just when a lonely nation turns its eyes to you…