The Government’s second Electoral Reform Green Paper, released this afternoon by Special Minister of State Joe Ludwig, has invited comment on a series of wide-ranging and occasionally radical reforms to Australia’s electoral systems.
Arguing that the Commonwealth Electoral Act has only been properly reviewed once in its 90-year history, Ludwig’s paper discusses nearly all electoral reform proposals advanced in debate in recent years.
Among the issues on which the Paper invites submissions are:
- Should non-citizens be permitted to vote and should they continue to be permitted to vote despite their refusal to take out Australian citizenship
- Should the voting or enrolment age be lowered
- Greater proportionality in the House of Representatives, or non-geographic electorates, and an end or changes to preferential voting, and greater representativeness in the Senate
- Ways to reduce informal voting and harmonise voting requirements across states and territories
- Ways to improve the accountability and transparency of the Australian Electoral Commission
- Ways to improve enrolment, including a reversal of the Howard Government’s punitive rolls-closure amendments and poll-day enrolment
- Strengthening registration requirements for political parties and candidates
- Removal of the media blackout and “truth in advertising” requirements for election campaigns
- Electronic voting and ways to accommodate growing interest in pre-poll and postal voting
- Whether Australians should continue to be forced to vote.
The paper raises some interesting, and possibly disturbing, facts and figures.
- Over 157,000 “British subjects” enrolled before 1984 continue to be enrolled, despite refusing to take out Australian citizenship.
- ACT citizens are the least enfranchised in the country, with more than 120,000 Canberrans in each of the two lower house seats – more than twice the number in the Northern Territory’s seats, and fifty thousand more than in Tasmania.
- In the Senate, NSW people are grotesquely under-represented compared to other states. There are less than 30,000 Tasmanians per Tasmanian senator, compared to 377,000 people in NSW, or more than twice the national average, and 90,000 more than Victoria.
- From 1993-2007, pre-poll votes tripled, and postal votes doubled.
- Only 17 countries throughout the world enforce compulsory voting.
- Ticket voting in the Senate, introduced in 1984, saw a drop in informal voting of around 10% to less than 3% in 2007.
Submissions are due by 27 November and an online discussion will be held from 9-13 November.
The Australian Senate model reflects the US Senate. Both were about protecting States rights. Great idea until political parties came on the scene. The only Senator in recent time to look after his state was ret Senator Harradine. I disagreed with about every thing he stood for, but admired his ability to get the best for his state.
If you want to argue about disproportional voting, have a look at the 2 California Senators versus 2 Wisconsin Senators. . .
I’d really like it to be supported to number 1 …X above the line on Senate forms.
We should keep compulsory voting. If not for who you put first, but who you put last. I had friends who wouldn’t enrol to vote but would b-tch all the time about the governments. I wouldn’t listen to their arguments because they had surrendered their ability to do anything about it by not enrolling to vote.
Making voting non compulsory will create even further apathy about the political process.
Agree with Deccles, except about Brian Harradine – I think, unfortunately he let his religious views get in the way too much.
Also, I disagree that non-Australian residents should be allowed to vote. If you live here and are not prepared to commit, then you shouldn’t be able to vote and this includes those Brits who now can – most countries allow duel citizenship now anyway, so whats the big deal?
And here’s me thinking we didn’t have ‘truth in advertising’ during election campaigns!!!! Not sure who polices this requirement, but it should be kept, even if its in principle only!!!!!!
Clearly some changes need to be made to ensure equal representation, but shouldn’t this happen through normal reviews of population patterns etc?
We should look carefully at electronic voting – look at the mess in the USA with all these different systems – I think the current system works well because it is uniform and easy.
Well I was thinking of the Telstra Call centres Harradine got for agreeing to the ‘partial’ privatisation of Telstra. I agree that his religion got in the way.
I agree that you have to be a citizen to be allowed to vote. If that means my ‘British subject’ brother in law has to go through a citizenship ceremony to vote, then so be it!
My concern is that if Senate voting becomes based on population, we’ll end up with all the pork barrelling going to NSW and to the lower house marginals and the rest of the country will go to rack and ruin starved of Federal funding.
I wish the Senators in Australia would be more like their American counterparts and not rusted on to toeing their party line at the expense of their constituents, but that’s la la land wishful thinking.
It’s absurd to say NSW people are under represented in the Senate. The senate is supposed to provide equal representation to each state as stated in the constitution.
I like the idea of introducing voluntary voting for 16-17 year olds. This should be accompanied by a compulsory subject in high schools to educate students about how our political system works.
Any moves towards electronic voting should be based on open source or government owned software (not proprietary or secret code owned by a private company), and backed up by a paper trail i.e. printed receipts.
Restore election day enrollments and the voting rights of prisoners.
Compulsory voting is a great moderating influence on our political system. It keeps the fringe elements in check, and reduces the need for politicians to pander to special interest groups.