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Voting: The people decide and throw a barbecue · Save Democracy

• 0:04
  Hello, and welcome to Save Democracy.
• 0:07
  In the UK, where I'm based, voting seems a low-key affair
• 0:12
  with little or no interaction.
• 0:14
  You get to the polling booth or postal vote, you do your duty, and you move on.
• 0:19
  It's so different to where I grew up in Australia.
• 0:23
  When I was a kid, elections were exciting.
• 0:26
  There was anticipation.
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  Outside the voting station, there were balloons, lots of color,
• 0:31
  treats, excitement, joy even.
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  Everyone you met, it seemed, was moved on some level to be
• 0:39
  part of a great collective act.
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  I knew as a young child this was a big day.
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  Democracy, of course, is much more than elections, but elections
• 0:50
  are, of course, essential.
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  When we think about trying to arrest democracy's decline, do our
• 0:56
  voting systems need a closer look?
• 0:59
  Too many people today feel excluded and don't trust a politics that
• 1:05
  they feel doesn't care about them.
• 1:08
  Does the system of voting itself need a closer look?
• 1:11
  How representative are our assemblies, parliaments, our Congress?
• 1:17
  So first, a very, very quick primer on voting, as we are not
• 1:22
  going to get into the technical weeds of voting systems today.
• 1:26
  There are basically three types of voting systems.
• 1:30
  First past the post, alternative, and PR.
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  There are different versions of each, but this is a summary
• 1:37
  of the basic distinctions.
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  In first past the post, and it's called many things, the candidate
• 1:44
  or party with the most votes in a district wins the seat.
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  Now, the key word there is most.
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  It's not a majority, it's just the most votes.
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  So they could have, like, 20% of the votes and win the seat.
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  They just have to have more than any other candidate.
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  So you'll have representatives that most people didn't vote for.
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  It often leads to single party governments and can lead to results
• 2:11
  where the number of a party's seats do not reflect its overall vote share.
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  So that's first past the post.
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  Next is alternative vote, which is also called IRV or preferential
• 2:24
  voting and has other names.
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  In alternative vote, you still have the single member constituency, but
• 2:32
  the winner ends up with the majority of the votes, as voters rank their
• 2:37
  choices on the ballot paper and preferences are taken into account.
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  In PR or proportional representation, the system features multi-member districts or
• 2:51
  national lists with allocation formulas.
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  It aims to ensure that the percentage of seats a party wins
• 2:59
  closely mirrors the percentage of the total votes they received.
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  This system often encourages multi-party systems and coalition governments
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  Now, many countries use a hybrid of these three basic varieties.
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  Other key aspects of an electoral system are the ease of voting, the
• 3:20
  ease of registering to vote, whether registration or voting itself is voluntary
• 3:25
  or compulsory, and the independence of the authority that oversees the system.
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  Today, we're diving into Australia's distinctive voting system, and my
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  guest wrote the book on this subject.
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  Judith Brett is a distinguished political historian and emeritus professor
• 3:46
  of politics at Melbourne's La Trobe University, and the author of many
• 3:51
  award-winning books and essays, including From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage.
• 3:58
  Welcome, Judith.
• 4:00
  Thank you very much.
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  Now, I may be in London right now, but I'm conscious of where you are in
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  Australia, on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people, and pay
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  respect to elders past and present.
• 4:15
  Also, we are about to talk about voting in Australia, and so we'll
• 4:20
  start with an acknowledgement, and remembering, of something you devoted
• 4:24
  a chapter to in your book, and that is the horrendous record of excluding
• 4:29
  indigenous peoples from the national vote for 60 years after federation.
• 4:35
  Judith, I also understand from your fascinating book that Australia early on
• 4:41
  was an innovator in electoral democracy.
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  Before we turn to modern-day resilience and challenges, could you share a few
• 4:49
  stories about this remarkable history?
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  Well, the first remarkable innovation, now when people go to vote, people
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  are used to polling booths which are organized with segmented little
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  cubicles for us all to line up in.
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  That was actually invented in Melbourne and in Adelaide, because
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  Australian colonies got manhood suffrage pretty early, in the 1850s.
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  There was very few property qualifications and soon none.
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  There were still property qualifications for upper house voting.
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  So that meant lots and lots of men would be turning up at
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  the polling booths to vote.
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  Now, the democrats at that period in Australia, they'd come from Britain.
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  Many of them were Chartists, and they were very committed
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  to the secrecy of the ballot.
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  So the question was, with so many people turning up, how are you going to
• 5:47
  ensure that the ballot would be secret?
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  That is, there was a practical problem.
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  What were you going to do with these queues of men?
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  So somebody, came up with the idea that people wouldn't bring
• 6:00
  anything to the polling booth.
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  There was already a secret ballot supposedly in the United States, but what
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  happened there was, people came with a little piece of paper where they'd written
• 6:11
  the name of their preferred candidate.
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  Prior to that, what had happened is that people would go up and tell the
• 6:16
  returning officer who they were voting for and hence could be overheard.
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  Now, in America, you didn't tell them.
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  You brought a bit of paper, but very soon the candidates would provide you with the
• 6:28
  paper that you would put in the box, and they would do it in different colours.
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  People could see who you voted for.
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  So there was two innovations that were introduced in, in
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  Victoria and in South Australia.
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  One was that you came to the polling booth empty-handed, and the returning
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  officer or the polling clerk gave you the bit of paper with the names on it,
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  and you would fill in who you wanted.
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  Put a cross next to it.
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  Now, they trialed how long it would take.
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  It was being done with pen and ink.
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  It took people, even people who were used to it, a very long time.
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  They said, "Well, that's not going to work. We'll never get it done on election
• 7:08
  day." So they came up with the idea of the segmented polling booths, so, like,
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  maybe six or 10 men could vote at once.
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  And that became known as the 'Australian ballot', and it spread
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  throughout the world because it was such a practical innovation.
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  And ensured the privacy
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  It ensured privacy and it ensured efficiency
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  Because the other thing that happened very early in Australia is that elections were
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  run by public servants who were appointed electoral officers and that was their job.
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  Yes
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  And so the parties didn't have any role in the running of elections and neither
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  did the local government administration.
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  And that separation was quite an innovation back then, wasn't it?
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  That you had this independent administration of elections.
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  It was done, partly out of necessity.
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  It was, first introduced in South Australia.
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  The settlements were very sparse.
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  In many areas there wasn't local government.
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  The police were probably the only government official there,
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  so they had to come up with something to make it practical.
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  And the next thing that happened was at first the ballot paper was you crossed
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  out the names of all the people you didn't want and just left the person you wanted.
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  that took a long time.
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  So a man called Henry Boothby came up with the idea of just putting a
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  little square next to each name and you just put a tick or a cross, it didn't
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  matter, next to the man you wanted.
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  And they were all men in those days.
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  So that made it much more efficient and less mistakes.
• 8:41
  Exactly.
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  That's right.
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  Yeah.
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  And so this was new.
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  This was not normal in voting around the world, this kind of process.
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  Well, England, didn't get the secret ballot till the 1860s.
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  There was, a lot of opposition to the secret ballot.
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  People said, "Oh, you know, somebody should be, a man should be able to say
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  what he thinks in a loud voice and not be scared of intimidation or bribery."
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  But in Australia, a lot of the settlers came with experience
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  of intimidation from landlords.
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  They would have to, felt pressure to vote for the landlord's candidate.
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  So the secret ballot was seen as a real democratic achievement.
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  And reading your book too, there seemed a real determination to spread the right
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  to vote as widely as possible and to make it as easy as possible, even for
• 9:33
  people who couldn't even write or, read.
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  Would you talk a little bit about that, the fact that-
• 9:40
  Well, I think they had… Yes, if people couldn't read or write,
• 9:45
  they could get help.
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  But I think the other thing in terms of making it easy for people to
• 9:50
  vote, my understanding is that in England and in Ireland, when you
• 9:57
  register to vote, you register to vote at a particular polling booth.
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  And you need to turn up there on the day or else make arrangements for a
• 10:05
  proxy or absentee voting in some way.
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  The Labor Party started in Australia in the 1890s, and they put a lot
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  of effort into getting itinerant workers onto the electoral roll.
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  They joined them up, getting them to join unions, and then they wanted
• 10:20
  union members to be able to vote.
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  So in 1901, when the Commonwealth was formed, and then a year later
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  when the Commonwealth Franchise Act was being debated, Labor insisted
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  that it would be legitimate to vote at any polling booth in your colony.
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  Otherwise, it would be very difficult for a drover or a shearer or a cook in
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  an outback station to actually get to a polling, get back to their home address-
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  if that's where they were registered.
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  So it meant that, voting was accessible.
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  I mean, and that's still the case.
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  You can just go and vote anywhere in your state, and you can
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  vote when you're interstate.
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  And also they introduced voting on Saturday, which was a half
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  holiday for most people, rather than voting on a working day.
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  And I think when you started off talking about the festive feel for Australian
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  election days, I think that's partly because it's on a Saturday, you know.
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  Kids might come along.
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  Early on, again, because of the lack of government buildings or public
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  buildings in many places, polling booths were often in public schools.
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  So kids, that was their place and the… it was all their classrooms
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  were all done out differently.
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  But it meant also that the fundraising committees of these schools saw it as
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  an opportunity to raise some money.
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  So with street stalls or providing cups of tea or something, and now that's morphed
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  into the provision of the democracy sausage, these barbecue sausages.
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  The barbecues.
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  Yeah.
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  And that's quite common today, isn't it?
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  Having barbecues at the polling booth.
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  Very common
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  That's amazing.
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  And there's websites where you can find out what's… Like, because we've got
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  a choice about where we vote, if you think, "Well, I want to vote somewhere
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  where I'm going to get a sausage," you can go onto a website and you can find
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  out where the sausages are available, if there's vegan options, that sort of thing.
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  And you can arrange to meet your friends and family at a particular
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  booth and stay for the barbecue.
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  I mean, that is a very social event.
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  That's, that's just beautiful.
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  So, just winding back a little more about the spread of the right
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  to vote, Australia was one of the first countries for women to vote?
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  Yes.
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  New Zealand got the vote for women, I think in, first, and Australia
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  a year later, 1893 and 1894.
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  Now, the right to vote was won first in South Australia.
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  Because before federation, the colonies are in a sense running
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  their own electoral systems.
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  So women got the right to vote in South Australia, and then when, the
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  Commonwealth federated, they got the right to vote in Commonwealth elections.
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  The states took a little while to catch up.
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  Some, I think was, it's not till about 1908 that women have the
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  right to vote in all the states as well, because that required
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  legislation in the various states.
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  But the federal level was one of the earliest in the world.
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  And-
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  1902. That's right.
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  And I understand from your book that Australia was the place in
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  the world where a woman first stood, for a national parliament.
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  Is that right?
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  Yes, that's right.
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  One of the funny stories that's associated with this historic achievement is that
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  in the South Australian Parliament, the bill giving women the right to vote
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  had come up and there was a lot of opposition still from conservative men.
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  And so one of these conservative men thought that he'd kill it dead by adding
• 14:01
  an amendment that women would also have the right to stand for parliament.
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  He thought that was so ridiculous that the bill would get thrown out.
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  But actually it didn't, and so the women hadn't even asked for
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  the right to stand for parliament.
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  But they got it, because of this.
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  And so they, so that when the Australian, the Commonwealth legislation went
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  through, the right to stand was there.
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  So women did stand for parliament.
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  A woman called Vida Goldstein stood a couple of times.
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  But they didn't get elected.
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  It took a while.
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  Right.
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  Partly because a lot of these early feminists were a
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  bit wary of party politics.
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  They saw party politics as being about conflict-
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  they saw it as very sort of competitive and masculinist, which it was.
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  But not being in a party, they actually didn't win.
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  Yes.
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  Yes, and that's, changed a lot in Australia, the rise of independents
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  and the system has adapted- That's right … to some extent.
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  I've just been enjoying reading all about, the different trends in
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  Australia with, the professional women vote becoming very important.
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  Just circling back then to something we haven't really spoken about
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  yet, which is compulsory voting.
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  It's quite unique.
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  Well, not unique.
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  There are other countries that do do it, but not many.
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  At the national level, Australia has compulsory voting.
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  And people wonder, "Well, how is that in a liberal democracy that you compel
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  people to vote?" And there's something, a bit of a tension around that in terms
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  of personal liberty, being forced to vote and being penalized for not voting.
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  But of course, Australia has a very different experience and the Australian
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  people seem to be quite, according to the polls, quite supportive of the
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  whole system of compulsory voting.
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  And I think it contributes too to the fact that the election day is a very
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  special day, that everybody's affected, everybody's touched by it in a way
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  that you don't see to the same extent in many other countries, because of
• 16:06
  the fact that everybody's voting.
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  So would you maybe speak to that innovation.
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  Compulsory voting, Australia got it in 1924.
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  It was preceded in 1911 when Labor was in government - the Australian
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  Labor Party was one of the first majority Labor governments in the
• 16:25
  world - by compulsory registration.
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  Labor introduced the bill for compulsory registration.
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  This was actually driven by the bureaucrats.
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  There was an electoral officer.
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  They put a huge amount of effort, into constructing the Commonwealth roll.
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  It had to be done again because now women could vote, so there needed to
• 16:47
  be a new roll for the Commonwealth.
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  You know, horses went out everywhere.
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  Household surveys, if you like.
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  They got very irritated when people moved and didn't let them know.
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  And so they thought, "Well, we just have to make it compulsory." You know, the law.
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  You have to be registered to vote, and when you move, it's your
• 17:05
  obligation to change your address.
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  And, so now when that was introduced, in 1911, people said, "Well, if you're
• 17:14
  going to have compulsory registration, why don't you have compulsory voting as well?"
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  Now, the reason it didn't was that Labor said, "Well, if we have compulsory
• 17:24
  voting, we'll have to have postal voting. And if we have postal voting, there's
• 17:28
  a possibility that the secrecy of the ballot will be compromised." Because an
• 17:32
  employer might look over the shoulder of his workers when they're filling in
• 17:38
  their ballots and, you know, gather them all up together to post off or whatever.
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  And so Labor really dug its heels
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  So they were very suspicious of that.
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  Did they have some sort of experience, do, do you know, that made them so suspicious?
• 17:52
  I mean, there was… Yes, you know, there was doctors who would, that
• 17:56
  they would sign up all their patients in their various nursing homes.
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  There were pastoral workers they saw as being particularly vulnerable who
• 18:05
  would be working on remote stations.
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  So they were nervous about that.
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  Now, Labor was riding high at that point from 1910 till about 1915, 1916,
• 18:18
  and then it split over conscription.
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  And so after the First World War, Labor was considerably weakened,
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  and its capacity to really oppose postal voting had gone.
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  The vote fell off a bit after the war, particularly in the early '20s.
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  So at this point you still have compulsory registration, but not compulsory voting.
• 18:42
  Yes, but not compulsory voting.
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  And there was continual discussion about it, bills would go up.
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  And there was really a consensus amongst the political
• 18:52
  elites for compulsory voting.
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  I went back and looked at all the debates in Parliament when bills about
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  compulsory voting came up, and the argument that was most often put was,
• 19:05
  well, if you have compulsory voting, you know that the government is supported
• 19:10
  by the majority of voters, not just the majority of people who've turned up.
• 19:14
  So, I describe in the book Australia as a majoritarian democracy.
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  You say, yes, it's a liberal democracy.
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  Liberalism is about rights, democracy is about majority rule.
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  And different polities strike a different balance between those two things.
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  Now, in the debates, hardly anybody ever raised the sort of argument
• 19:36
  that you're putting forward, about it being somehow against fundamental
• 19:42
  liberties to compel people to vote.
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  It just wasn't an issue.
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  I mean, Australians, they had a fairly trusting relationship with government.
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  It was a basically a government-built society.
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  Government provided most of the infrastructure that
• 19:57
  made settlement possible.
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  And there wasn't taxing, they weren't taxing the settlers for quite a long time
• 20:03
  That's right, because the government was making money out of land sales.
• 20:08
  So it came in.
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  We're already voting on a Saturday.
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  Women can vote.
• 20:13
  We can vote anywhere we like.
• 20:15
  Yes.
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  And so there wasn't… It just sort of slid into place and
• 20:21
  everybody's got used to it.
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  And so, but it does mean it, like as an argument, it gives the
• 20:27
  government much greater legitimacy.
• 20:29
  Yes.
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  And that legitimacy underpins an aspect of democratic resilience.
• 20:37
  The fact that the government of the day has been voted in by a much greater
• 20:42
  proportion of the people of the country.
• 20:45
  Right.
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  I mean, and look, if you really don't want to vote, you can go into the
• 20:50
  polling booth and all you have to do is get your name crossed off the roll.
• 20:57
  Because the ballot's secret.
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  You can draw an obscene drawing on it if you want to, or you
• 21:03
  can put an empty ballot paper in.
• 21:06
  Yes.
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  And as I understand it, very few people do that.
• 21:09
  That's true.
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  Very few people do do it.
• 21:11
  Yeah.
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  And, and when Australians have been polled, the support of a
• 21:14
  compulsion is, is really strong.
• 21:17
  Yes.
• 21:17
  It's about 70%, I think, generally.
• 21:19
  Yeah.
• 21:20
  That's, that's fantastic.
• 21:21
  There, there'll be people whose, you know, just say, "Oh no," like it's
• 21:23
  a… But it's really not much of an inconvenience to be expected to vote.
• 21:27
  And now we've got
• 21:32
  pre-poll voting.
• 21:34
  That is they open the polls one or two or even three weeks before voting
• 21:38
  day, and so you can vote early.
• 21:41
  That does lessen something about the festive quality
• 21:45
  of the actual election day.
• 21:47
  But it again means there's not really very much to complain about.
• 21:53
  There's this constant theme of making it as easy as possible and as inclusive
• 22:00
  as possible and for everybody to vote and to have this legitimacy, and
• 22:04
  there's also this theme of trust, of trusting the bureaucrats, bureaucracy,
• 22:09
  and this evolution of an independent authority that manages the whole process.
• 22:15
  Yes.
• 22:16
  That has huge trust as well, and it's so important in, in democracy today.
• 22:20
  And now they've made it like the… So the question, like
• 22:23
  to maintain your registration.
• 22:25
  So I said it's compulsory to register, but people don't necessarily, right?
• 22:30
  Particularly young people or they move and things.
• 22:32
  So now they've introduced something, like people always have the right
• 22:36
  address on their motor registration.
• 22:39
  So now your voter registration is linked to your motor registration.
• 22:43
  Was there much resistance to that?
• 22:45
  Most people wouldn't have even noticed that it happened.
• 22:47
  Okay.
• 22:48
  But it just meant that, young people in particular, who are the
• 22:53
  ones least likely to be on the roll, it made it easier for them
• 22:59
  Yes.
• 22:59
  Before we go on for too much longer, I best bring in, the voting system.
• 23:04
  We're just talking at the federal level here, and how the particular voting system
• 23:08
  builds resilience in Australia today.
• 23:11
  So you have the alternative vote at the Lower House where we, I explained
• 23:15
  before, you rank your candidates,
• 23:17
  and that's a single member constituency.
• 23:20
  And then the Upper House at the federal level is a multi-member district,
• 23:24
  and each district is actually a state or territory of Australia.
• 23:27
  That's the size of the district.
• 23:29
  It's massive, and there's a multi-member allocation for each state.
• 23:33
  Okay.
• 23:33
  And could you speak to how that works in practice in terms of
• 23:37
  the, the democratic result?
• 23:39
  Well, I, I mean, I think that it's a very good balance, but preferential
• 23:43
  voting, which, I mean, secret ballot and, and the polling booth and everything,
• 23:47
  that's spread throughout the world.
• 23:49
  But preferential voting is not used that often.
• 23:51
  And preferential voting, just for listeners is the alternative vote
• 23:55
  that I was talking about at the start.
• 23:56
  Yes, carry on.
• 23:57
  We call it preferential voting because it's about how
• 24:00
  You list your preferences
• 24:02
  You list your preferences.
• 24:03
  Because it allows minority positions to be visible in the electoral system
• 24:09
  in a way that they're very much at risk where you've got a first past the post.
• 24:13
  As we've seen in, in ballots in the US where a vote for a Green candidate can
• 24:18
  mean actually you end up with a much more conservative president than most
• 24:22
  of those Greens would've really wanted.
• 24:25
  It was introduced, after pressure from farmers who were opposed to
• 24:31
  Labor, but were also wary of the way the major non-Labor party was
• 24:37
  essentially managed by urban interests.
• 24:41
  Now, they definitely didn't want a Labor Party, but they wanted their
• 24:46
  own… They wanted farmers to have a visible presence within the Parliament.
• 24:53
  And they put a lot of pressure after the First World War on the
• 24:56
  political system to make that happen.
• 24:59
  So that meant that we got preferential voting.
• 25:01
  Now, in fact, nothing much really happened with that, but it did mean
• 25:05
  that smaller parties could at least be visible around election time, and
• 25:10
  people could express support for them.
• 25:13
  What we've seen since about 2012 is people using preferential voting to
• 25:20
  support non-party independent candidates, some of whom have been successful.
• 25:27
  And that's a big shift.
• 25:28
  We're getting so-called community independents.
• 25:32
  That's possible because of preferential voting.
• 25:35
  Now at the Senate, it's much more like proportional voting.
• 25:37
  There's 12 senators per state.
• 25:40
  That was part of the
• 25:44
  bargain at federation part of the deal that each colony would be
• 25:48
  equally represented in the Senate, independent of what its population was.
• 25:53
  So for example, Tasmania with a fairly small population has 12
• 25:58
  senators, which is not particularly democratic I'd have to say.
• 26:05
  But you then get,
• 26:09
  minor parties have been able to win positions in the Senate.
• 26:13
  And what's happened really since about the 1980s when a sort of centre-right
• 26:17
  party called the Australian Democrats formed, is that the government has
• 26:24
  very rarely controlled the Senate.
• 26:28
  The Senate has been more like… there haven't been coalition governments
• 26:33
  because the government's formed in the Lower House, but it's meant that
• 26:35
  the government has to deal, make deals with the Senate, negotiate with the
• 26:40
  Senate to get their legislation passed.
• 26:42
  The Senate doesn't have the power to block 'supply' [money/budget bills], so it
• 26:47
  can't destroy the government in that way.
• 26:49
  It can just hold up and amend its legislation.
• 26:53
  One thing I wanted to ask you about was the effect, the fact that when you have
• 26:57
  alternative vote, and you have compulsory voting, the effect on campaigning.
• 27:03
  Firstly, they're not trying to get out the vote, which is
• 27:05
  a big deal in many countries.
• 27:07
  And then you have to care about preferences.
• 27:09
  So you can't really bad name all the people on the ballot.
• 27:16
  You have to be careful about who you criticize and who you align with.
• 27:20
  You know, it becomes a sort of more, maybe a broader appeal to the electorate rather
• 27:26
  than a more narrow appeal elsewhere.
• 27:28
  I think compulsory voting means that the major parties have to make a broad appeal.
• 27:34
  They can't leave out, really significant sections.
• 27:39
  One of the advantages of compulsory voting is that the parties have to think about
• 27:45
  the impact of their policies on the poor and the marginalized, because we know from
• 27:51
  studies that the people least likely to vote are, are poor, marginalized people.
• 27:56
  And because they will vote, many of them, in Australia.
• 28:02
  But the other thing in terms of the lead-up to elections
• 28:05
  that happens is that parties do preference deals with minor parties.
• 28:09
  At the moment we've got, this new party, One Nation, which is a
• 28:13
  sort of right-wing protest party.
• 28:17
  And so there's a big question is about whether the Liberal Party, which
• 28:21
  has in a sense been the mainstream right, center-right party for decades,
• 28:27
  whether they will do preference deals with One Nation or not.
• 28:31
  Now, because the parties hand out 'how to vote' cards, which will have [the
• 28:36
  number] one for their party, and they suggest what your preferences should be.
• 28:40
  Now, maybe 80, 70% might follow the preferences.
• 28:45
  They won't all.
• 28:46
  In fact, the numbers who are following preferences is declining.
• 28:50
  But the preference deals are part of it, and so they'll decide who to put last.
• 28:57
  Okay.
• 28:57
  So up until relatively recently, the contest has been between
• 29:01
  Labor and Liberal, and they'll be bad-mouthing each other.
• 29:06
  But it's shifted quite rapidly
• 29:12
  over the last couple of elections where now, in some seats it will be Labor
• 29:17
  and Greens where the final runoff is-
• 29:20
  not Labor Liberal.
• 29:21
  It may be an Independent and a Liberal.
• 29:24
  A lot of people now, vote differently in the House and in the Senate.
• 29:31
  So there's a lot more strategic voting that goes on.
• 29:34
  So they may support a major party in the Lower House because
• 29:38
  they want a strong government.
• 29:40
  But they may support a minor party in the Senate because they
• 29:43
  actually like the fact that the government won't control the Senate.
• 29:46
  Yes.
• 29:46
  Okay.
• 29:47
  They like that constraint.
• 29:49
  They like that because it means that there's more negotiation,
• 29:53
  and hence the government has to work harder to build consensus.
• 29:56
  You know, there's a picture emerging.
• 29:58
  This habit of voting, whether you, maybe came from a family who even
• 30:04
  talked about government or elections or anything like that or, or whatever your
• 30:09
  circumstances are in life, you might not have much bandwidth to think about
• 30:12
  governing, but you're still voting.
• 30:14
  You're still having to turn up and vote.
• 30:17
  State elections, local I assume as well, federal elections.
• 30:22
  There's a sort of civic education by default, at least on some level.
• 30:28
  And the fact that you're talking about this, you know, strategic voting
• 30:33
  and preferences and there's a sort of knowledge there, basic knowledge
• 30:37
  you need to have to engage with that system, and you're doing it election
• 30:40
  after election after election.
• 30:41
  So there's this sort of baseline, and you, and you have, I know,
• 30:45
  civics in schools as well.
• 30:47
  You teach civics in Australia.
• 30:49
  But there's this baseline that is a result of compulsory voting.
• 30:53
  Yes, I think so.
• 30:54
  And I think also to add into that, Australia has run an active and
• 30:59
  relatively large immigration programme
• 31:02
  since the Second World War.
• 31:03
  Now, when, an immigrant becomes a citizen, they acquire the obligation to vote.
• 31:10
  They're immediately part of the polity.
• 31:12
  And I think that's a really big benefit, in terms of maintaining social cohesion.
• 31:22
  And, as you say, young people, by the time they're 30 they will have
• 31:27
  voted probably in maybe half a dozen elections or three or four.
• 31:30
  You know, that they will learn by doing.
• 31:33
  But I think the benefit for the multicultural society that we are, as a
• 31:40
  result of immigration is.. it wasn't one of the things that people were thinking
• 31:44
  about back in the day when they introduced compulsory voting, but I think now we
• 31:49
  can see it as a really big benefit.
• 31:53
  Thanks to you, Judith, for bringing this whole subject to life.
• 31:57
  I'm going to be in Victoria in November for the state election and very much
• 32:01
  look forward to joining a barbecue and having a democracy sausage.
• 32:05
  Thank you so much for joining us.
• 32:06
  It's been most illuminating.
• 32:09
  Thank you for having me.
• 32:11
  Bye for now.
• 32:16
  Thank you for joining us today at Save Democracy.
• 32:19
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• 32:22
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• 32:24
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• 32:26
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