Electoral Reform Green Paper
Strengthening Australia’s Democracy (9-27 November)
The Electoral Reform Green Paper – Strengthening Australia’s Democracy discusses a wide range of potential changes to our electoral laws and systems, in areas including:
- the franchise (who is entitled to vote in Australia);
- voting systems for the House of Representatives and the Senate;
- arrangements for enrolling to vote and for maintaining the electoral roll;
- arrangements for the registration of political parties and nomination of candidates for election;
- campaigning for elections;
- arrangements for casting votes; and
- the counting of votes and determination of election results.
The Green Paper argues that the main challenge for governments is to preserve the key strengths and stability of Australia’s electoral systems, while striving for greater improvements to ensure that they continue to meet the needs of contemporary Australia. The paper outlines a number of possible changes that may have implications for our electoral systems, including:
- changes in methods of voting, with a greater number of postal and pre-poll votes being lodged;
- technological developments, with an increasing trend towards electronic transactions and interactions with government;
- demographic changes, with the Australian community drawn from an increasingly diverse range of places, a highly mobile Australian population, and an ageing population; and
- increased opportunities for harmonisation between the Commonwealth, states and territories.
The Green Paper also examines a number of options that could achieve increased participation in elections. More than 2.3 million Australians who were entitled to vote for the 2007 federal election did not fully exercise their right to vote, either by failing to enrol to vote, failing to cast a vote, or casting a vote that was informal and therefore not counted. Strategies for maximising participation in elections could include:
- improving enrolment processes;
- improving civic education;
- amending and harmonising rules for voting, or for accepting votes as formal; and
- improving and harmonising the accessibility of voting services.
In light of these issues, the Government is interested in your views on what changes should be made to our electoral laws and processes. In addition to this online discussion forum, written submissions have been invited by 27 November 2009. A list of specific issues for discussion and comment is set out in Chapter 15 - (PDF 71KB) of the Green Paper. Some starting questions that you might wish to consider are:
Which area, or areas, of our electoral laws should be the highest priority for reform?
What strategies do you think should be adopted to improve electoral participation rates?
Which area, or areas, should be a priority for harmonisation between the Commonwealth, states and territories?
I can't believe how little participation this 'forum' has seen! I applaud the government for giving people the oppurtunity to voice their opinions, but this bland uninspiring format doesn't really encourage people to get out there and express their ideas.
Anyway, I just wanted to give my full and confident support to a lowering of the voting age, to 16, on a compulsory basis. I see the oppurtunities for greater political education, participation in government and engagement in social issues, by doing this, are immense. While I know plenty of young people who would love to cast a vote, I also know many people, who are over 18, and don't even know who the opposition leader is! I think the argument that youth are 'uneducated' and 'apathetic' is not backed by any substantial evidence. Not only that but if education is the problem then lowering the voting age will allow these younger voters to become the most educated about politics, through the introduction of civil education programs. In terms of apathy, as I mentioned before, I do not see how if someone is apathetic at 16 they will suddenly become enthused at 18, however there are obviously many youth who do want to vote, now!
This consultation has come at a great time, what with exams for all us high school students! I'd like to see Kate Ellis standing up for youth with this green paper, I fail to see any benefits that conservatives can claim with this one!
P.S. The last 'argument against' the lowering of the voting age mentioned in the green paper is that there's nmo international precedent. What rubbish! Come on Australia, let's see some innovation for once! South Australia was the second country in the world to give the franchise to women, let's make Australia the first to give it to young people!
South Australia was the second country in the world to give the franchise to women.
Not so. South Australia is obviously not a country, and though it gets a bit technical, even as a state or territory it misses the mark by almost 200 years.
Yo, yeah bit of a freudian slip there! Missing marks by 200 years? Our politics textbooks cite it as the second place to give women the vote, after New Zealand. Doesn't look like there's much hope for great civics education if they can't even give us the right facts in our politics textbook! What do you think of lowering the voting age?
Point 3 regarding Expat Voting:
3) Introduce overseas electorates (as Italy has successfully done already). With so many Australians living offshore, we should be represented by parliamentarians, just like everyone else. We should set up regional off-shore electorates - perhaps starting with just 3 - one in the US, one in the UK / Europe, and one in Asia. Let Aussie expats represent themselves in Parliament and vote for someone who understands (and lives) their issues. Aussie expats (mostly !) pay tax, but what sort of representation do we have ?
Australian expats who can demonstrate ongoing close links to Australia should be able to stay on the electoral role indefinitely rather than being kicked off after an arbitrary time period simply because they haven't been living "on-shore".
Aussie expats make a valuable ongoing contribution to the wealth of Australia, to its international relations, to trade, to people to people links with other countries, to diversity, to the arts, to science and medicine, etc. We must include and draw on the talents of this terrific resource.
Australia used to be a leader in the field of electoral reform - we were amongst the earliest to give the vote to women and aborigines. Where has our leading edge, pioneering spirit gone ? Off-shore perhaps ???
Three steps to Including more Expats in elections & the governance of Australia:
1) Conduct a census of Australians living off-shore. Our current census only covers Australians living "on-shore" and thus is massively inaccurate and is not serving the equivalent of a whole state capital city. There are numerous expat groups which could assist with this process to keep the cpost manageable - e.g. Southern Cross Group, Advance, the Australian Chambers of Commerce, Alumni Groups, etc.
2) Introduce online voting. The postal voting system is a hopelessly outdated dinosaur that simply doesn't work for most expats. In today's age when we can conduct banking, buy books, furniture, clothes, music, plane tickets, hotel accomodation, etc. online, why the hell can't we vote online ? The banks can securely identify us online - why can't the government ??
(next point in next box)
I have to agree with Aussie Expat 11/11/09 02:27. Apparently there are over 300,000 Aussies living in the UK alone - a similar population to that of Canberra! Aussies overseas are the unsung Aussie population without a vote. Just because we're not in Australia doesnt mean we dont (silently) cheer when Aussies win at sports, feel nostalgia when we spot Vegemite in Sainsbury's Supermarkets, or weep when bush-fires sweep over our home State. And why doesnt Australia have a reciprocal agreement with the UK regarding pensions?
As a long term Aussie expat with extremely close and ongoing ties with Australia I'm extremely disappointed that Australia continues to make very little effort to ensure our talented and large expat community are included in elections in an efficient and comprehensive manner. There are estimates that there are as many as 1 million Aussie expats living off-shore - almost as many as live in Adelaide !!
These people are by and large, well educated, employed, and doing interesting things and are a great resource for Australia, yet a large percentage of them don't vote for reasons of massive inconvenience, needless bureaucracy, and systemic faults which rub people off the electoral role. I have three quick and simple suggestions for resolving this issue and driving up the rates of inclusion of Aussie expats:
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Under 'Chapter 8 (f) of the Conclusions is a note which asks:
"Alternatively, are there any administrative solutions that you think could be introduced to support compliance with
section 44?"
Section 44 of the Constitution, in its second paragraph, makes express reference to two classes of persons as being exempt from the disqualifications for membership of the Parliament set out in its first paragraph. Those two classes of persons are Officers or members of the Queen's navy or army (ie. of the UK forces) in the one case, and Officers or members of the naval or military forces of the Commonwealth in the other.
Clearly both classes of person, being resident within Australia, are recognized by the Constitution as possessing equivalent status with respect to the very pinnacle of the expression of citizenship, legal fitness to be chosen as a member of either House of the Parliament.
Equally clearly, both classes of persons do not possess this status as something deriving from their official positions, but as representatives of a much wider class of persons in each case, adult subjects of the Crown by right of birth in the UK now resident in Australia on the one hand, and adult subjects of the Crown by right of birth in Australia or from naturalization under its laws, on the other, all of whom share common nationality and rights under the Constitution.
The only thing peculiar to the Officers or members of the respective forces is that they are in receipt of pay from the Crown, which in any other case would disqualify them from being chosen to sit in the Parliament.
Section 44 has never been altered since Federation. The Nationality and Citizenship Act 1948 (renamed 1973 the Australian Citizenship Act 1948), insofar as it may have been used as a basis for disenfranchising the million or more permanently resident age-qualified British citizens, would therefore always have seemed un-Constitutional.
Re-enfranchise all the British citizen permanent residents.
REGARDING OVERSEAS VOTING
I needn't recount the various benefits of having a large expatriate population with close links to Australia - that has been dealt with by the Joint Select Committee on Electoral Matters and lobby groups before. But one part of having a functioning expat community is ensuring their effective right to vote, as distinct from a notional right to vote (at a far flung polling place or with queues that can last for over an hour.)
I have personal experience of organising to vote in London and Italy, and neither was especially pleasant. In London, a very busy polling booth by any Australian standard, there is consistently too little space and too few staff for the process to run smoothly. This ends up disenfranchising thousands directly, and also indirectly from the horror stories that circulate in Australian circles there. The solutions are relatively cheap and simple. They could include establishing a second polling place (at least at peak periods), not unreasonable for a city for 200,000 Australians in it, and making use of an easy accessible temprorary labour pool - the said 200,000 Australians in London.
Italy is a different situation - it provides the example of needless bureaucracy, in this case the inability or unwillingness of consulate staff to issue, receive, store or arrange for the secure postage of a ballot (either to the consulate or from it). ... why should an Australian in Northern Italy have to go to Rome to vote? It's just silly and unnecessary. To argue for this is not to arguement for open-ended costs to taxpayers. It's to argue for creative ways to enable authorised, security-cleared public officials to print and issue ballot papers on demand for a given seat and state. If we are serious about democracy we should be serious about finding solutions for people in these situations.
After marrying a Greek I have lived in Greece half my life but I have not taken dual citizenship and I have given our son Australian Citizenship by Descent. I used to vote at the Australian Embassy in Athens but some years ago I somehow disappeared from the electoral roll and can no longer vote.
Although expatriate I remain Australian. I have sisters in Australia and I intend to return; hopefully my son will go to an Australian university. So I would like to be able to vote.
There may well be another 'elephant in the room' with respect to the background against which this 'holistic' discussion is meant to take place. The Special Minister of State's preface, in a bulleted point at the top of page 2, claims that:
"At the 2007 federal election,
of an estimated eligible population
of around 14.8 million, more than
1.1 million persons were not enrolled to vote; ..."
I suspect there may have been what amounts to a double counting committed in the AEC's calculations upon which this estimate is based. I suspect that a very large number, perhaps as great as around 700,000, maybe even more, permanent Australian residents having a birthplace in the UK or Ireland have been counted as part of the electorally eligible population, when by all purport since 25 January 1984 they have not been.
Whereas in the past the AEC has claimed that it was not known how many persons with British citizenship remained on the rolls under the so-called 'grandfathering' provisions of the legislation that conditionally disfranchised such, in the JSCEM Report on the conduct of the 2007 Federal elections its submission now claims 162,928 with the notation 'British subject'. As at 1999 there were 1,244,300 persons shown in table 5.34 on page 152 of Year Book Australia 2001 as having a birthplace of UK or Ireland.
Footnote 28 on page 43 of the study 'Australia-Aggregate Enrolment Levels 1947-1987', published as Submission 123 to the JSCEM Report on the conduct of the 2004 Federal elections, includes the statement "YBA 2000 contains the claim .... that "between 1949 and 1965, only 4% of citizenship grants were made to former citizens of the UK and Ireland"".
That study claimed consistently virtually full, and on occasions over-full, enrolment of the eligible proportion of the population between the years 1961 and 1987. The 'official' AEC statistics on enrolment levels do not overlap, covering only from 1999 to the present.
Problem: possible disparities unresolved.
As much as I fully agree with the first two comments of this forum, I suppose it is time to comment on the subject for which it is here.
The PMC has done a somewhat admirable job on presenting us with a extensive list of subjects on Australia’s democratic system that might need addressing: from how prescriptive our electoral laws should be to the universality, flexibility and civic culture of our electoral system and more.
However, dare I say it, there seem to be some “elephants in the drawing room” that perhaps should be given priority.
In our 2001 federal election for the House of Representatives, The National party polled approximately 496,000 votes and won 16 seats while One Nation, which polled 936,621 votes, won precisely no seats.
In both the 1998 and 2001 elections more voters failed to end up with their first preferred candidate as their local member than those who actually did. What this means is that for at least those elections the average voter did not attain their first chosen representative.
Leaving the best for last: back in the 1998 election, winning candidate John Howard won the office of Prime Minister for himself and power for his Liberal / National coalition with over 200,000 fewer votes (preferred) than his opponent Kim Beazley of the Labor Party. (this is actually a common occurrence in Australian elections. Federally also in 1990, 1969, 1961 and 1954 as well as some states.)
It’s hard to imagine a greater fault in an electoral system than one that declares the winners are actually the losers. Some would say “Well yes, but that’s the price we pay for single member voting”. To me that’s rather ridiculous. It’s like marketing a new car and saying “ It has great fuel economy, needs minimum maintenance and is really safe and comfortable. Of course every now and again one will have its petrol tank explode and kill all the occupants.”
Isn’t the most fundamental concept of democracy the belief we are ruled by popular political parties while the unpopular ones must retreat to regroup and come up with policies amenable to the public?
As outlined in our submission to the first Green paper, the overriding concern we have is the undermining influence of political donations and lack of transparency and accountability. With the absence of national leadership and harmonisation between jurisdictions, the blame game is all that is happening in NSW. Meanwhile political donations from vested interest groups continue to open doors and dumb down and delay good government policies and legislation in the public interest. Banning political donations and capping election spending is the key to improving our democratic system.
Given that, in the relatively encyclopaedic 'Conclusion' chapter of the Green Paper "[15.6]Readers are particularly encouraged to think holistically ...", I cannot help but observe what a terribly short fuse is set with respect to the acceptance of submissions made taking this exhortation to heart.
The Green Paper is dated September 2009. It is a 260 page document.
The first newspaper mention of its release I am aware of was dated 15 October 2009, and of this I only became aware via a link from an article published on the Onlineopinion Forum on 4 November 2009.
A very significant pool of relatively informed potential respondents to this Green Paper exists in the names of persons who have made submissions to various Electoral Matters Committee inquiries over, say, the last 25 years. Most of the many likely to still be alive would be on the electoral rolls, and their current addresses thus known. Could I suggest that information relevant to this call for public response to the Green Paper be mailed out to these persons?
A CD with all of the relevant PDF files, links, etc, would seem to be a relatively inexpensive way to address this part of the wider Australian audience, a part that has proven to have responded with input before, but never with the prospect of influencing such potentially holistic change to the electoral process.
Surely, if useful input is genuinely sought, something like this could be done, and the date for acceptance of submissions extended accordingly.
I concur with the comments of Forrest Gump, but would put it more succinctly - four days is just not enough time for an real, online discussion to take place on this subject.
And if PM&C was really serious about engaging the Australian public on this debate, then I would expect far more commentary and participation than the one sole comment before mine in the last 18hrs. It shows that this isn't serious, because virtually no advertising or awareness campaign has been conducted for this consultation.
I'm going to try and read through 260+ pages of content in the next few days and see if I can contribute something to this - but like most people during the middle of the week I'll be hard pressed to find this time.
This forum is now open for comment on the questions above. Please feel free to login or register to comment or simply return to this page over the next 5 days to follow the discussion