Why your vote’s too vital to waste
AS AN avid election watcher since childhood, I’ve always struggled to understand why so many people care little about their vote. Today, about 564,000 adult Australians aren’t on the electoral roll – 45 per cent of 18 year olds.
Even more worrying is the fact that, despite the convenience of postal and pre-poll voting, about 10 per cent of the nation’s enrolled 17.2 million voters will not bother to cast a ballot on May 21. That’s 1.7 million people, or roughly the population of Perth, who just couldn’t be bothered.
Add to that the 800,000 Australians likely to cast an informal vote – either deliberately in an act of childish petulance, or accidentally from a lack of knowledge – and about 3 million Aussies will throw away an opportunity to shape the nation’s future.
But it’s not just Australia’s future they’ve turned their backs on; it’s their own. After talking politics for more than 40 years, I’m still stunned by those who stubbornly refuse to vote because, they flippantly say, “all parties are the same” or because “all politicians are crooks”.
Enrol to vote and force some change if you really believe that.
But I’m equally shocked that so many Australians see the electoral process not as a delicate democratic instrument of peaceful, orderly change but as a petty soap opera that has little to do with everyday life.
These Australians believe that, even when the cast of politicians changes, the script of government stays the same, with our lives marching on unchanged. How wrong they are. That’s why former Labor PM Paul Keating was forced to remind Australians that “when the government changes, the country changes”.
How can anyone not realise that? Worse, how can voters regard all political parties as the same?
True, there are fewer ideological differences between the Labor and Coalition parties today than 60 years ago, but differences in policy and leadership remain stark.
Moreover, the differences between major and micro parties are especially pronounced. Yet far too many voters see all parties as equivalent despite the fact micro parties have no experience in government, often select unsuitable candidates, and boast views shared only by a tiny minority.
Yet most opinion polls already point to a record number of electors – up to 34 per cent according to one poll – who plan to vote for a minor or micro party, or independent candidate, on May 21. That’s a huge increase from 2019, when 25 per cent of Australians cast votes for candidates outside the major parties, and far higher than even the 1998 election when Pauline Hanson’s One Nation burst onto the federal scene.
This surge in minor and micro party support won’t necessarily see seats lost from the majors – although the “Teals” (the ‘green liberals’) will poll well in Sydney and Melbourne – but their preferences will matter more than ever. In what will probably prove a bigger headache for the LNP than Labor, this is especially true in regional Queensland, where up to a third of voters will opt for a populist minor party – led by Hanson, Bob Katter or Clive Palmer – with up to a one third of those preferencing Labor ahead of the
LNP. As a result, seats like Flynn, Herbert and Capricornia could come into play when they otherwise wouldn’t. But that doesn’t mean Australians need worry about a hung parliament. The hung House of Representatives between 1940 and 1943 functioned well in passing 208 bills under two governments during the early days of World War II.
I’M STILL STUNNED BY THOSE WHO STUBBORNLY REFUSE TO VOTE BECAUSE, THEY FLIPPANTLY SAY, ‘ALL PARTIES ARE THE SAME’ OR BECAUSE ‘ALL POLITICIANS ARE CROOKS’
Similarly, the Gillard-Rudd minority government between 2010 and 2013, was productive in passing 561 bills. That compares to the 2007-10 parliament that passed just over 400.
The point is that parliaments pivot not just on the number of MPs on each side but on the quality of those MPs, too. That’s why I’m pleased the Australian Electoral Commission has launched its “Stop and Consider” campaign to encourage voters to think about claims made this campaign (especially on social media), and to reject those from unreliable sources. Stop and consider just how important your vote is.