The election message our politicians missed
For too many of us, elections have become a hollow charade where duplicitous parties simply elect the same players that never enact any real change. Which is precisely why people are tuning out, writes Paul Williams.
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My heart soared in April when I learned that Australians had enrolled in record numbers ahead of the 2019 federal election.
Never before have we seen 97 per cent of eligible Australians — and 88 per cent of 18 to 24 year olds — enrolled to vote. It seemed young Australians, courtesy of the 2017 same-sex marriage plebiscite, had especially got the message: having a say in our liberal democracy is not some arcane exercise; it shapes our everyday lives.
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But now I’m dismayed. Terribly dismayed. While record enrolment promised a revolution in civic awareness, our dismally low turnout before and on May 18 has snatched that promise away. With fewer than 91 per cent of enrolled Australians bothering to vote, the 2019 election has been the most poorly attended since compulsory voting began in 1924.
Of course, 90 per cent turnout is, by international comparison, still a healthy result. Compare that to the fewer than 80 per cent of New Zealanders who turned out in 2017, or the 67 per cent of Brits doing likewise the same year. Worse still, just 56 per cent of registered Americans voted in a 2016 presidential election that saw just one in four Americans endorse Donald Trump. That’s just one reason the US is now categorised as a “flawed democracy”.
As I’ve long warned, lazy and incompetent citizens end up with lazy and incompetent governments. Thank goodness for a system of compulsory voting (supported by more than 70 per cent of us) that, for 94 years, has kept Australia’s participation rate above 90 per cent.
But 2019’s poor turnout is not an aberration. It’s part of an alarming pattern.
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Where 91 per cent of enrolled voters turned out in 2016, 93 per cent did so in 2013. Australia is clearly moving in the wrong civic direction, and we don’t have to look far for the reasons why.
First, we live in an age of public mistrust. With just 60 per cent of all Australians (and a mere 40 per cent of those under 25) “satisfied” with Australian democracy, we’re also turning our backs on traditional news sources — where both sides of a policy argument are normally explored — in favour of social media snippets too often weaponised as political propaganda.
The fact a nasty scare campaign, falsely warning regional Queenslanders of a Labor plan for death duties, shifted so many votes via social media is a case in point.
For too many Australians, elections have become a hollow charade where duplicitous parties — too alike in their spin and empty promises — elect the same players, year after year, and all without meaningful change. “The problem with political jokes,” the old gag goes, “is they always get elected.”
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Those who find that funny might also believe the rights Australians now enjoy will continue in perpetuity regardless of who’s elected. Wrongly convinced that certain entitlements — from aged pensions to a basic sense of equality — are forever guaranteed, low information electors feel safe in casting a protest vote for anti-democratic forces on the rabid right and loony left.
For too many, politicians are a mere cast of players in a meaningless political soap opera who spout corny lines that, no matter how inane, cannot possibly affect our lives. For them, elections change only the cast but never the plot. What a shame more Australians cannot grasp Labor PM Paul Keating’s maxim: “If you change the government, you change the country.”
Of course, there’s no denying the 2019 campaign was arguably the least inspiring in living memory. While that doesn’t excuse the 1.5 million enrolled Australians who didn’t vote this year (or the extra 500,000 eligible Australians who’ve never even enrolled), we can at least sympathise with their disdain for dull leaders navigating an even duller campaign.
This was especially true for young voters who saw this year’s election issues as irrelevant to their lives. While same sex marriage rights sit at the heart of many a young person’s passion for social equality (and hence the boon in enrolment), debates over so-called “retirement taxes” — a key frame of the 2019 campaign — held little meaning for the under 30s.
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The good news is that we can reverse disengagement through three simple words: education, education, education.
In short, state and territory education departments must write (or rewrite) social education curriculums to make the study of democracy — from teaching basic values of co-operation in junior primary to the workings of preferential voting in senior secondary — a key experience.
All students deserve the right to feel a meaningful connection to the democracy that serves them so well. We simply cannot afford the alternative.
Dr Paul Williams is a senior lecturer at Griffith University
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