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Peter Goers: Let’s stick it to Australians who don’t vote with a $2000 fine

The 2.6 million Australians who couldn’t be stuffed turning out to vote in the Voice referendum is a disgrace and the penalty for them should be far greater, Peter Goers says.

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Here’s my vote in favour of voting.

We’ve had compulsory voting in Australia since 1925 which makes us one of only 21 countries in the world with compulsory voting. Good. But now it seems that we have voluntary voting by default.

Before the recent referendum, when I inquired of three young people of my acquaintance yes or no, they told me they were not voting, never voted and they preferred to pay the fine of $20.

There were 2.6 million Australians who didn’t turn out to vote in the Voice referendum. Picture: Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images
There were 2.6 million Australians who didn’t turn out to vote in the Voice referendum. Picture: Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images

Now we learn that 2.6 million Australian voters, or one in seven of us, opted to merrily break the law by deliberately not voting in the referendum and will pay the fine or offer some spurious excuse.

This is shocking.

I love to vote. It’s a privilege and a hard-won right and democracy depends on it. People have fought and died for our right to vote and for universal suffrage. Why abuse that?

I enjoy my pilgrimages to a polling place and they are ubiquitous and convenient – halls, schools, kindergartens, Salvation Army citadels – and you can have a sausage.

I take all the how-to-vote cards proffered and return them to canvassers for recycling. It’s a nice outing.

Of course, it’s actually not compulsory to vote but it is, or rather was, compulsory to have your name crossed off as attending.

What you do in your cardboard cubicle with a dinky pencil is up to you, but why waste the opportunity?

I practically move into a cardboard cubicle to vote below the line in senate and legislative council ballots having practiced my preferences and having to copy them out carefully on a ballot paper the size of a small tablecloth. This is my right. What fun.

Peter Goers believes the fine for failing to vote should be increased considerably. Picture: Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images
Peter Goers believes the fine for failing to vote should be increased considerably. Picture: Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images

We should celebrate and thank our Australian Electoral Commission which is held in irreproachable regard all over the world for its dazzling efficiency, fairness and incorruptibility.

Nowadays you don’t even have to turn up on the day to vote. You can have a postal vote or be pre-polled.

It’s a concern to me that 6 million voters – a third of us – are pre-polling. What if issues shift after you’ve voted and you can’t change your vote?

It’s easy to vote on the day with thousands of polling places all open from 8am to 6pm, or before.

Yet, 2.6 million Australians can’t be bothered. Why? There are lazy bastards, there are the apathetic, there are the selfish (I’m OK and I don’t care about anyone else), there are those who distrust politicians, there are those who can’t see the difference between two centrist major parties fighting for the lowest common denominator, those who feel stiffed by the preferential system – you vote for X and Y gets elected – and there are those who imagine they are just too busy to vote.

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If you don’t vote you have no right to complain and you will change nothing. Compulsory voting is essential. Had voting in the US and UK had compulsory voting, Trump would not have been elected and Brexit would not have happened.

Voting is the sacrament of democracy. But 2.6 million of us can’t be stuffed.

The $20 fine is absurdly low. It has not been raised since 1984 when you could buy a nice house for $50,000. That house is now $750,000.

Should the fine be raised to $200 or even $2000? The carrot doesn’t work so we need a bigger stick.

And we need much more education in civics, government and democracy and maybe people who are desperate never to change the Australian Constitution will actually read it.

And perhaps better politicians could provide better reasons to engage and inspire the recalcitrant voter. I’ll vote for that.

Originally published as Peter Goers: Let’s stick it to Australians who don’t vote with a $2000 fine

Read related topics:Voice to Parliament

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Original URL: https://www.ntnews.com.au/news/south-australia/peter-goers-lets-stick-it-to-australians-who-dont-vote-with-a-2000-fine/news-story/e252738882b08752c147a71f2680738e