Marin raised an interesting point in the comments section yesterday - Australia has a compulsory voting policy, and that skews the political landscape and changes the way that the parties market themselves.
Australia has a 95% electoral turnout rate, the highest in the world. The UK (where voting is optional) has a 76% electoral turnout rate. From my experience of living in both countries the level of political interest is roughly the same, which means that around 20% of Australian voters are turning up purely because they have to and not because they want to. The electoral role for Australia stands at approximately 14.5 million, which means that just under 3 million people are standing in line at the polling booth not because they feel strongly about the way the country is run and want to make a difference but merely because they're avoiding a $40 fine and a stern letter.
At the last election there was an overall gap of approximately 1 million votes between the two major parties. So that apathetic voter population has the power to decide who will run the country. And to get that vote, the parties abandon policy (anyone who cares enough to read up policy has probably already made their mind up) and resort to crass advertising tactics, soundbites, threats & bribes. Given that it's estimated that the next election could cost the Australian public more than $100m, the most effective campaigning tool for the ALP could be to do no advertising before the election but just have the candidates hand out $50 bills to people standing in line on polling day. After all who's not going to vote for a guy that just gave them $50?
In keeping with this theme, here's today's musical choice
Incidentally this clip was buried in the middle of the Tony Abbot 'blooper reel' in yesterday's post, but it's worth highlighting. Welcome to your future Australia...
Australia has a 95% electoral turnout rate, the highest in the world. The UK (where voting is optional) has a 76% electoral turnout rate. From my experience of living in both countries the level of political interest is roughly the same, which means that around 20% of Australian voters are turning up purely because they have to and not because they want to. The electoral role for Australia stands at approximately 14.5 million, which means that just under 3 million people are standing in line at the polling booth not because they feel strongly about the way the country is run and want to make a difference but merely because they're avoiding a $40 fine and a stern letter.
At the last election there was an overall gap of approximately 1 million votes between the two major parties. So that apathetic voter population has the power to decide who will run the country. And to get that vote, the parties abandon policy (anyone who cares enough to read up policy has probably already made their mind up) and resort to crass advertising tactics, soundbites, threats & bribes. Given that it's estimated that the next election could cost the Australian public more than $100m, the most effective campaigning tool for the ALP could be to do no advertising before the election but just have the candidates hand out $50 bills to people standing in line on polling day. After all who's not going to vote for a guy that just gave them $50?
In keeping with this theme, here's today's musical choice
Incidentally this clip was buried in the middle of the Tony Abbot 'blooper reel' in yesterday's post, but it's worth highlighting. Welcome to your future Australia...
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