Dear Julia,
I hope you don't mind my making a private discussion public. The idea of writing this letter came to me after talking to you and your friend Carmen, who will also be a first-time voter on 7 September. Both of you expressed the same perplexity: excitement at the prospect of voting combined with dismay at the choices you're going to find on the ballot papers. Since I am sure that you're not the only young Australians who feel that way, I have decided to continue our conversation in this way.
Disillusion with politics and politicians is nothing new, nor is it unique to democracy. But long-established democratic systems of government seem especially susceptible to it, and there is evidence that a new round of disillusionment has taken hold in Australia. According to the Australian Electoral Commission, nearly one in five eligible voters aged between 18 and 24 had not bothered to enrol to vote when the rolls for this election were closed last week. That's more than double the number of unenrolled people in the wider adult population.
In other words, many of your contemporaries — whose votes might conceivably have determined the outcome in some seats — have declined to participate in the democratic process altogether.
Many observations might be made about this decision to opt out. Some people I know attribute it to compulsory voting, which Australia has but most democracies do not. In this country if you are enrolled to vote and want to express your contempt or despair at the choices available, the only legal way of doing so is to spoil the ballot paper in some way. Why put yourself in the position of having to resort to such a farcical solution?
I happen to agree with the critics of compulsory voting. Voting is a duty as well as a right, but it is a duty that should be freely recognised and accepted. Compulsion encourages an unreflective, almost mechanical form of participation, and it is one of the reasons why Australian elections are too often decided by people who have no interest in politics whatever the choices might be. Such voters are easily susceptible to slogans and distortions, and politicians know it. We would have a more vigorous democracy if political parties and candidates had to work at 'turning out the vote' as it is called elsewhere — at persuading people that their vote can make a difference.
But