There is an over-arching reason why non-citizens should not be entitled to enroll and vote in Australia. It has to do with electoral enrollment accountancy.

It is possible to determine, to a very close approximation, the number of persons who, by virtue of age and citizenship, are qualified to enroll upon the electoral rolls in Australia. It is the fact of being lawfully enrolled which is the source of the right, and in fact obligation, to vote in Australian elections, Federal, State or local.

There are three classes of persons who are entitled to vote in Australian elections. They are:

Persons who have acquired their citizenship by virtue of Australian birth;

Persons who have acquired their citizenship by naturalization;

Persons who, being permanently resident British subjects and having been electorally enrolled as at 25 January 1984, and having remained enrolled since.

Each of these three classes of persons is subject to relatively precise numbering, through such things as records of births, deaths, and marriages; naturalization records; census records of country of birth; and the like. The point is that a comparison of total electoral enrollments recorded for Australia with these determinable entitlements to enrollment indicates around 100% enrollment already exists.

There is, however, a conundrum. Surveys over the years have indicated that only around 85% of persons enttitled to enrollment have actually effected and/or maintained their electoral enrollment themselves, which is the way the law has always required that it be done. In such circumstances, how is 100% enrollment to be explained?

One explanation could be that in the centralized electronic roll managment system names have been emplaced by other than lawful means. If this was to be so, however, it would have to be accepted that there is no more room left for the emplacement of yet more such unlawfully emplaced names on rolls, lest some of the 15% of genuinely entitled but currently unenrolled take up their entitlement, and push the total into incredibility.

Opening the rolls to non-citizens would eradicate this benchmark. In conjunction with weak proof-of-identity at enrollment, game over!

What a crackpot idea!

Susan Giblin (the author) wrote "Is refusing voting rights to residents who live and work in the community something we will look back on as unjust?"

I think its unjust that so many foreign born people have been allowed to "live and work in the community" whilst existing citizens with experience and qualifications are unemployed or working in low-paid dead-end jobs thanks to the state and federal governments' criminal policy of opening the immigration floodgates based on the lie of the "skills shortage".

I think its unjust that the cost of housing has been placed completely beyond the means of ordinary people as a result of population growth deliberately brought about by our Governments for no better reason than to further inflate the already hyperinflated housing market.

For further information, please see my article "How the Growth Lobby Threatens Australia's Future" of 9 Feb 09 at http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8485&page=0

It may well be that many of the migrants in our midst, including Susan Giblin herself, are decent well-meaning people, but the fact remains they are being used as tools of the greedy, cynical elite that runs this country in order to break up and disorganise communities and undermine democracy as well as to line their own pockets without regard to our environment or our long term future.

Granting voting rights to non-citizens would make even worse an already bad situation.

You are absolutely spot on Leigh and Forrest Gumpp.

This is a completely crackpot idea.

I don't regard the idea as necessarily "crackpot", however I'm curious in regard to those immigrants who reside in Oz and have never paid tax here (or possibly anywhere) or live on welfare, there are at least a few of those. What are their rights?

Sorry Susie love, but we don't want none of them foreign ideas around here. It's gunna take at least 10 years to git all that foreign indoctrination out of that pretty little head of yourn.

By then that husband of yours may have got a bit of Aussie sense in there. [Maybe not, he's probably an academic, too].

Truth be known, we should be restricting voting to only those who have at least one Aussie born grandfather. That would keep all this newfangled thinking at bay for a while.

Hardly an original way of dismissing other peoples' arguments is it, Hasbeen?

Ignore nearly all of what was actually written, parody a little of what was written and then pretend that the parody is what you are arguing against.

Democracy is government for the people by the people.

The question is who are the people (voters)? The general definition has been citizenship.

This definition has been clear, easy to record and track. To open it up further would be an administrative nightmare, as well as the definition of who could vote would be extremely fuzzy and subject to all sorts of litigation. To this end citizenship has pretty much been accepted as the litmus test.

Also:

-The Boston tea party was about citizens of the colonies not getting the vote or having any prospect of being in the position to do so.

-Citizenship also carries responsibilities (less so recently) in that in war time citizens are often conscripted, which cannot be done with temp residents.

-As for tax, this is recognised by most countries as based on where where you reside (>180 days in a tax year) whether you are working or merely on an extended holiday.

So while Susan's proposal has some merits, it falls firmly in the too hard, too little benefit bin.

Surely there should be some advantages left for being a citizen, to that of non citizens.

Off the top of my head, I can see only two. One is having the right to vote and the other is being eligible for an Australian passport.

A non citizen, with permanent residency can get employment, health benefits and is free to reside anywhere they choose and purchasse property.

Give them the right to vote as well, you have to be kidding! Ok, we are fools for the lax and very high immigration we have, and for letting so many uninvited 'illegals' in as well, but hopefully not that stupid to acceed to the crackpot suggestion of the author.

I wonder if any other country allows non-citizens to vote. I wonder if this woman has thought that countries other than Australia should take up her ratty ideas. Or, has she picked on Australia because she now lives here, with an Australian husband, and knows that Australia is a soft touch – even softer since we have been lumbered with a Labor Government. We are already an international laughing stock, with universities selling visas to overseas students who can barely make themselves understood, and who get privileges no Australian-born students get; and the people-smuggling boats coming almost line astern since the Rudd Government put out the word that it would be easier to enter Australia illegally after Howard.

The quality of contributions to OLO have taken a dive recently. Like Horus, I took a recent look at the General area because of the fall in standards here, only to find Graham Young berating posters for not putting up better subjects.

Graham has said in the past that it is hard to get good contributions from outside, and he asked us not to be rude to contributors for this reason. Since then, the standard has got worse; regular posters have dropped out, and it is damned hard not to be rude to contributors like this one and many others who, at best, keep rehashing subjects that have been done to death.

Perhaps the 10 years that OLO just reached were all it had?

Leigh,

I've noticed that the degree of rudeness is in inverse proportion to the quality of the arguments presented, that's why I'm never rude.

At the time of the Boston Tea Party, British subjects in the American colonies were not having their interests represented within the British Parliament. Today there is emerging a widespread feeling that Australians are not having their interests truly represented within the Australian Parliament.

Indeed, prior to 1948, native-born and naturalized Australians shared without question with persons having the same origin as Susan Giblin the status of British subject, or, in the case of persons from the Irish Republic, an entitlement to such status. Permanent residency here made all such overseas-born British subjects Australians, and if of age, entitled to enrol and vote.

Progressively, over the years, Australian Parliaments purported to alter this birthright of native-born Australians, degrading it to one of mere Australian 'citizenship'. From 25 January 1984, those Parliaments have in a discriminatory fashion purported to disenfranchise an indeterminate number of such permanently resident, but overseas born, British Australians. I say 'purported' because the enactments which have led to this appear unconstitutional. The rider to Section 44, sub-Section (iv), of the Commonwealth Constitution holds the key to that unconstitutionality.

The significance of this conditional disfranchisement of British (and Irish) born Australians may have been that it created a 'grey area' of uncertainty as to the total number of persons qualified for electoral enrollment, such that small-order exceedings of the theoretical maximum might be seemingly satisfactorily explained away, were such ever to become noticed.

Susan Giblin writes:

"In Great Britain, Irish and Commonwealth citizens can vote in national and local elections. ....... I would like to be able to contribute fully. If the most important elections are those where we elect our political representatives I would like to have the opportunity to take part sooner rather than later."

The best contribution you can make Susan, is to thoroughly study the implications of Section 44 (iv)'s rider for Australian citizenship legislation. Then raise the roof about it. Australian Parliaments have betrayed us both and all on this. Here's a start point: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=5275#65639

Hope you succeed.

Can I vote in Irish elections then, I can point it out on a Atlas. Hell, perhaps the author can take up my case of not being allowed to become the prez of the USA as well. LOL

There has to be some test for voting rights and citizenship is a good one. I can see any reason to change it. I glad you wish to vote and have an interest in this country, and when you can become a citizen then you can act on it.

I understand and sympathise with the sentiment but not the reasoning of the author.

It is not a given that the applicant may actually be successful in their application for citizenship. There has to be a rite of passage, if you like to gain the right to vote in democratic elections. Otherwise anyone can move here, never commit to citizenship and continue to influence the outcome of elections.

The fact that a foreign visitor or a citizenship applicant may pay tax is irrelevant in my view. Citizenship applicants pay tax for the same reason we do - because they are accessing public services like public transport, roads, hospitals and maybe even the protection of our police etc.

Interesting thoughts, but I disagree for a few reasons:
(1) It is more important to grant enfranchisement to youth, who can be sent to prison, grant sexual consent, drive a car, sign contracts, etc, but not vote.

(2) Citizenship is boolean: yes/no, so it's easy to use that as a basis for enfranchisement. Personally, I'd argue against being able to vote in more than one nation-state at any given time, as dual-citizenship seems ugly.

(3) There is a way non-citizens (even non-residents!) can have far greater influence on political directions than with the vote (and I'm not talking about under-the-counter political donations): make public submissions to inquiries.

Consider: if an Israeli cluster-bomb manufacturer's submission, which was little more than a product flyer with a cover letter, was accepted as a submission into the cluter munitions prohibition bill inquiry a couple of years back, then almost anything goes. More usefully and recently, a team of US Law Profs, and a Swedish quango made great submissions to the Senate Inquiry into Gene Patents.

If the non-citizen would-be elector considers the influence of a single vote (especially in a non-marginal seat), then compares that to the effect of an on-the-public-record archived-forever submission to an inquiry provides (whether parliamentary or departmental, and especially if it is an early submission so others can refer to it when developing their own submissions), then enfranchisement looks pretty useless.

So... has the author demonstrated any interest in the direction of Australian political policy by making a submission to any inquiry? Not being facetious, but I'd be interested to know, especially as there have been so many inquiries to choose from in the last few years of worldwide significance (Carbon trading, Citizenship Testing, Climate Policy, Gene Patents, just to name a few). If not, why not?

Daggett, I don't believe you.

I did hope I might get some lady to have a go at the grandFATHER bit, but I never expected anyone could take the whole post seriously.

I suppose you do vote in our elections.

Speaking as an immigrant, I had voting rights immediately upon arrival. That is because, at the time of my migration, I was English (although this rule has changed since) and not the citizen of a country who took it upon itself to fight against British authority.

Generally, it is wholly appropriate for only those who make the effort demonstrate acceptance of the Australian way of life, through submitting themselves for citizenship and embracing Australia, rather than holding fealty to some alien state, to be allowed to vote in public elections.

Lets face it the citizenship exam is not that tough (even for the Irish)

So for every three good reason in support of the motion, I could think of six against it..

Hasbeen wrote, "... I never expected anyone could take the whole post seriously."

Call me stupid, but I took your post to be a parody of how people opposed to high immigration (such as myself) might express themselves.

If I am mistaken, then I apologise.

---

I note Susan Giblin has written another article, "Reflections on my first experience of writing for 'On Line Opinion'" at http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8898&page=0 http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=8898&page=0 in which she seems critical of responses to her article including, presumably, mine.

I think Susan should have argued her case on this forum.

---

Susan writes in the other article, "My impetus to write the article came when I found myself voteless for the first time in my life. ... I felt voiceless and disempowered and I had a yearning to do something positive about it. I set to work doing some research, writing the short article and submitting it to On Line Opinion."

In fact many Australians with voting rights are disempowered. Look at how the Tweed Shire residents are being treated by their own local council in "Nightmare 'Nightcap' Development approved in Tweed Shire" at http://candobetter.org/node/1257

A massive highly inappropriate residential development, for which the Council received only one submission in favour and hundreds against, was approved on Tuesday Night by a council, the majority of which was elected on a pro-environment platform.

The views of local residents are being completely disregarded.

And they are also being disregarded in regard to a Car Rally scheduled for September this and which was organised secretively behind their backs and sprung on them at the last minute (See http://candobetter.org/NoRepcoRally).

This is an all too common experience in this country, today.

Those without jobs or in jobs for which they are overqualified, thanks to record high immigration, or who are forced to rent in a market that has become hyper-inflated, also thanks to to record high immigration, are even more disempowered than the rest of us.

First Point:
Should anybody buying any product that attracts tax in any country be eligible to vote in that country?
Does airport tax paid in transit count?
Or should it only be based on income tax? Why?
At what level of income tax paid should voting rights apply?
When income falls so that no tax is paid should voting rights be taken away?
Second Point:
In Australia up to 2009 children do not have voting rights.
"Is refusing voting rights to (children) in the community something we will look back on as unjust?"
We cannot disenfranchise children on the basis of them not working because unemployed and retired adults have the right to vote.
There are surely some 17 year olds with greater political awareness than some 70 year olds.
They will also be potentially more affected by political decisions with long term implications.
Why not let children vote?
Third Point:
Why should people have voting rights just because they "live and contribute to a community"?
What does contribute mean? Spend money? Work?
Who will decide what level of contribution earns voting rights?

Shouldn't voting rights be reserved for those who bear allegiance to a country by way of birth or citizenship pledge?

Whilst it would be nice to give the maximum possible rights to absolutely everyone, there needs to be some acknowledgment that granting such rights to one group can effectively take away rights (i.e. the right to decent affordable shelter, decent jobs or, indeed, any jobs at all, education, access to health services) from another.

Any society that doesn't guarantee these basic rights to existing inhabitants before granting the kind of rights that people like Susan already enjoy, let alone voting rights that she asks for, to often more privileged outsiders is, by my definition, dysfunctional.

In recent years, Australia has abysmally failed this test with many existing residents being reduced to what is no better than slavery(1).

Does anyone ever wonder how people on basic wages pay the rent these days?

Either they cram into substandard forms of shelter such as boarding houses or shared tenancies (2) or they work at two jobs. Sometimes they have to do both.

Even professionals find it hard to cope.

This appalling situation has been deliberately brought about by our political leaders, that is unless, we assume that they were too stupid to realise that the unearned windfall profits raked in by land speculators had to be paid for by somebody.

And through the years whilst they and their puppeteers (3) have been bringing about this situation they have masked their true motives behind a facade of fake compassion for other human beings.

---

1. This is a word used by a professional surveyor who lives near me to describe his curent circumstances. He had to cancel his annual trip back to Europe last Christmas thanks to his landlord jacking up his rent repeatedly in recent years.

2. See my article "Shared accommodation a necessity and no longer a choice for many in Brisbane" of 30 April 2008 at http://candobetter.org/node/446 . The situation has become even worse since then.

3. See "How the growth lobby threatens Australia's future" of 9 Feb 09 at http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8485&page=0

Upon further reflection, I have decided that it wasn't appropriate for me to raise my concerns about immigration in the way I did in my first post.

I should have made it sufficiently clear that Susan Giblin was not unlikely to personally responsible for the way that immigration has been abused by our elites to screw ordinary Australians.

My own personal experience clouded my better judgement, so I apologise to Susan.

---

That said, my general points still stand and I would encourage Susan to engage in this and other discussions.

It should be noted that in the midst of a recession the rate of immigration has actually INCREASED. See http://www.theage.com.au/national/migrant-figures-jump-the-slump-20090508-ay0t.html

"IMMIGRATION has soared to record levels, even with the country in recession. Figures show that in the year to March, permanent and long-term arrivals outnumbered departures by 337,000.

"The Bureau of Statistics says that in the March quarter alone, people entering the country who said they would stay here for at least a year outnumbered residents leaving for at least a year by 128,000 ­ about 10,000 a week.

"The figures imply population growth is even higher than the official figures, showing record growth of 389,300 in the year to September, or 1.84 per cent.

"On the new figures, population growth could be running at more than 400,000 a year, or about 2 per cent.

"In the March quarter, the number of net permanent and long-term arrivals was 24 per cent higher than a year ago.

"The number has doubled in five years. ..."

This is insane.

To KMB - thanks so much for the fantastic questions. I'll have to ponder on them and do a bit more research, to come up with a response.

Best wishes, Susan

Susan Giblin
Reply to KMB

I’m sorry for the delay getting back to you.
I’ll start with a comment on your questions about young people's voting rights.

I agree that there is a case to lower the age of voting in Australia. Mandela famously wanted to lower the age of voting in South Africa to 14. He was overruled though. I haven’t looked into this issue in detail but I reckon it would be interesting to investigate – what his suggestions were and why he was overruled.

I’ve found a few websites relating to the issue of youth voting rights:

http://www.youthrights.org/votestatus.php
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/04/21/2222839.htm

Susan Giblin cntd.
Now to the issue of tax:

I said in the original article that ‘[a]s a resident here in Australia I pay taxes out of any wage I earn.’ It is the potential to pay this tax, not the actual paying of it, which I think warrants whether we should have a vote or not. This would ensure that people who have lost their job, or retired people, or students still have a vote.

Discussions in favour of non-citizen voting rights seem to use the payment of income tax as an argument in favour, not other kinds of tax, such as GST. See this article for example:

http://www.drummajorinstitute.org/library/article.php?ID=5519

I would need to go into this much deeper. Referring to the Boston Tea Party, which happened within very different circumstances to today was, perhaps, not the strongest of my arguments, but it is possible to extrapolate from then to now and argue for a further extension of democracy and justice.

Nobody is suggesting tourists should vote, rather those who have a stake in the community and have made a commitment to be here and set up a life here in Australia. Extending voting rights to residents but not tourists would not be contradictory in this sense.

TomT: << ...those who have a stake in the community and have made a commitment to be here and set up a life here in Australia >>

Susan, I may have missed something here, but is there some reason that you've not chosen to take up citizenship in Australia? The reason I ask is that doing so is a formal act that demonstrates both an individual's stake in the community and their commitment to it.