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.