As for the Electorate, the Woman's Lobby are over the moon. More perks and gratuitous handouts. Money for staying at home. Subsidies for child care and working mothers. Parental leave for gay couples. More child care bonuses and first home Govt grants. Tax relief. Educational HEC affordability relief. Free hospitalization and IVF programs. More. And much more, as polling Day approaches.

It is just as well, the Elections are held every three years. It puts things in perspective. It tells us, we are silly pawns who play either side for material gain, and short term opportunistic expediency. It isn't Leadership, nor Statesmanship we aspire to.

We are content with mediocrity. Politics makes such strange bedfellows.

[Deleted for abuse]

The article is okay so far as it goes but, as other responses point out, there are more serious flaws in our democracy. I think those who bewail compulsory voting may do so because they think that those who would not bother to vote are likely to be uninformed or less qualified to make a wise choice. I don't have the wit to suggest a better system, but it does seem to me to be very strange that we have a system in which the vote of the lowest-qualified citizen carries the same weight as the most highly-qualified voter. Perhaps though, the principle of respect for each individual is so important that it is worth the sacrifice of rationality.

Deleted for abuse? Lol, it was a joke, just riffing on the line about internet debates descending into abuse.

Guess someone didn't get it.

Anyway, I'll be serious now ...

Slightly off-topic, perhaps, but I was interested to hear a comment Tanveer Ahmed (if I recall correctly) made on ABC radio the other day.

The interviewer made a comment about the oft-lamented 'Laborals' phenomenon - the complaint that the two major parties do not differ enough to offer voters a real choice, etc.

Ahmed pointed out that, on the plus side, what this does do is provide Australia with extremely stable, centrist government. Despite Tony Abbott's conservatism, Ahmed argued, he knows he can't go too far, or he'll lose votes. Similarly, Julia Gillard may personally hold stronglyh Socialist leanings, but also can't risk voter alienation by being too radically left-wing.

When one considers the most radical governments of recent history - Whitlam's Labor on the Left, and Workchoices-era Howard Liberals on the right - both were resoundingly rejected by voters.

It may make politics in Australia slightly boring, but in many ways boring has its virtues: it certainly avoids revolutions - nasty, disturbing, uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!

Yo!....*Proxy*... you are out of the sin bin now.. speak up... please.