Bazz,

Haven't seen the Australia Card mentioned for a long time. For a Laborite, Hawke had some good ideas, and that was one of them.

We should celebrate those 628,000 who managed to escape the system.

Obviously if they wanted to vote, then they could.
They don't and their wishes should be respected!

It really doesn't matter if one or one million people don't vote.
With this system of voting tilted towards the scumbags in politics, whether you vote or not is of no use what so ever.
Because firstly we have the stupid system of 'preferences', where you vote for one and get another.
Then there are the morons, I think they're called the 'donkey votes'.
They have no idea.
So it is that by the time you've eliminated half the voting population, we are left with the 'hard core' voters who ignorantly think they are going to make a difference.
If anybody actually stopped to analise what we call Democracy, you will find it in the dictionary under 'joke', or 'how to fool the fools'.
This stupid system we have all it takes is to get the ear of a large group or cult or club with a very large membership, like the unions, and hey presto you win the election.
Again if anyone bothered to look into some stats, they would find a frightening revelation which confirms this very notion I am speaking of, and that is;
If it were not for BS like 'Coalitions, preferences and other factors, based purely on the number of votes for a particular party, Labour would have been in power from the very beginning and only labour.
The number of votes for labour has pretty much been the majority so Labour would have always won more than 50% of the votes outright.
Now don't get me wrong I am NOT a lefty by any means, I just wanted to highlight another 'cock-up' of our wonderful 'Democracy'.
It's a 'joke', that is one of the best ways of describing it.
It falls far short of it's mission statement, or what it should be.
For example, we only need 50.00000000000000000000000001% for it to be called a majority.
BS!
That's half in any thinking man's mind.
What is so severely wrong with this system is, that only half the population are being appeased, the other half can go and get stuffed, according to the pollies.

That's 628,000 people who can't let their conscience choose from that loose assembly of inadequates who call themselves politicians.