GrahamY,

You describe from experience that which I must admit I would have instinctively thought must have been the case with respect to returned mail and electoral roll canvassing. I should feel relieved. Yet other contradictions nag at me, and make me wonder whether there could have been some substance behind Hughes' anticipations in circumstances of a whole roll recompilation in the division of Herbert having been required several years ago. Of course the matter is academic, inasmuch as there was little prospect of such recompilation ever happening, due to the seeming provisions of Section 85 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act, as Hughes himself made clear. But I still wonder as to whether your experience, and Hughes' presumably educated expectations, are not capable of being reconciled.

Conventionally in attempting to assess electoral roll accuracy, everything hinges upon whether mail is returned to sender, or, in the case of face to face contact, knowledge of the existence of named persons in connection with a particular address now or in the recent past is comprehensively denied. Nothing in this process is capable of determining whether the named person(s), whose existence as electors would in most cases appear substantiated, has in fact effected the electoral enrolment THEMSELVES as the law requires.

It would thus be possible for a roll to appear to be substantially correct, but in fact contain something like the from 20% to 40% oversubscription that both the mobility statistics and Professor Hughes variously indicate. Only the act of whole roll recompilation would actually put this to the test. It is possible that Hughes was drawing upon international norms or specific experience overseas of whole roll recompilation comparisons with previous rolls in anticipating 30% to 40% of names carried on the roll for Herbert might not attract matching claimants at a recompilation.

In reading posts to this forum, it is impossible to escape the feeling that, across the political spectrum, there is a massive disconnection between electors and the elected. A routinely bogus vote of the order of 20% to 40% of all enrolments might account for such a perception.

The Victorian election result should send a clear message to Canberra that Victorians are unhappy with Canberra.

The former Liberal leader, Robert Doyle, conceded that this was a worse result that the Liberal defeat in 2002 making it the worst result in the party's history. Right wing voters who were unhappy with the Liberals voted Family First or Green.

Left wing voters were too frightened of causing a Liberal victory, to register their disapproval of Labor policy by voting Green, so by and large the Greens lost votes back to Labor.

I think the result sends a very unclear message billie. You could say that voters in State elections have been sending the same message for some years - but the same voters have been re-electing John Howard! Talk about schizoid!