Alright! G'day, guys! Welcome to this five part interview series where today I have the pleasure of chatting with my dad, Ian Smissen about Australian politics. So, we sat down I thought the interview would last about half an hour or so, but it ended up going for about an hour and there is a lot in here, we spoke about the political landscape in Australia, the different parties what they represent. You know, why you should or shouldn't vote for them. We also talked about the upcoming election and we also went through a bit about the history of politics in Australia. So, the turmoil that has occurred over the last decade or so and what it was like when my dad was my age growing up. Anyway, it's a really good series! I hope you get a lot out of it. I give you Ian Smissen and myself talking about politics in Australia.
Dad! Welcome back!
Hey, Pete! Good to be here.
I thought I'd get you in today because obviously we have an election coming up.
We do! Six exciting days to go!
Six exciting days! I'm going it by the mail so, I don't even know what day it's officially. What day is it on that we have to or you have to jump out and?
Saturday the 18th.
You go down to the local primary school, right?
Go down to the local primary school where you went 20 days ago and we all line up and vote, buy a sausage bread.
That's the culture, right?
Shake hands with somebody that you don't want to vote for, just because they're there slapping hands and kissing babies.
You have to kind of dodge all the guys at the front, right? Handing out flyers as well.
Yeah. If you know how you're going to vote, they just become annoying and it's just a waste of paper, but, you know...
Yeah I know. So, who are you going to vote for? Is it rude to ask that, by the way?
Look, if we're talking about Australian culture generally that's an interesting one because I think in, certainly in my parents generation, they would never tell me who they voted for let alone discuss it publicly.
Is that because they don't want to have an argument or some kind of heated discussion?
No, I think it was more that you know this is a private decision and I'm going to keep it private. In the end we knew which side of politics their opinions lay. Well, in fact, my father used to tell me because he voted informal and that is and we can talk about the political system in Australia, what that means, but he voted informal because he came from Britain and they didn't have compulsory voting in Britain and Australia is one of the only countries in the world, I think is about ten, that have enforced compulsory voting.
So, do you want to explain both of those? Informal voting is...
Yeah, so informal voting is where you're required to vote or as I joke you're actually not, you're required to turn up to vote, get your name crossed off and put a piece of paper, the the electoral ballot, in to the the the big cardboard box.
You don't even have to do that, right? You just have to have your name ticked off.
You have to be handed the piece of paper, I think.
Because I went to the last one and I just said take my name off and I was like Is that all I have to do? And she was like yeah, yeah well...you can vote. And I was like not interested! I hadn't thought about who to vote for, so I was like I just don't have any...
I have no opinion.
And I can't be bothered, I have something to do today. So, to be honest I just want to not get fined twenty dollars or whatever.
So, that's it. And so,that's that. We have enforced compulsory voting in that every person over the age of 18 in Australia is legally required to register to vote and is then legally required to turn up to vote.
And what happens if they don't register?
If they don't register you'll effectively, you'll get chased they'll find you. It's not not witch hunt, but...
The police won't show up on your doorstep, but you'll end up getting letters from the Electoral Commission where they will find all there's a bank account, you've got a driver's licence, all of those sort of things. So, I think there is a team of people sitting in the background somewhere in Canberra that are probably chasing people up to get them registered on the electoral roll, but once you are on the electoral roll you're required to turn up to every election whether it's federal election for the country or whether it's a state election or even just a local city council election you're required to come and vote.
So, in Britain it's not like that?
No, there's only 10 countries in the world, I think it's 10, that have compulsory and enforced... Just don't spill your coffee.
Exactly.
That have enforced compulsory voting that is it's compulsory to vote, but the Electoral Commission actually enforce it so you get a fine if you don't. There's a number of other countries that have compulsory registration to vote, but if you don't turn up to vote on the day, they don't really care. But so, you get if you don't come and vote in any one of those either you have to provide a legitimate reason why you didn't. So, unforeseen illness or whatever else. Forgetting isn't quite good enough.
I think I kind of got away with it for forgetting because I'd moved to Canberra and they sent me an e-mail or something saying you have a voted in this one and I was like I've just forgotten to change that I'm actually not in state.
That would have been you forgot to vote in a state election where you weren't living in the state and you forgot to change the your enrolment.
Yeah.
So, you get fined twenty bucks, I think it is, a twenty dollar fine if you don't vote. Which it's a trivial amount for most people, but it's just the sort of statement that saying look, you know, you're supposed to do it just go and do it. It's less than a parking fine.
Well, that's it, parking fines a huge now.
Yeah. In Melbourne they are. Yeah.
So, do you think it's a good idea or a bad idea that we have mandatory voting? Do you think it's fair?
Oh yeah. That's a really interesting sort of moral philosophical question, really. Having grown up with it for my whole life it's just sort of...it's one that you don't think about. I actually think it is reasonable for a couple of reasons: one, we want, we, I believe that as a country we want our citizens to participate in the democratic process, and if we don't make it mandatory then there's a reduced chance they will. The second thing it does, and having spent a lot of time in the United States for work over the last decade and been there at a couple of election times...
You got to see Obama, right?
Yeah, yeah. Got to see Obama and Bill Clinton on stage. Me and Bill and Obama and 35000 of our closest friends at a rally, but yeah, one of the challenges that they have in the United States is simply getting people out to vote. So, there's an enormous amount of money and time and advertising and effort and a whole lot of people just to get people out to vote.
And the reverse too, right? Where there's quite often a game played to try and prevent to try and prevent people.
To try and prevent people, yeah.
To like to sow seeds of dismay or hopelessness and be like, no, screw this.
No point coming. Yeah. That it's a foregone conclusion. So, that's a challenge. But then the second part of that is that you have people lining up for hours on election day here in the United States to vote because there's never a known number of people that are going to come and vote. So, there are far fewer voting public polling stations, places where you can go to vote that are open on voting day. But that means that you can end up with, you know, queues a mile or kilometres long just to get in to vote.
It's another reason not to do it, screw that, I'm not wasting my day in this line.
Whereas in Australia we know exactly how many people there are to vote in our town. There's 15,000 people plus or minus a few thousand depending on holidays and weekends that live here of which half are probably registered to vote because they're 18 or over. So we know that there are seven or eight thousand people that are going to have to vote and in order to get through that number of people the Electoral Commission knows that they've got to have two or three places open all day and staff them with the right people so there's never a queue of more than, you know, 15 to 30 minute wait at the busiest time, which is usually first thing in the morning and and you're always going to get in and vote quickly. It also means that the Electoral Commission have got the apparatus set up to count those votes really quickly. And apart from postal votes and and other sorts of vote where you can vote in and elect an electorate that you don't actually live in so, that then has to be transferred over to that electorate and so on, but the majority people who vote on the day the counting is done by the end of the day by voting closes at 6:00 by 8:00 the counting is basically done and then it's just collating it through the rest of the evening to get those together. So, but I think the other side of that of other than just the logistical side I think the other part of it that's important is to understand that if we want our citizens to vote and participate then requiring them to vote is a reasonable thing. You could argue on the opposite side of that and say well, you know, why should we force people to participate in our society? But I think it's a fairly minimalist participation where all you're saying at the national level is that, you know, you've got to turn up once every three years and put a tick in a box.
I think it's one of those things for me, at least, I can kind of see the libertarian side of it where you should be able to opt out, and I guess you have the opportunity of doing that as long as you go there, but at the same time it would be nice if I could just press a button online and be like a ok, I don't have to waste 20,30 minutes, 60 minutes of my day on this.
The mechanism, the mechanism for voting is something that we probably need to look at at some stage, but the the opportunities for either accidental or deliberate manipulation of electronic voting or for something to go wrong are way higher than simply counting bits of paper.
Which is what? Something similar to what happened with the census years ago, right? Where we got virus? What was it? There was some sort of spyware attack or something.
Look, I think it was just, you know, there were a few attacks on it, but...
And some people couldn't fill it out online.
It crashed the system failed so, that you couldn't do it. And yeah, can you imagine what the federal election would look like if voting was open for even if you open it for the week beforehand, but voting was open for a week and then for five or six of those days it wasn't available? Or something went wrong and then you got to go out and do it again? And so, it's a really hard one. You'd think that the technology should be available now to do it, but I don't think we're quite there.