ugh.I hate this so much… leaving aside the fact that “the centre” is a statistical fiction and not an actual position, say you just want to argue that compulsory voting makes political parties reflect the majority views of Australians (a common assumption) - there’s really no evidence for it.
For example - Australia is one of the most pro-choice countries on earth, has been for ages, massive support for legal abortions from voters of all parties. In New South Wales abortion is illegal unless a doctor says there’s a threat to the mother’s life - and that’s Australia’s most populous state, 7 and a half million people. Abortion has literally just been decriminalised in Queensland, comes into effect in December.
The majority of Australians supported marriage equality in every poll since 2007, compulsory voting didn’t stop politicians ignoring “the centre” for ten full years on that one.
The majority of Australians are opposed to privatisation, has compulsory voting stopped every single government, regardless which party is in power, pushing it through? Nope. Australians are actually in favour of re-nationalising a lot of things, and it’s not even a lefty thing, the majority of Liberal-National voters (the mainstream right wing party, current government) actually want to re-nationalise Telstra, the largest telecommunications company in Australia. Has compulsory voting made this prime patch of centre-ground real estate attractive to any party? Has it fuck
The average Australian is pro-euthanasia, they’d like the public transport system to be good (they’re all shite) they’re not up for massively subsidising the mining industry or bailing out banks. They believe in climate change - up until 2015 we had a prime minister who thought climate change is “probably doing good” for the planet - did compulsory voting save us from that wanker? nope
All compulsory voting does is allow them to manufacture a larger mandate for whatever shit they were going to do anyway.
No amount of voting will ever make public opinion matter more than the various vested interests of the powerful, because politicians only need your support on election day - every other day they need the support of a bunch of rich and powerful scumbags and the institutional forces they command…which suits politicians fine, because they understand rich and powerful scumbags, that’s their mates, their colleagues, their school friends… they don’t need to do an opinion poll to know what plays well in that, their true and only constituency. They are fundamentally, permanently, constitutionally unable to actually give a fuck what you think - and compulsory voting makes that easier for them, not harder.
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