Search results

Actually, if there were a referendum today on whether or not voting should be a right, I can guarantee you over 80% of people would vote 'yes, it should'. Aussies love equality and egalitarianism. Your attempt to 'justify' government inaction on the issue is, frankly, weird.

Any of the various Western political parties which associate themselves with classical economic liberalism? Most Americans don't have a clue what the term 'liberal' means, which is why they misuse it so often.

You make no sense. Pleeeeeease tell me what you're smoking. I'll buy some off you. Edit: I think I know what it is. You're not using the fume cupboard.

So what?

Those kids are more libertarian than you ever will be. Their first priority is civil rights; yours is those 'big evil greedy corporations'.

That makes no sense. Seriously, wtf are you smoking. Edit: The single most powerful way for citizens to influence government policy is to vote. Since teenagers can't vote, what the fuck do you expect them to do? Post about it on an internet forum? ;)

By "that far into debt" do you mean debt levels similar to previous ones in Australian history? Id est: the lowest in the Western world? Sure, I'd prefer no debt, but let's not delude ourselves by buying into the Coalition's hype machine.

Youth unemployment is always far higher than adult unemployment in general, though. It's usually due to lifestyle choice. Not to justify a level of 40%, but just pointing out it's a different thing to normal unemployment.

This has experimentally been proven false. Only 5% spoil their ballot paper each year in Australia, while based on experiences in other advanced Western democracies, often quite a bit more than 5% don't bother voting in voluntary voting systems. Edit: I checked the stats here...

Which is exactly the reason I support Australia's system. They're still free to spoil their ballot, and I would never want to or try to deprive them of that privilege. 5% of voters do end up doing this, but that leaves us with an election participation rate of 95%. Because they live in this...

Yes.

Not to mention that people live longer now anyway. They'll be counter-balanced by more old people voting.

Oh, I didn't know it was only the Liberals who were allowed to enact tax cuts.

Sure. Henry Parkes. "The founding fathers" simply refers to the men and women who worked on making Australia a federation, drafting a constitution, laying an electoral framework (e.g. creation of the Senate, introduction of proportional and preferential electoral math), etc. Smugness fail...

The first or the second sentence? The first sure as fuck isn't - it's an opinion. You're free to argue why you feel the way you do about compulsory voting of course. Please do.

It's minerally rich, and surely likely to contain a modest amount of carbonaceous material.

Re: Holy mother of dust storms That's what you get for using IE you fool. Switch to something useful and safe, like Firefox or Chrome.

I'm extremely thankful that Australia's founding fathers had the foresight to make voting compulsory. This way instead of only the extremists having a say in how the country is run, as in America, everyone does.

a) Australia will be one of the most, if not the most, hard hit countries by global warming b) He's mentioning global warming, sure, but I don't see him making a big fuss about it any more than he's supposed to. I hear more about Telstra/broadband or the stimulus package than I do the...

And you're merely a moron.