Politics professor, Lisa Hill, argues in The Conversation (30.1.15) discusses the arguments for and against compulsory voting, and concludes:
‘Australians also exhibit fairly high levels of trust in government and have been found to place more value in both voting and obeying laws than citizens in comparable voluntary-voting settings. This is probably related to the fact that almost all eligible Australians are involved in the appointment of their lawmakers. Unless we want Australia’s electoral democracy to wither and become the exclusive domain of older, richer elites, we had better keep our present system.’