However, since the 1950s, federal elections in Australia have seen a decline in the share of adult residents whose votes are counted.

At the last federal election in 2022, 14.6 million Australians cast a valid vote. A further 800,000 made it to the voting booth but cast an invalid or blank vote – either deliberately or by accident. 1.8 million were on the electoral roll but did not turn out. 650,000 Australians were missing from the electoral roll. Taken together, over three million Australians entitled to vote did not have their vote counted. By contrast, the Labor Party only won the two-party preferred vote by 600,000.

Thus, despite voting in federal elections being compulsory, only about four in five eligible Australians (82.5%) cast a valid vote in the 2022 federal election. Compulsory voting is responsible for that number being as high as it is: New Zealand’s rate of effective participation in the 2023 election was just 69.6%.

In addition, millions of people live, work and pay taxes in Australia, but are not citizens and therefore not entitled to vote. Taken together, the share of people of voting age who cast a valid vote in the last federal election is just 72%, far below the 89.8% official headline turnout figure.

Uruguay, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and several smaller countries in the Commonwealth of Nations allow permanent residents or Commonwealth citizens (which Australians are) to vote in national elections.

Nor is electoral disengagement inevitable. While New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Canada record declining voter participation, in the United States, Germany, and India, voter participation has seen an upward trend in the past decade or two.