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Some opponents of compulsory voting claim that rising rates of informal voting point to growing antipathy towards the institution. In order to test this claim we examine recent trends in informal voting, focusing upon some recent figures, particularly those of the 2004 Federal election when there was a sharp rise in informal votes. We suggest that it is not compulsion that is leading to informal voting but rather complexity and its interactions with sociological factors that are brought into play by near-universal turnout.The 2004 Federal election saw a notable rise in levels of informal voting, with 5% (or 639,851 votes) declared informal. This increase in informals gave renewed energy to calls for the abolition of compulsory voting since, according to some commentators, compulsory voting 'causes' a rise in informal votes due to protest against the compulsion (e.g. Minchin, cited in Coorey 2005, 21; Griffin, cited in Bennett 2005, 9). But such assertions are rarely, if ever, supported by sustained argument or evidence.By revisiting and contextualising what happened in 2004 we show that, although some informal votes are undoubtedly protest votes, the majority are not; instead, they reflect the interaction between low levels of literacy, numeracy and English language competence and a complex voting system rather than disaffection or lack of political interest. Furthermore, of those that could, in fact, be interpreted as protest votes, very few are likely to represent a protest against the compulsion itself. We show this partly by resort to longitudinal survey data and partly by testing whether previously accepted academic explanations for informality (McAllister and Makkai 1993;Bean 1986) still hold true.

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With attention focused on the battle for news ratings between Channels Seven and Nine, an underlying trend has tended to go unnoticed: audiences have been switching off televised news and current affairs programs since the 1990s. Drawing on detailed OzTAM ratings, this article shows how this is particularly true for specific audience segments. Allied with this is the longer-term decline in newspaper circulation. These data raise a central question: are Australians merely switching off ‘outdated’ media such as TV and newspapers (and getting their news from somewhere else such as the internet), or are they switching off the genre of news/current affairs altogether? This article weighs the evidence and concludes that the news audience is fragmenting in particular ways, especially by age, and that some (but certainly not all) groups are going online for news.

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