"wiser heads will prevail"

Comrades,

Not only is the result of the "non-binding postal survey" a victory for common sense and decency, it's also an outstanding endorsement of the Miracle of Democracy.
And one we didn't need to have.
Never mind that the margin in the poll was emphatically in favour of YES and it easily carried all the states, to have just 20.5% of the electorate in the "don't care" basket in a voluntary 'plebiscite' is truly extraordinary.
As the turn-out numbers were posted weekly by the ABS, and the participation rate climbed higher and higher, my daughter put it to me that perhaps it's just because Australians are so used to voting in compulsory elections, and have been educated about the importance of turning up at the ballot box [the "civic duty"] and the diligence to do it has been drummed into people from an early age, with the threat of a big bad-ass [well, really small] fine if you don't, and the stigma of being branded as a non-voter.
I pooh-poohed the idea at first, thinking "jeez, maybe I've underestimated this thing and it is a 'hot-button' issue after all", but now I'm not so sure.
And if you don't believe that there is stigma around not voting, my other daughter has a friend in her mid-20's who for some reason or another had not enrolled to vote - slipped through the cracks - and when she was urged by her friends to get on the roll for this one, she was genuinely worried that it would mean trouble, because of the fact that her non-enrollment would be exposed.
I don't know if she ever did enroll, but it was very simply - and forcefully - explained that there would be no penalty or backlash whatsoever; the Electoral Commission is a rough pub, they'll let anyone in, anyone at all, no questions asked, as long as you meet the criteria for eligibility, which is citizenship.
And, yes, you can be a dual citizen and vote.
So, the quiet grass-roots Pinko campaign to enroll as many young folk as possible through the 'social media' before the cut off date for this nonsense was supremely effective.
In less than a week before the electoral roll closed, new enrollments rose from 36,769 to more than 90,000...and you'd expect that the huge majority of those would be the people who have just turned 18.
I am now thinking, maybe they're right - they'd been taken to polling stations many times as children and been told and shown how to cast a ballot - compulsory voting is so ingrained in the Australian psyche that we just can't help ourselves from turning out in huge numbers.
We know the turn-out in general elections is generally somewhere in the mid-to-low 90 percentile [and the informal vote rarely rises above 10%], so the 79.5% voluntary roll-up for this - even the patently pathetically weak political compromise that it was - is startling.
Of course the 'campaign' was awash with bald-faced naked propaganda and there would have been instances of multiple-voting, but trying to organise it on a meaningful scale to have any significant impact on the outcome was all but impossible.
That may come, and be one of the many serious threats to democracy, but rigging free & fair compulsory elections will take some imagination.
And there has never been a serious push anytime, as far as I'm aware, for the re-introduction of voluntary voting.
Re-introduction, I hear you say?
Who knew, and pardon the little history lesson here, that it was back in 1924 that compulsory voting was enacted almost by accident - after a record low turn out in the 1922 election - by amendment to the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918, which by all reports was passed on the voices in both Houses after about 15 minutes of debate?
And to think the bumbling fumbling right-wing fools missed the chance to do the exact same thing with the Marriage Act in 2017, with a minimum of fuss?
Instead there was all this gnashing of teeth and pulling out of hair for months on end for a result that was pretty much beyond doubt.
Gawd, help us.
Still, we're virtually on our own here, with only Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Ecuador, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Nauru, Peru, Singapore and Uruguay having enforceable compulsory voting, but there are exemptions in those countries for the illiterate, 16-18 year olds who may and some do have the right to vote, and the over 75's...none of which apply here.
Even the dead can vote in our democracy, until they are probated out of the picture.
Our system is for all intents and purposes unique.
High turn-outs add hefty weight and legitimacy to the well-worn hackneyed expression "the people have spoken".
I remember Joe Biden commenting before last year's US General Election on the chances of DJ Trump! winning the White House with the famous last words..."wiser heads will prevail"...but we all know the turn-out in that one was 57.9%, and some 95 million eligible voters just didn't bother to show.
Wiser heads are all very well and good, but you need to turn out the numbers, Joe.
So even though the weak-as-piss Tories have had an almighty "bagarap" keeping secret foreigners under their beds - losing their majority on the floor in the process - and are so hopelessly fractured on ideological grounds to the point were they have very little to no ideology left, the polity of Australia remains strong.
As much as the religious fundamentalist right will get themselves into a foaming slobbering lather trying to subvert the process, there is simply no arguing with this result.
"The question is resolved in the affirmative".
The electorate might be dumb, but they are definitely not stupid.
It goes without saying politicians who ignore that do so at their own peril.
In any case, everybody knows the next election will be a grand exhibition of one of our great national pastime's -- "Vote the Bastards Out!"
Vote early, vote often.
Bravo.