Australia is poised to erode one of the most powerfully enfranchised electorates in the world – and we’re losing it without a sophisticated discussionStudent politics is brutal but its lessons are thorough; by the age of 19,I’d learned how to pull knives out of my back without wincing, how to count a senate-style multi-candidate preferential ballot and that a true politician will finish anything – anything – to be re-elected. I’ve been reminded of these final two valuable lessons in the context of the agreement the Greens and Nick Xenophon absorb made with the Coalition to change Australia’s senate voting system, or of an admission that Malcolm Turnbull made on radio final week that contained nothing short of a threat to the existence of the Australian senate cross-bench should they not give him his way on some union-busting legislation.
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Source: theguardian.com