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THE YWCA CARES WHETHER YOU WILL BE ABLE TO VOTE
Did you know that the electoral laws were changed last year in a move that could see hundreds of thousands of young people lose their chance to vote?
The approaching election will be the first federal ballot under the Coalition’s new electoral laws, which means that if you’re not enrolled by 8pm on the day the election is called you may not be able to vote!
Previously, Australians were allowed to register or change their details with the electoral role in a seven-day period after the issuing of electoral writs. But it’s not like that anymore.
Now the electoral roll will close to new additions on the same day an election is called and enrolled voters will only have three business days to change their details, as well as 17-year olds who will be turning 18 before the election.
The Opposition and civil liberties groups have condemned the new laws, which unfairly target and marginalise young voters. A poll conducted by GetUp showed that only 5% of Australians were aware of the new laws and as few as 3% agreed with them.
In the last federal election, one in five people between the ages of 18-25 were not enrolled to vote. Subsequently an estimated 300,000 votes were lost amongst the Australian youth. That is enough to sway the outcome of an election! In the last federal election, three seats were decided by fewer than 200 votes.
IT’S EASY TO ENROL
If you are 17 or older and have not yet enrolled why not download the form from www.aec.gov.au? Leave it one more day and you may lose your chance to be heard in the next election!
You can even enrol and vote if you do not have a fixed address or any formal I.D. In this case all you need is two people, who are on the electoral role, to declare that they have known you for at least a month.
Also, while you cannot vote until you are eighteen, at seventeen you can be enrolled provisionally, which means once you turn eighteen you will automatically be added to the electoral roll.
Enrolling is easy, and you only need to do it once in order to be eligible to vote in all federal, state and local council elections.
To do this, you simply need to fill out an enrolment form. Once completed, it can be returned by mail, fax or hand-delivered to your nearest Electoral Commission divisional office.
IT’S EASY TO VOTE TOO…
Once you’ve enrolled, you’ll need to know the basics on how to vote. Here is a basic summary of how our electoral system works.
The federal government is constantly making decisions that affect the lives of all Australians. The federal government administrate over these following areas: social services; education; medicare and health funding; foreign policy; immigration; the national economy; trade and commerce; and defence.
When you vote in a federal election, you will elect people to represent you in the two houses of parliament: the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Australia is divided into electoral divisions. Each electoral division elects one member of parliament to represent them in the House of Representatives. Each state elects twelve people to represent them in the Senate, and the NT and ACT elect two senators respectively.
Voting is compulsory in Australia, which means that if you are enrolled but don’t attend a polling centre on the day of the election, you may be fined if you do not have a good excuse.
Elections are always held on Saturdays between 8am-6pm. On the day of the election all enrolled voters must attend a voting centre, which are usually located in local schools, church halls and public buildings.
When you arrive you’ll be asked your name and address. You will then be issued with two ballot papers and be allocated a polling booth so that you can cast your vote in private. Of the two ballot papers, one will be for the House of Representatives, and one for the Senate.
The House of Representatives ballot paper will have a list of the candidates’ names and their corresponding parties. Under this system, you will have to write a number 1 in the box beside your preferred candidate and then continue marking the rest of the boxes in order of your preference. You must enter a number in every box on the ballot paper or your vote will be considered informal and cannot be counted.
When voting for the Senate, the process is slightly more complicated. Unlike the House of Representatives, you will have two options of how to fill out your ballot paper, and you can decide to either vote above or below the line. If you choose to vote above the line, you only have to place a 1 in the box above your preferred candidate leaving the rest of the boxes blank, and your preferences will automatically follow those determined by your chosen candidate.
If you want to provide your own preferences instead, you have the option to vote below the line, where you must place a 1 in the box next to your preferred candidate and continue numbering all of the other boxes in order of your preferences.
When you have completed the two ballot papers you will be required to place each ballot ticket in their corresponding ballot boxes.
For more details on the electoral mechanism please visit the Australian Electoral Commission website: www.aec.gov.au.
For 10 great questions to help you think about who you want to vote for go to www.ywca.org.au or see below
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Who I'd like to meet:
POLITICIANS WHO CAN ANSWER THESE TEN QUESTIONS
1. Will your government protect workplace conditions?
WorkChoices is severely impacting on the employment and wellbeing of women in Australia. Research co-commissioned by the YWCA shows that the new IR laws have placed low-income women in situations of uncertainty. Not only are many women receiving lower rates of pay, less control over working time, reduced work and family flexibility, intensified workloads and increased rates of dismissal, the secrecy around individual agreements has meant that women are also more likely to experience discrimination on the basis of gender in the workplace. WorkChoices has led to an environment of insecurity making it hard for employees to enter into negotiations with their employers and providing women with few avenues to turn to for help. Which parties will support fairer conditions at work?
2. Will your government support mums?
Australia and the US remain the only two countries in the developed world to have not yet legislated for a minimum level of paid maternity leave across the workforce. While 41% of employers currently provide some form of paid maternity leave, it is usually only for six weeks. Women at the lower end of the wage spectrum often have none. While 77% of women in the finance and insurance industries have access to paid maternity leave, as few as 1% are covered in the retail sector, and only 2% in hotels and restaurants are offered paid maternity leave. The YWCA believes that the baby-bonus is inadequate and perpetuates gender inequalities in the Australian workforce. Which parties will guarantee a minimum of fourteen weeks paid maternity leave?
3. Will your government act on unhealthy body image issues?
Anorexia is the third most common disease among Australian women aged 15-24. It is also the most fatal of all psychiatric illnesses, with a mortality rate of between 10-20%, many of whom die from suicide. Greater awareness and research is needed about anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and obesity. The YWCA is concerned about the insufficient number of hospital beds allocated for eating disorder patients, which often results in enforced discharge and readmission of patients, and sufferers receiving inadequate treatment by staff not specialised in eating disorder care. Which parties will convene a summit on body image to develop a national code of conduct to ensure the media, advertisers and the fashion industry portray a healthy, realistic diversity of women?
4. Will your government ensure safe and affordable housing?
Noticed everyone’s been complaining about the price of housing? The UN has identified a serious hidden national housing crisis in Australia, with a chronic shortage in available housing and the average cost of homes now double what is was in 2000. Young women are particularly vulnerable to housing stress because they are more likely to be escaping situations of domestic violence, are likely to be earning lower wages, receiving welfare payments and struggling with existing debts. Australia is experiencing increased rates of homelessness yet public housing has been consistently cut back over the past twenty years, with waiting lists often spanning between two and ten years. Which parties will provide real housing solutions??
5. Wll your government improve child care?
You don’t need to be shopping for baby-wear or ploughing through baby-name books to feel concerned about the downward trend in child care provision that affects parents in Australia. In 2005, over 61,000 children were turned away from child care services because there wasn’t space. A further 22,000 children couldn’t access child care because there were no facilities in their local areas, and more than 30,000 children were denied child care due to the high costs involved. For-profit child care has meant community based organisations are on the decrease and child care fees have risen (49% over four years). Which parties will reverse these appalling disparities to provide for an equitable system of child care provision?
6. Will your government support women with breast cancer?
Breast cancer is the most common form of invasive cancer among women in Australia, affecting one in eight women before the age of eighty-five. YWCA Encore is the leading provider of exercise support programs for breast cancer survivors, helping over 1500 women every year across Australia to overcome the physical and emotional hurdles faced after breast cancer surgery. Encore has made a huge difference to the lives of women recovering from breast cancer, with studies showing that the program improves the overall quality of life of women involved. Which parties will strengthen Encore in rural areas?
7. Will your government curb violence against women?
Statistics show that violence against women in Australia is extremely wide-spread. 57% of women in Australia have been subjected to some form of violence in their lives. Domestic violence contributes to more ill health and premature death for women aged 15-44 than any other factor. Yet women’s crisis services are critically under-resourced. Indigenous women, women with no income, women with credit cards linked to their partners, and women who are victims of torture and trauma are particularly vulnerable under the current system, experiencing additional financial and social barriers to accessing help. Which parties will target anti-violence programs to meet the needs of vulnerable women?
8. Will your government support the participation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and migrant women?
For the government to achieve real representation for women they need to hear from all sorts of women. The Howard Government has funded four networks of women’s organisations to provide policy advice to them, including one which focuses specifically on the issues of rural women. But there is no funded network for migrant women or Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women. Which parties will support Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and migrant women to provide direct policy advice to government?
9. Will your government count women in Australia?
While statistics are not exactly a BBQ stopping conversation topic, they are fundamental to the government providing fair and adequate services and programs for people living in Australia. But right now the government statistics only tell half the story. Too often statistics simply ask about gender, but we also need to know about different groups of women, what is known as disaggregated data collection. The UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women Committee has called on Australia to improve this before 2008. Which parties will meet the challenge?
10. Will your next government show leadership on climate change?
While the hype of Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth may have begun to fade, the looming reality of climate change remains unchanged. Australia is one of the world’s highest emitters. Former World Bank economist Sir Nicolas Stern has given us ten years to act in order to avoid the worst effects of climate change, impacts of which include rising sea levels, environmental refugees, an increase in extreme weather conditions, more frequent droughts, floods and cyclones, loss of habitat and species extinction. Australia is one of the three OECD countries to not have signed the prominent Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change. Australia is rich in natural energy sources and Australian wind farms, bioenergy from plants and solar power stations have the potential to provide most of Australia’s energy needs. Tell politicians green is the new black! Which parties will adopt binding targets to address climate change?
YWCA Australia is writing to the major political parties to ask for their answers to these questions. You can compare their answers and our answers to figure out who you want to vote for:coming soon
http://www.myspace.com/ywcaenrolandvote
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