Australia has long been the only country that compels people to vote. But until now the government did not go through databases looking for people, invading their privacy and writing to people intimidate them and to threaten them with legal action if they did not register on the electoral roll.
Of course if the government has made it legal to do so then the government has redefined the concept of privacy, or more pedantically, dis-defined it!
I was one of the people they threatened, after just renting a house at Magill. Even before being threatened by the Australian Electoral Commisioner I was evicted within several weeks of moving in (if it could be called that) with a demolition order served upon myself and my next door neighbour, resulting in my attempting to obtain justice through the Tenancy Tribunal and the Adelaide District Court.
Fortunately, I am not an Australian citizen, I hold a British passport and have never sought Australian citizenship. I was therefore exempt from enrolling, though I had been enrolled in previous elections, and had been a member of an anarchist party V.I.T.D.D.T. (Vote Informal Today Direct Democracy Tomorrow).
However, I have been subjected to stress and trauma in standing up for what I believe. Taking a stand is especially traumatic if you are poor, as the consequences upon one's life are intensified. It is so easy to crush the lives of poor people. I cannot ignore what others are going through in standing alone as isolated individuals against the government for what they too believe in, and so I protested both in my name and anonymously.
I have written a letter outlining my stance to the Australian Electoral Commissioner, which I have then on-forwarded to Parliament .
The Australian Government has, since I joined V.I.T.D.D.T. made it illegal to advocate "voting informally" (i.e. scribbling on ballot paper, writing comments, failing to obey instructions etc thus rendering the vote invalid) illegal. So even the name of the political party I joined in the year 2000 is now a Federal criminal offence. To advocate that people should not vote or should not register would also constitute an offence as this would constitute inciting a crime.
(THIS IS THE LETTER I WROTE TO THE AUSTRALIAN ELECTORAL COMMISSIONER (referred to above). Please also note, for confirmation purposes, that my membership of the V.I.T.D.D.T. "anti-party"
> Subject: Re: Unclassified NOT FREE ELECTIONS!
> From: info@aec.gov.au
> To: e-Liza1@hotmail.com
> Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 12:58:40 +1100
>
> Dear Elizabeth,
>
>
> Thank you for your email.
>
> The provisions of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 (the Act) are
> determined not by the Australian Electoral Commission, but by Parliament.
> If you wish to recommend changes to the legislation please contact the
> Joint Standing Committee at:
>
> Committee Secretary
>
> Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters
>
> Department of House of Representatives
>
> PO Box 6021
>
> Parliament House
>
> CANBERRA ACT 2600
>
> AUSTRALIA
>
> Phone: 61 2 6277 2374
>
> Fax: 61 2 6277 4710
>
> email: jscem@aph.gov.au
>
>
>
>
> Regards,
> Communications and Information Strategy Branch
> Australian Electoral Commission
> National Office Canberra
>
>
>
> -----Elizabeth Jane wrote: -----
>
>
> To: info@aec.gov.au
> From: Elizabeth Jane
> Date: 25/11/2007 07:09AM
> Subject: NOT FREE ELECTIONS!
>
>Electoral Commissioner,
These are not free elections.
Not only does the two-party system with block party voting mean there are only two "representatives"
People are systematically ruled from above, with no freedom, no means to change the "system" and in this country (as elsewhere) patriarchy is institutionalised. It is institutionalised in national holidays, in "corporate culture" (an oxymoron - it is a male corporate cult!) in government family values propaganda, in the Christian judiciary and Christian parliaments, and in the right-wing media establishment.
The pressure to conform to right-wing male-dominated society means the outcome is merely a product of the propaganda - it is input-output!
The anima has been suppressed in this society and in culture. There is no way for matriarchy to co-exist within a monolithic patriarchal system - it is systematically crushed. This is not freedom and it is not fair.
Hitherto, the only way that matriarchal people could show their opposition to this "system" was to boycott it. Now even that freedom has been taken from us.
To refuse to give one's approval to that which we oppose, but which we cannot defeat - it is this right to refuse that has been taken from us.
Refusing to participate in such a "system" now results in confrontation with patriarchal society. We cannot win, and so we will lose, be brutalised. The superior power of patriarchal authority will crush all those who resist in even the most passive and harmless way, and we will be further destroyed as human beings.
This is your "system". Your desire to crush us is an illness, an obsession, that comes from your focussing upon the "light" the animus, for "as without, so within" - you focus upon the male principle. The "male principle" is not equatable to "men" - it is the principle of logic and judgement, and men, seeing themselves as "male" are prone to gender identify with it. But a light is to see the world with, not to be stared at in consciousness, not to be blinded by. We all need freedom, we all need creativity, to express who we are, to be channels for the creative principle. Was Leonardo not a man?!
This illness will not go away unless it is faced and realized. And if that does not happen you will be compelled by it to control us and brutalise us more and more, and the outcome of that process is well known, from history. The path to apocalypse is a path of psychological torture and oppression and to go down that path at all is madness in itself. We all need freedom, and freedom comes from below, not from above!
Please take heed. Consider the truth, that freedom cannot be given through coercion and control, and ask where does this desire to compartmentalise, to judge, to conform and to control originate in consciousness. If you take the time to understand, the solution is within each one of us.
Don't expect to be inundated with this message. Probably no-one else will tell you this in just this way again.
Elizabeth Jane
Broadview SA
See this letter also posted at The Guardian & Observer:
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/
