How Australia Can Stave Off Democratic Decay

In July 1924, Australia’s Federal Parliament legislated a facet of Australian democracy that would prove remarkably prescient. It was then, 100 years ago, that voting in elections became compulsory. The law is widely credited as being a central component of Australia’s stability and success as a country. It’s a small initiative with an array of positive knock-on effects for both elections themselves, and the broad sense of civic participation, generating a sense of belonging and trust in Australia’s institutions.

Yet in the last federal election in 2022, turnout dipped below 90 percent for the first time since compulsory voting took effect in 1925. While most countries would be ecstatic at a turnout of 89.82 percent, in Australia this was cause for consternation – a sign that apathy, disillusionment, or even hostility toward democracy was emerging in the country. Australia is, of course, not immune to the global forces that currently threaten democracy.

It was the combination of these circumstances that led the Australian government to launch a Strengthening Democracy Taskforce in January 2023 with the mission to provide practical measures that build greater resilience within Australia’s democracy. In July 2024 the taskforce released its report to the public.

The report is positive about the structural advantages Australia has, but also argues against complacency. It highlights that democracy the world over faces a “new constellation of challenges” – and these challenges render Australia vulnerable to democratic decay. The internet has created an array of new information sources for people, with the ability for misinformation and disinformation to spread quickly and entrench narratives within people’s thinking that are difficult to shift. The rise and continual improvement of AI risks exacerbating these problems.

Within this new information environment political entrepreneurs have emerged who use the infrastructure of democracy to launch sustained attacks on it. Alongside this, polarizing global events like the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the Israel-Hamas conflict have also created social schisms that threaten democratic norms and principles.

Yet the report is keen to stress that reduced physical social interaction also poses a considerable threat to democracy. The decline in participation in religious communities, sporting clubs, and other communal forms of civil society engagement is leading to a rise in loneliness and isolation, which provides fertile ground for cynicism and extremism. Alongside this, the difficulty in obtaining homeownership due its extraordinary costs in Australia can breed resentment, distrust, and disillusionment.

Central to how Australia responds to these challenges is the country getting better at explaining to itself what it is doing well. First, the report recommends that there needs to be a stronger recognition that democracy is never perfect, but it contains enough rights and freedoms – alongside the opportunity to choose how the country is governed – that citizens would be at a noticeable disadvantage were these to dissipate. A public shouldn’t have to lose their rights and freedoms to understand their importance.

To that end, there should be a greater awareness of, and national pride in, Australia’s track record of democratic innovation, which has proved the country capable of improving its practices. These milestones include the invention of the secret ballot in the then-colony of South Australia in 1856; the country being at the forefront of both full male suffrage and women’s suffrage; the use of preferential (or ranked choice) voting from 1918; the aforementioned institution of compulsory voting; and on to the creation of an independent electoral commission in 1984 that maintains the electoral roll, conducts elections, educates the public on electoral processes, and most importantly sets electoral boundaries (making sure no political party can get anywhere near them).

Of course, to just look at Australia would defeat the purpose of building democratic resilience. Essential to improving democratic practices is the ability to learn from other jurisdictions. The report recognizes that Estonia was first to incorporate 21st century initiatives into its democracy through the digital transformation of voting systems – although Australia is likely to remain with paper and pencils. However, Estonia’s prioritizing of civics education and media literacy within its education system is something Australia could do a far better job with.

Alongside this, the report looks to France, Sweden, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Lithuania, which have all conducted their own inquiries into how to counteract foreign disinformation in their public domains. Of particular note is Sweden’s creation of a Psychological Defense Agency, which aims to identify, analyze, prevent, and counter foreign malign information influence, as well as build the population’s ability to detect and resist such information.

Australia starts from a high base with its ability to protect its democracy from those seeking to undermine it. Although it faces some extraordinary new threats, the Australian government has signaled its desire to take these threats seriously. An initial sign of how successful they are will be if the voter rate heads back up to mid-90 percent range, where it has been for most of the last 100 years.