AQ - Australian Quarterly Volume 78 Issue 5

The Mouse Leaves No Trail: Need for Caution on Electronic Voting

Tony Smith

Changes to the conduct of elections arouse suspicions because they may have the potential to favour the party which is the incumbent government at the time of their introduction. It must come as a relief to the Government then, to find that one intended reform has met with approval from its target population. On 23 August 2006, the e-mail newsletter of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission carried an enthusiastic endorsement of a trial of electronic voting.

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The View from 2050
Patrick Moriarty

If you are in the forecasting business, it’s best to pick a date in the far future, say the year 2050, not one or five years hence, for your moment of truth. Both predictions will be wrong, but you probably won’t be round in 2050, and in any case there’s plenty of time for people to forget your forecast. We’ve all heard of forecasts that went badly wrong. Despite a dismal record of future predictions, attempts at forecasting still flourish, as they must. The US writer Donald Norman has said it well. ‘Attempting to predict the future is both foolhardy and essential’.

 

The Politics of Happiness
Amanda Cole

What makes a society happy? Should happiness be measured in terms of individuals or groups? What makes one person more capable of determining the means of happiness rather than another? Is this what influences our vote on Election Day? And why, despite being richer than ever, are over one million Australian adults experiencing depression?


The Aussie Identity and Multiculturalism
Peter Wall

Various identities focus national image in Australia: the ‘ancient culture’ identity of Indigenous Australia, the pioneer identity of Colonial Australia, the ‘bushmen’ of the Outback, the Anzacs and Diggers, and our sports hero identities. What of ‘Multicultural Australia’, can it be included here as a focus of national pride, or is it just a descriptive term based on fact? At worst an image of division? The answer to this identity conundrum may well determine the stability of future Australian society.

 

The NSW State Election 2007: Liberal Prospects
Geoffrey Hawker


Liberalism, Harm, and the Limits of Free Speech
Tim Soutphommasane


Book Review: Underground by Andrew McGahan
Tony Smith


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