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On a recent research trip to Australia, I was not surprised to gauge a rather depressed mood as the election was announced and campaigning began. Of course, I would not claim that the people I talked to are either representative of the Australian electorate as a whole, or numerous enough to provide a convincing account of the situation (can any poll claim to represent the population?), but it brought a few interesting points to my mind.On the whole, my friends and colleagues (most of whom would be described by the Australian Murdoch press as ‘latte sipping bleeding hearts’) are feeling disheartened by the choice they will have to make on the 7th of September. Yet they cannot just forget about the election, for Australia is one of the few countries where voting is compulsory and where a vocal affirmation of your refusal to vote could land you a fine at best, and at worst possibly in jail, if you tried to convince others to reflect on the system. Coming from a place where voting is not compulsory, this law has always made me uneasy. Many Australians argue that it helps democracy inasmuch as it forces people to take part in today’s most potent democratic ritual. If they were not threatened by fines, wouldn’t many Australians prefer to stay at home or to do something else, victims of what Senator Payne described ‘apathy and indolence’ when compulsory voting was passed in 1924? Some would even add that in the current global climate, where voting is plummeting in many western countries because of the widespread feelings of disillusionment and powerlessness within the electorate, compulsory voting forces the people to engage with politics.Eventually, all these arguments are trumped by the most common defence of voting (a kind of Godwin point): voting is not a right, it is a duty, because people died so that we can have this right. Or did they? Of course, people died for democracy (and still do), but is voting to elect either Tony Abbott or Kevin Rudd really what these people had/have in mind? Is the choice between two watered-down versions of dystopian neo-liberalism what our forebears sacrificed themselves for? I am not, of course, saying that these politicians haven’t kept Australians very comfortable, but at what cost? Is Australia a perfect society where everyone shares equal rights if anything? And in any case, are our votes really necessary for the election and re-election of people increasingly trained to lead and plot rather than represent us, leaving only the right-wing populist to claim to be even remotely representative in our so-called democratic institutions? In a world where many potential crises are looming (climate, oil, water, food scarcity…), shouldn’t a real democracy be about vision, debate and bold projects?In general, there is something rather worrying in the obsession we have with the act of voting itself: that act which can be democratic, but is by no means in itself democratic, and certainly does not embody democracy alone. As I mentioned previously, polls suggest that the electorate in many, if not most western countries is becoming increasingly disillusioned with politics. Even in Australia, almost a fifth of young voters are not enrolled to vote, while most adult Australians seem not to trust those who lead them. Across liberal democracies, parties which have led us for decades are commonly seen as corrupt and divorced from reality, and the old class divisions which gave meaning to the left and the right have long been considered obsolete by politicians. Constant campaigning and the recent rise of the extreme right have led many of these mainstream parties to readjust their rhetoric and start on a dangerous populist slippery slope. Targeting immigrants, and Muslims in particular, has become common practice today across the board. And yet, those who feel progressive at heart have very little choice when it comes to elections (particularly in Australia where the preferential system reinforces the bipartite structure).In Australia, there is no clearer example to illustrate the failure of democracy than the asylum seeker ‘issue’. While this particular issue has been used and abused by politicians for a long time, it became a central political issue in 2001 when it gave John Howard a very welcome boost in a campaign up to that point dominated by Labor. With its slogan ‘We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come’, the Liberal party managed to convince part of the electorate that asylum seekers arriving by boat were not only ‘illegal’ ‘queue jumpers’, challenging the Australian ideal of the ‘fair go’ (where honest refugees wait as long as it takes in orderly queues in the dreadful conditions of refugee camps), but that they could also be terrorists. While this was denied by the Australian secret services, it proved potent in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The Labor party caved to Howard’s masterplan: from then on, no matter the human cost, asylum seekers would be considered a threat. Predictably, it has so far proven impossible for Labor to defeat the right while keeping true to their progressive values.Since its return to power in 2007, the Labor party has tiptoed around the issue, first attempting to repeal some of the inhumane measures Howard had put in place (such as the Temporary Protection Visas, borrowed straight from the extreme right One Nation manifesto), then succumbing to some tougher measures, without ever daring to go as far as Tony Abbott wished. Yet as the prospects for this year’s election seemed at their most dire for Labor, Rudd’s return heralded a new era in Labor’s treatment of the asylum seeker issue. The now infamous PNG (Papua New Guinea) solution, where asylum seekers risking their lives to reach Australian shores are sent to camps in Papua New Guinea with no hope of resettlement in Australia, is now in place. Despite the fact that over 90% of asylum seekers coming by boat prove to be genuine refugees, Australia will now send them away to a country where tensions are already high amongst minorities, and to parts of which Australia’s own citizens are warned against travelling.Worse still is the self-righteous stand taken by the government in the nakedly opportunistic use of some of the weakest people on earth. In an unashamedly populist move, the Labor party launched a campaign of full–page newspaper ads with catchy font, apparently designed for asylum seekers and their relatives. Not only has Australia acted in a manner denounced by the UNHCR, but it has so far proven unrepentant, and it was astonishing to hear Immigration Department acting regional manager Steven Karras congratulating himself on the fact that the Iranian refugees being told they would not be settled in Australia might ‘contemplate very seriously whether in fact returning home is a better option’. Managing to convince people who have travelled halfway across the world fleeing a brutal regime to return to the place where they might face persecution is no small feat. And sadly there is little doubt that in the current political climate, the government’s behaviour was rewarded. Since the PNG solution was put in place, Abbott has been stripped of his most potent weapon against Labor, and the race is closer than ever between the two highly dystopian visions for Australia. And yet, most Australians will go and vote on the 7th, whether by duty, belief in democracy and/or to avoid being fined. They will most likely vote against someone rather than for something, and therefore will condone the behaviour of politicians, ready to use extreme means to vilify weak minorities, and perpetuate a system very few still believe in. A dire prospect indeed.&#160;