Sally Warhaft, Kim Rubenstein and Judith Brett

In a democracy, should voting be a citizen’s right or a citizen’s duty?

Australia is one of a small number of countries – including Argentina and Egypt – with mandatory voting. Australia is rare, within this small group of nations, in imposing penalties on citizens who fail to turn up to vote. Compulsory voting has been in place here since 1924 and it sets us apart from other advanced democracies. Less than 60% of the US voting-age population cast ballots in the 2016 presidential election.

For this conversation, we bring together citizenship law expert Kim Rubenstein and the eminent historian Judith Brett, author of From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage: How Australia Got Compulsory Voting. They trace the history of our voting system and examine how it’s shaped the tenor of our debates and our sense of ourselves and our representatives – plus, how the system may yet change. With Sally Warhaft, they discuss donkey votes, ballot boxes, barbeques and the wide-ranging implications of compulsory participation.

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Tony Jones is best known as the host of ABC TV’s tightly controlled, agenda-setting and sometimes combative political panel programme, Q&A. Having presented the programme for almost ten years, Jones has learned a few things about tension, intrigue, complex plots and surprise attacks.

Those years of experience – not to mention the preceding decades as an ABC investigative reporter and foreign correspondent – have prepared Jones perfectly for his latest incarnation as a thriller writer. His debut novel, The Twentieth Man, tells an electrifying tale of crime, terror and international conspiracy and is set between the corridors of power in 1970s Canberra and the harsh mountain ranges of former Yugoslavia. Jones has a long-standing interest in the Balkans, having covered the Bosnian conflict in the 1990s during his stint as the ABC’s Europe correspondent.

In conversation with Jason Steger at Montalto Vineyard and Olive Grove, this veteran of Australian journalism discusses his foray into fiction and the experiences in Australia and overseas that have inspired it.