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No home no vote

By Michael Quin

Tens of thousands of Australians aren’t voting in Federal Elections because of housing issues, a Melbourne study has found.

The survey of homeless people’s voting behaviour, conducted by Hanover Welfare Services after last November’s Federal Election, found 43 per cent of those eligible to vote did not.

A researcher involved in the study, Deb Batterham, said this percentage was alarming, considering the number of Australians homeless or without safe and secure housing, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, is at least 100,000.

“That means you’ve got the equivalent to an entire electorate not voting in the election, that’s huge,” she said.

Among those who didn’t vote, 60 per cent said it was because they weren’t enrolled, while 32 per cent said there were “too many issues to deal with”.

“Their life situations and their head spaces act as structural barriers,” Ms Batterham said. “The average age for homelessness is 25 and under, and since they’ve been eligible to vote, their lives have been pretty chaotic and they’ve been without stable housing. They’re often really stressed out and they’ve got so much on, enrolling is not their top priority.”

The findings were presented to the Australian Electoral Commission along with recommendations to make participation easier for homeless people by setting up voting services in crisis centres, similar to the mobile voting booths in hospitals.

But according to Hanover Welfare Services the AEC hasn’t followed through with any of the suggestions, and is doing nothing to engage with homeless Australians.

“I think the AEC has really dropped the ball with their inaction. We’ve done the research, we know these things and we’ve given them the findings, but nothing’s happening,” Ms Batterham said.

The AEC refused to comment in relation to the findings, nor did they clarify what steps were being taken to engage with homeless Australians.

In a written statement they said only that while it wasn’t compulsory to enrol if you had no permanent address, it was still a valuable democratic right and responsibility to do so.

The AEC said it encouraged everyone who was eligible to do so to enrol, with no penalty for those who enrolled now for not previously doing so.

Hanover Welfare Services, frustrated by the AEC’s response, said their next step was to take the message to the media in an attempt to raise public awareness of the issue’s significance.

Ms Batterham said while the study was Melbourne-based, the findings were expected to be similar Australia-wide, with political consequences in each region.

“In parts of Australia like the Northern Territory and north Queensland, where indigenous people are more likely to be homeless, the AEC’s inaction in engaging with disenfranchised citizens is also political,” she said.

While 19 per cent of participants stated they were “not interested in the election”, the huge majority simply didn’t vote due to disengagement from society, highlighting the degree to which these people were excluded, Ms Batterham said.

This was especially the case for homeless single men without children, who were found to be the least likely to vote.

Ms Batterham said these people deserved to be reengaged with and that very few had chosen their situation.

“The most common cause of homelessness in Australia is domestic violence and family breakdown, which is disgraceful,” she said. “However it’s often this group that can escape homelessness if they maintain some links or participation.”

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