Bernard Keane is a wonderful asset for Crikey. He is policy-oriented, pungent and prolific — and he sure can write. But his piece on Friday, in which he lamented NSW’s move towards automatic enrolment, was a stinker of the first order.

The NSW plan is to automatically put people on the electoral roll and update their details when, for example, they move home. This will be done using data from various government agencies. Bernard hates the idea, believing it to be the symptom of a “repressive government”. Alan Jones of 2GB agrees.

Dust off your Smiths albums, it’s 1988 and the Australia Card all over again!

But this is a serious issue, about enfranchising Australians who easily drop off the roll or never get on it: Indigenous people, renters, transient workers, young people. It is about dragging our electoral processes into the 21st century and into line with most comparable countries. And saving the taxpayers money and rescuing a few trees.

At the last federal election, some 340, 000 people unsuccessfully attempted a declaration vote for the House of Representatives. Most failed because their enrolment details were not up to date or they had dropped off the roll. An unknown number of others would have simply turned around and walked out upon discovering they were not on the roll for their electorate.

Many people (particularly young ‘uns) believe “the government” already automatically updates their enrolment. Read for example this amusing letter an elector fired off to the Australian Electoral Commission after receiving an enrolment form.

Keane writes, chillingly, that “Citizens wouldn’t be given any say in this use of their confidential data. There’ll be no opting out. You may think you’re just paying your car rego but in fact you’ll be handing information to the Electoral Commission. You will have no choice.”

Stock up on the ammo and canned food!

But Big Brother is already here. The AEC (which currently maintains the electoral rolls for federal and state elections) has been getting this info from government agencies for almost a decade. Here is a recent-ish list of such agencies.

The problem is that while the commission uses the information to take people off the roll when they move house, it can’t put them on to their new address without a signed enrolment form. All they can do is send them one, which generally goes into the bin along with the junk mail. But then people turn up on election-day expecting to vote. It is this lopsided process that has resulted in the majority of the “missing 1.2 million”.

This is also why Bernard errs in claiming that compulsory enrolment is “considerably more difficult to enforce than compulsory voting, given electoral authorities need enrolment data to identify who has failed to vote”. The authorities know of hundreds of thousands of transgressors; they currently try to get them on the roll but tend not to prosecute.

This does bring us to the issue of compulsion — in both enrolment and voting. Having a law that isn’t enforced is problematic, and in fact many Australians don’t enrol because they wrongly fear they will get in trouble for not doing it earlier. I would not lose sleep if we did away with either.

But it is a different argument. Most democracies overseas have some form of automatic enrolment, and most don’t have compulsion; they just do it to enable people to vote on election-day if they choose to do so. Outside of the United States (and pockets of Australia, it seems) this is simply seen as an advantage of the modern world.

It is great to see one jurisdiction, NSW, dragging itself forward as well. This will probably cause a bit of havoc in the NSW portion of the federal roll, but it will be worth it if it finally pushes the feds into moving beyond the horse and buggy.

In the meantime, if you forward me the address of Bernard’s cave I’ll be happy to illuminate him further in person. If he promises to have a wash and keeps the guns locked away.