Lib hint at end to forced voting

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A senior Howard Government minister is looking beyond the next
election to use a continuing Senate majority to abolish compulsory
voting.

Finance Minister Nick Minchin, a long-time campaigner for
voluntary voting, said although it was Liberal Party policy, it
could not be pressed in the current term because it was not argued
in the 2004 campaign.

But he said he would like nothing more than to remove the
"blight" of compulsion, and hoped to persuade the Coalition to take
such a policy to the 2007 election, for implementation in the next
term.

"Yes, you should vote," he said. "But you shouldn't be forced to
vote. There are people after every election who go to jail because
they won't vote, and they won't pay the fine as a matter of
principle."

He told the national Young Liberals Convention in Hobart
yesterday that in terms of party advantage, voluntary voting cut
both ways. "But the basis of Labor opposition is their terror and
fear their people won't come out to vote," he said

Under pressure from some Government MPs recently to reduce
taxation, Senator Minchin rejected as unaffordable tax indexation
or increasing the tax-free threshold.

Young Liberals voted to call on former prime minister Malcolm
Fraser to resign his life membership of the party.

The motion's mover, West Australian Young Liberals' president
Matthew Eggleston, said Mr Fraser's repeated "sledging" of the
Howard Government showed disloyalty to the party.

The delegates were told by the federal Fisheries, Forests and
Conservation Minister, Ian Macdonald, that while they might be the
cream of Australia's young professionals and entrepreneurs, it was
time for them to reach out to "the Kath and Kim" in suburban
electorates who gave the party its stunning majority.