Australia’s biggest polling booth opens for business, 16,000 km away & More News Here

It’s fairly quiet at about 5pm on a weekday afternoon after I go to. A purposeful straggle of Australian-accented punters are dropping in to vote on their means dwelling from work.

“When I first did this booth in 2004, there were queues wrapped around the building. You don’t see that now,” one booth employee says. “After the GFC [in 2008-09] a lot of Aussies went home, and it hasn’t been quite the same since.”

The COVID-19 pandemic might have taken one other chew out of the dimensions of many Australian expat communities, when the border closure prompted many to go dwelling for good.

This might hasten the decline of Australia’s apply of utilizing embassies as polling stations: far fewer embassies are operating a booth this time, forcing native Aussies to make use of postal votes.

But Australia House, the grand dame of the nation’s diplomatic community, is holding the custom alive.

The busiest day shall be Saturday: it’s when individuals who dwell outdoors London can discover the time make the journey; and it’s when there’s a traditional Aussie sausage sizzle outdoors, elevating cash for the Royal Flying Doctor Service.

The British branches of each Labor and the Liberals have festooned the limitations with placards, although solely the Labor ones have the celebration’s chief on them. Posters that includes Scott Morrison are on their means, I’m advised.

Even on the quieter instances, each events have a roster of operatives on the entrance to dish out the compendious 151-electorate how-to-vote playing cards.

“It’s a big effort to get it covered over the two weeks,” says Paul Smith, president of the UK department of ALP Abroad, who has been on the booth outdoors Australia House at federal and state elections since 2007.

He has dozens of volunteers, and in addition expects Australia House to be as busy as common within the coming week.

“People want to have a say, even from far away. They want a country they can be proud to go back to. That motivates a lot of people to volunteer, and to vote,” he says.

The volunteers say it’s extra sociable, relaxed and assorted than working a booth on election day in Australia itself.

“In a booth back home it’s usually a more transactional process, whereas here you get some of that camaraderie of Australians overseas,” says Jason Groves, who has presided over the UK department of Australian Liberals Abroad for 20 years.

“You get to meet people from all over. Across eight elections here, I would have met people from every electorate in Australia. And they are often more willing to engage in conversation.”

Maybe the voters are additionally simply excited to be getting an opportunity to peep inside Australia House, which is normally off-limits to the general public.

The constructing’s marble-clad and gloriously chandeliered Exhibition Hall, the place the poll containers and voting cubicles are arrange, famously featured as Gringott’s Bank within the first Harry Potter movie.

“The staff should do some Harry Potter cosplay,” suggests one of many celebration employees. There’s nonetheless time to organise a couple of goblin costumes, if anybody from the Australian Electoral Commission is studying this.

But there’s a type of disincentive for voters, too, says Groves. The guidelines on who can vote abroad are “convoluted and complicated”, and there may be anecdotal proof that the regime is utilized inconsistently between electorates.

If long-term abroad voters aren’t taking energetic steps to make sure they’re enrolled accurately – which in some circumstances can imply making a yearly utility to remain on the electoral register – then Groves fears their ballots could be invalidated again in Australia.

“I’m worried a lot of people who turn up to vote here won’t have their votes counted,” Groves says. “After the pandemic, the voice of Australians living overseas needs to be heard even more loudly – and that might not happen.”

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