YELLOW CAKE

An early photo as crowds gathered in World Heritage Kakadu in remote northern Australia in a national and international campaign to stop the development of a giant uranium mine and to hear the local Mirarr people. It was a moving experience. The government was unmoved...
Peter Garrett was there. Now as an MP, he continues to be into environmental issues. He was the band Midnight Oil.

• It is election time. We have compulsory voting for Citizens (and some British subjects) and the system of secret ballot or Australian Ballot was a first, when it was implemented here in 1856. Preferential voting is relatively exclusive to our system and there is no first-pass-the-post voting done. Proportional voting applies to the Senate.

• Women were given the vote, as well as allowed to be candidates for parliament, in 1894, as a first, in the state of SA and it took twenty years to reach all the states. (New Zealand adopted voting rights for women in 1893)

• In 1962 all Aboriginal people became entitled to vote.