Compulsory voting (along with preferential voting, a proportional senate and a permanent, nonpartisan electoral commission) is one of the success stories of Australian democracy. (Making showing up to vote — or formally lodging a reasonable excuse — compulsory makes declining to vote a deliberate act, and prevents anyone from winning merely by riling up a base of hardliners and counting on apathy on the other side, as happens often in the US.) Ditching it would be a retrograde step for Australian democracy.