Preferential voting means it's harder to shift the mean anyway, because parties have to appeal to other parties/interest groups to get preference deals etc (of course no one has to follow a preference voting card!).
Secondly, having 98% polling day turnout means you don't have to build outrage to get people to vote (as they do in the us/uk). I remember hearing that if polling day was rainy in the UK the conservatives could usually count on a 10% boost because their constituency have cars and the working class don't - not sure how true this is these days
Yes the combination of compulsory and preferential voting has a great calming influence on the political system. Our two major parties (labor and liberal) are very similar in practice as they are competing for the middle ground, not the exciting the extreme wings to the polls. The only downside is it tends to make for boring politics, but overall boring is good if you have to live in the country.
Yes, but this actually a side effect of the how close our elections are. A few nut jobs on the far right of the Liberal party are able to cause mayhem due the slim majority the liberal party holds in parliament.
The good thing is it is mostly just noise - what actually gets through the parliament is much more benign.
Preferential voting means it's harder to shift the mean anyway, because parties have to appeal to other parties/interest groups to get preference deals etc (of course no one has to follow a preference voting card!).
Secondly, having 98% polling day turnout means you don't have to build outrage to get people to vote (as they do in the us/uk). I remember hearing that if polling day was rainy in the UK the conservatives could usually count on a 10% boost because their constituency have cars and the working class don't - not sure how true this is these days