Dang. :/
Can you please explain the whole right to vote thing? There's so much in there and I'm just confused. My teacher, whose an assessor, said that we should just be able to explain at least 2 examples of structural protection, so I avoided this one
Don't worry, you don't need voting as an example of rights protection. It is *one* example of a structural protection, but there are plenty of others. You need one example at least, but two would be safer (as your teacher says). If you really struggle with the system of representative government protecting voting, then pick another
Basically, our Constitution establishes a democratic system of representative government - this is through the whole of Chapter 1, but specifically in ss7 and 24 which provide for the direct election of both houses of federal parliament by the people. If the people vote for parliament, then the system is democratic; if the Constitution is the thing that says the people vote for parliament, then the Constitution sets up that democratic system. One of the structural protections afforded by the Constitution is therefore the democratic system of representative government.
Remember that representative government *doesn't* mean just doing what the majority wants. Representative government really, traditionally, means speaking on behalf of the people regardless of which point of view you express: being chosen by them. Therefore, if parliament wants to be truly representative they can't speak only on behalf of a few people in society, or be chosen by only a few people in society. If voting was cut entirely, or limited to only a small percentage of people, the parliament wouldn't be truly representative or truly democratic because they would not have been chosen by the people as a whole to speak on behalf of the people as a whole.
This is why fair elections, involving a significant percentage of the people, are protected structurally by the Constitution. Each individual doesn't have the right to vote (which is why there is no right to vote), but the community as a whole is protected from the abuse of government power by having fair and regular elections in which the vast majority of the people get to participate. Even if you personally don't have the right to vote, as a member of the community you are protected by the democratic system of representative government.
Hence, laws banning too many people from voting for what the HCA thought were insignificant or unsubstantial reasons were (eg in Roach) held to be invalid.