It is illegal not to vote in Australian elections, if your name is on the electoral role and is not crossed off at the election then you get fined. Someone tried to publicise some way of making a stand against the compulsory voting without the possibility of getting fined - they got fined for doing that. You can understand why they make it compulsory if you could see the ballot paper for the Senate (Upper house) it seems to get larger every year, last time I think it was about 3ft by 1 ft. The paper is divided into 2 sections you can put one cross in the upper section which is basically voting for a party. Or you put numbers 1 - 10 in the lower section which has the names of each candidate in the order of your preference. In the UK where I originally hail from voting is not compulsory - I think I only ever missed one local election. Citizenship is not taught at schools, as such, depends I suppose on what you mean by citizenship. Part of education, partly by school and mainly by parents is what it means to be a good citizen - I suppose I talking morality and ethics. Now-a-days it seems that on the way to preventing child abuse children are well educated by schools about their rights, but the attending responsibilities seem to have gone out of the window, so to the younger generation it may seem citizenship is about rights but no attending responsibilities; but that's my opinion.
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