I agree in princible with what you say, but I dont think it would pass a refferendum.

With Tassie currently having 12 Senators, the argument Id run is having less pollies and s system that would always have a hun Senate, which I think people actually want.

The only other way to introduce what you are talking about is to change S128 so that only the majority vote condition is needed to change the constitution and not the second condition of the majority of voters in the majority of states. However I think that would fail currently

Your idea is interesting, although I suppose people would be up in arms about the less populous state of Tas having 9 senators!!

I would like to see all electorates have the same average enrollment, unlike the situation now where each state or territory has the same average enrollment. It leads to the situation where the NT has average enrollments of 56,465 (2004 election) and the ACT has 113,770. Also the average size of SA electorates is quite high compared to the other states.

Surely averaging out the numbers over the whole country would make it fairer?

By the way please don’t use the UK as an example. Unlike the US and Australia, they suspended elections altogether during WWII. The question of election timing for the Senate is easy to resolve, get rid of it.

They needed someone who could stand up as an independent brand name to try and appeal to the agarian socialists and so far he has delivered in spades, particularly as Howard wont let the the QLD Libs merge with the QLD Nats

I accept that the idea of the major party senators taking a more independent role must be good for the Senate and Country.

But if you were running a major party you just would not risk giving yourself a Barnaby for 8 years unless you really really needed his/her talent and didn’t think you could get him into the HoR.

So the independent role could only evolve to the extent that the majors can’t spot independent streaks in possible candidates.

I was implying that the nexus should be boken between House of Reps numbers and Senate Numbers in my previous post, as I dont wish to see electorates becoming so large that MP’s hire huge armies of staff and never see a constituent and thus become even further removed from their electors

Ben, how would you see this happen

Make each Senate Term 4 years with 9 members form each state and changing the House of Reps to be one seat per 75,000 votes with a 5% national (or state for Tasmania) differntial?

The constitution says that the House of reps must have twice as many members as the Senate. Given you want the senate to be reduced to 54 members, the House of reps has to be reduced 112 members, which would increase the number of voters in an average electorate (now around 90,000)

For a start the punters will never accept an 8 year paid holiday for Senators. Just imagine, a Senator re-elected just once would serve 16 years in the Senate. Nice work if you can get it.

Plus 4 years is too long for a government. Loz Oakes was 100% right.

People often forget about the bad governments who serve 4 year terms, such as the SA Bannon and Victorian Cain/Kirner state governments in the early 90’s. Those governments were bedevilled with terrrible financial scandals. Electors were mightily relieved when their 4 year terms expired.

Politicians don’t like to be regularly accountable to the people so they argue effective government is impossible because the haven’t got the guts to make difficult decisions within 3 years. Of course the voters recognise this as utter poppycock.