Australian Senate Reform

[pErvinalia]

I'm gunna post this here because none of my friends on facebook replied because they are all arse munching space lizards. There's a back story to this reform, and if Hermit doesn't beat me to it, I'll post a link later.

Here is my (admittedly not deeply thought out) idea for Senate reform. Yes, we need a process to get rid of unrepresentative vote scammers like Ricky Muir etc. I'm not going to comment on the best method to do that.

But a way to counter the argument that it's going to be hard for "ordinary" people to get into the Senate, is to implement the following idea. I (and I'm sure others) have had this idea for a while for Aboriginal representation in the Senate, but it could also be used for average citizen representation too.

So the idea for Aboriginal representation is to have a 9th state/territory holding seats in the Senate. So the collective Aboriginal nations would elect a council to manage their 12 seats in the Senate. For "average citizen" representation, we could either do the same process (having a 10th grouping), or we could elect one seat per state from a citizen's council process.

In terms of the Aboriginal seats idea, this is a matter of doing what's right to allow indigenous people to have more of a say in the running of the country that has screwed them over for 200+ years.

In terms of the citizen seats idea, I think our democracy sorely needs this as our political systems have become more and more out of touch of the regular person and more geared towards the rich and powerful in our society.

Please comment and critique!

[laklak]

Politicians should be chosen by lot and forced to serve one term. Pay them minimum wage and put them in army tents. You'll see an immediate reduction in career politicos.

[pErvinalia]

Yeah, pay rates are ridiculously high.

[JimC]

I'd make it an additional 14 in total. 7 via a citizen council of some sort, plus 7 from the aboriginal communities.

As always, the devil would be in the details.

[pErvinalia]

Yeah. In terms of citizen councils, they'd have to be unpaid, and not have had any party affiliation for the last 5 (or however many) years.

[pErvinalia]

Senate voting reform has passed both houses of parliament now in Australia. A couple of the senators who got voted in on around 1% or so of the vote are launching a high court challenge based on "voter disenfranchisement". Yes, making it easier for voters to direct their preferences is somehow disenfranchising voters. Good luck with that.

[Tyrannical]

You have to sell special unsniffable petrol and methylated spirits that aren't actually poison to keep them from killing themselves. They need to be protected by the government like children and not have a voice in it.

[pErvinalia]

What in the titty Christ are you talking about?

[laklak]

Jesus didn't have titties! You take that back!

[pErvinalia]

Manboobs, maybe?