I am taking a couple of extracts from the article that I see relevant!
note the 6 year term of a Senator with a half Senate election every 3 year was for stability I understand.
But one wonders if that is necessary. Could it be made the same as the HOR"s??
Surely all can see the problem with a "4 year fixed term with the likes of Bill Shorten at the wheel)
"Bill Shorten’s tricky claim that the Senate problem can be solved — Labor’s formal policy is for a radical shift to four-year Senate terms — is spurious. The Opposition Leader wants to look more bipartisan to improve his image. That’s fine. But if the Liberal Party falls into this trap it will prove what many suspect: it is weak, soft and an easy touch for Labor’s manipulations.
Labor’s four-year Senate terms policy has potential but only if it comes with a changed Senate voting system to remove the huge bias in favour of minor parties. But there are two certainties: a four-year Senate term proposal would split conservatives, violate the constitutional conception of the Senate, cause untold chaos inside the Coalition and provoke upheaval for a totally doomed cause. Have no doubt, the four-year term proposal is dead before breakfast. In 1988 the Hawke government put a referendum for four-year terms for both houses and lost every state with a dismal 32.9 per cent of the vote. The public will never buy it. That Turnbull told Shorten on Sunday morning he was open to further discussion on four-year terms is abject folly."
etc, etc,
Yet an eight-year Senate term makes largely unaccountable senators even more unaccountable. It looms, therefore, as a killer element for any linked four-year term for the house. But this proposal can serve a purpose. It might make you angry about the sham that poses for democracy in this country. Consider that at last year’s election, 4.7 million voters in NSW and 334,000 voters in Tasmania got the same deal: 12 senators elected. A Tasmanian vote has 16 times the power of a NSW vote.
Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie got a shade over 28,000 party votes or about 0.19 per cent of the total nationwide vote — and became a balance-of-power senator. That’s right — on one-fifth of 1 per cent of the vote. In Western Australia, One Nation got a balance-of-power senator on 54,000 party votes, about two-fifths of 1 per cent of the national vote.
The Senate is an anti-democratic rort. Short of a double-dissolution election all senators enjoy six-year terms — they only need to be elected three times for a 20-year career. Where else can you get a deal like this? And some people now tell us they deserve an even better deal — let’s give them eight-year terms. That would make an arrogant and irresponsible Senate even more arrogant and irresponsible. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opi...s/news-story/ae4045577d16f2f9405ca3532a70cbd6............
small discussion..
This article has a few worthwhile points of view, with the essence to stay as we are.
imo...Having the same number of Senators in Tasmania as some of the more populated states is nothing short of a rort..
But to change the system one has to start somewhere, and I really do not see the problem from Paul Kelly's view.
One alternative is to consider 4 year terms, while diluting the number of Senators in Tasmania.
Another is reduce the Senate term to 4 years.
Surely all Senators should have the equivalent power in a democratic system.
Now Labor have a point with this section..
"The ALP platform now specifies simultaneous fixed four-year terms for the house and Senate. In brief, if Shorten sticks by Labor’s platform then the far bigger change he envisages concerns the Senate. The rotation of senators ends; their six-year term goes back to four years; and the separate life of the Senate ends by having simultaneous elections (whenever the house goes to the people the Senate also goes)."
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Now we all are aware Labor have an alternative reason behind this, and that is probably to get some of the excess seats from Tasmania transferred to Labor states to install more Union "riffraff".
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Should there be a discussion?... probably.
Is the PM aware of Labor's trickery?.......most definitely.
Can a solution be resolved? ....very doubtful, but this Senate in-balance needs to be sorted somehow.
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I do not think I have done justice to the whole article, but imo there should be a discussion.
cheers
