Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Entirely reasonable

Government set to change Senate voting in bad news for 'micros'

I find it hard to credit that making people vote so as to indicate their actual preferences, as opposed to letting people vote when they are absolutely in ignorance of where their preferences will go, can be argued as being bad for representative democracy.  

I suppose that the "micro" argument is that, regardless of how they get there, having more micro members (so to speak) in the Senate is better for democracy.   They like the current system, but they should be more upfront that it pretty much like running a lottery for a handful of Senate seats each election. 

I would also assume that, should this reform be followed by a double dissolution, it will be goodbye to my favourite Senator to hate, Leyonhjelm.  I will have to re-focus the target of my political hatred elsewhere if that happens.  But I can live with that.  

2 comments:

Not Trampis said...

Early election??

not given what the polls are saying now. Punters do not like early elections nor voting in Winter!

John said...

Turnbull keeps waffling on about being policy based not politically motivated. Rubbish, politicians are politically motivated. I find it hard to believe he will go for an early election but given he has no policies and declining polls perhaps he will. If he does he'd better move quickly because his lack of policies is now a big political cost. I can't see it happening though because he has to deliver a budget, so July will be the earliest. The coalition is cornered on the budget question: ruled out GST increase, changes to negative gearing, and capital gains tax. That only leaves huge spending cuts. The unemployment trend is upward. The fool has snookered himself.