One desirable reform would be to allow crossing the floor where prospective legislation is not connected with the platform the party ran on during the election.

I agree with sarnian and King Hazza. Separate the legislative branch from the executive branch by electing a prime minister separately, and outlaw corporate contributions.

Allow initiative, referendum and recall. Initiative puts prospective legislation before parliament by petition of the citizenry. Recall requires a special election if a petition of a large percentage of the citizenry indicates dissatisfaction with the incumbent. Referendum mandates that certain legislation must be approved by the electorate. This should be required before committing Australian troops to foreign combat.

Have preselection by vote. All voters could select a party that they identify with. Then voters selecting a party could preselect the candidate for that party.

After election have the new senate sworn in at the same time as the new house.

sarnian .. "We have a situation now where all parties and politicians are owned by the corporate world"

really, I thought the major finding for the ALP came from the Union movement, after all the ALP is the political arm of the unions ..

Or do you not count the ALP as receiving those - are the unions not counted as "private" money?

Sorry, not trying to be smart, I truly do not understand your point.

What do we do about professional lobby groups, like Getup who receive union money and make political advertisements .. while claiming they don't take sides, when they are clearly part of the ALP.

The author says "The universities are moving away from politics", sorry .. they are a hotbed of politics and intrigue always have been .. the ANU seems to turn out left wing students and staff without exception .. other Unis turn out similar activists

the ABC is becoming so politically activist that even their own staff are commenting and seem to be actually concerned.

the Drum, struggles to cope with their own lean to the left .. I saw one comment saying they thought the comments were fair, but always to the left .. and on other sites were complaints that contrary comments never get posted. So lefties always feel there are very few conservatives or different views, at all!

Personally I would prefer a straight 2 party system, no indies, no other parties .. if you want change, you do it within that structure .. that way we avoid the one person awesome political clout we have now with one green in federal politics wielding out of proportion power .. it would also end the stupid dealmaking that only benefits politicians and no one in the electorate

not perfect, but the current system is spiraling in for a very bad landing

By the way I agree with Sarnian, and David F.
Ban all donations, ensure that a VERY strict cap on what private or party use of resources is permitted, and of course David F's three measures.
Ensuring that extra contentious issues require a referendum (war declaration as you said) are an obvious thing lacking.
How about this for a rule- whenever a politician calls for a 'conscience vote'- the issue is immediately stripped from the government and put to referendum.

As it was said, regional representatives make sense for the colonial years, but in the modern age they make no sense, and really only make public input filtered down in the processes as representatives are filtered into eventually reaching the executive.

I'm glad most of us so far have offered some considerable ideas

Before one can accept that Australia has a dysfunctional party system, one has to have an idea of a functional party system.

One cannot form an idea of a functional party system unless one knows the function expected from a functional system.

We normally associate parties and elections with democracy and, probably, it is to a kind of democracy that the author of this article alludes.

If this is so, the article would be clearer if the author gave us his definition of ‘democracy’.

I agree. Long overdue!

One minor fix: I think that preferences are still a good thing.

Even in countries with proportional representation there is some minimum percentage which a party needs to achieve in order to get in. Voters are therefore afraid to vote for smaller parties due to the risk of their vote being completely lost. To prevent that, it is fair to allow a second (or even third) alternative-preference on the ballot paper.

I would add my support to changes recommended by others above, namely:
* eliminate donations
* citisen initiated referenda and legislation (I would also restrict parliamentary power to change/amend such legislation)

I would not want an american style executive outside of parliamen. However to make the senate work properly as a house of review I would make changes:
* ban ministers from the senate. When needed for questioning, the minister has to front the senate in person;
* all legislation originates in the lower house. The upper house simply debates/amends/passes (or not) as they decide.
* Deadlock between house, have the double dissolution provisions as at present with one small change: The moment the bill is rejected a second time, both house are automatically prorogued immediately. No further debate, no banking up more measures etc. Off to the people 4 weeks after the rejection. Oh and treat not passing the bill say 3 months after first tabling as rejection.

DKit