Republic or not is a red herring. Like snag I am far more interested in major structural reform. The idea of replacing the three tiers of government with just one parliamentary system makes sense. One way this could be made to work is to identify what may be loosely referred to as 'communities of interest" Each of these small communities would elect a representative. In every instance the community would be responsible for the sort of services that government needs to provide to a community: health, education and social services. Where some of these services c an be best provided by working with other communities (eg hospitals) then the communities would pool their resources for those hospitals. Where we would need to cooperate on a national basis would be in the area of uniform rules and regulations. (Ever thought what a nightmare it is for a plumber operating out of Mildura - his market area covers NSW, SA and Victoria; each has very different standards - with really no apparent justification.)Once you confer that sort of responsibility on a representative; ie to ensure that the burdens and benefits of social cooperation are fairly distributed you can argue for giving that member a decent budget to ensure that s/he can discharge those duties. But at present our members are little more than over paid muppets with neither accountability or responsibility and of course the puppeteers are not ever held to account.

Well, as far as accountability, aside from the ideas Pericles mentioned, the ad-campaign restriction I mentioned, and my usual Citizen Initiated Referenda advocacy; the most obvious way to reorganize government is to abolish parliament and the GG office (both useless), and have each ministry a separate, directly-elected house. That is we vote for our President/Prime Minister, finance minister, foreign-affairs minister, immigration minister, education minister, industrial relations minister, health minister from separate pools of candidates.

This would leave only the actual ministries as the executive (Which they effectively already are minus obeying the same political party), and the Senate (we only need one house of review).

The positive is that a government can't simply be granted exclusive control of all ministries simply because they promised to stop boats arriving, or promised they wouldn't implement a GST- or simply promised they weren't Tony Abbot or Labor, respectively.

Each candidate would actually have to make a promise for their respective field and probably compare relevant credentials to get the job, while the rest of the prospective ministers are required to do the same.
So long as voters are free to mark only as much of their ministerial preferences as they personally care about, it would be a far more effective system.

forget citizen referenda - complex questions cannot be decided sensibly by a referendum - the most logical response will in most instance be to vote no for the yes vote opens up a can of worms of uncertainties. But why not go for a model like this instead - and use the carbon tax as an example. Those who oppose the proposed tax organize a petition against the tax - they need to collect at least a 1,000 signatures. Once they have their petition approved the chief justice impanels a jury and the politicians have a month to present their case in open court both for and against the tax. I have every confidence that a jury of 12 people will come up with the right decision. To those who argue that it is too complex for a jury decide I would simply say that since this is a decision that affects us all then the onus is on the politicians to present their case in terms we can all understand. If such a case were televised then people will be able to determine for themselves whether or not the arguments for or against stack up. Of course this is another example where we can show there is no need to increase payments to politicians simply work outg ways to make the system more accountable.

Name just one politician who you think is worth his/her pay ? I can mention hundreds of people who should get more & I know even more who should get less.

It is a matter of if you think you can do better , go and throw your hat in the ring. The political atmosphere is running red hot as a result of the hung parliament. 200 bills have passed parliament since the election. All you hear about is the back-bitchin going on. All in the name of democracy.

Good point 579 - by any standard this government is travelling pretty well; people may not like what they are doing but that is true for all governments. Abbott in collusion with the Murdoch press has been successful in creating the impression that the government is failing.
The crazy thing is that even if Abbott were to win it would not make a great deal of difference - a bit of fiddling at the edges is the most that any government can do. Hence to argue that people should get paid more does not make sense.
In passing the following may be relevant - a friend of mine was a member of the Liberals National Policy committee. He was offered a safe seat and declined. The money did not worry him - although he would have gone down in income that was not his concern. He simply pointed out that all you were there for was to make up the numbers and do as you were told. For him the deciding factor was that the policies he and his committee had sweated on were thrown out because they did not resonate with focus groups. He made the point that if he ran his company like the politicians ran their party he would have gone broke long ago. And these are the people who should be getting paid more?