All that is needed is to get rid of this government.

Gillard - and Rudd before her - were the most divisive, nasty people we have had as PM.

They are even worse than Paul Keating, and that's really saying something!

It never ever worked well! The states, for a start, is like a house divided against itself, or a house, [Australia,] divided!
And self serving leaders and factions with too much personal power, regrettably, can stymie progress and essential long overdue, [real,] reform.
The UN and the Russian Parliament have an electronic voting system.
[There may well be others?]
While in Russia, it may well operate like a Putin rubber stamp, the UN system works quite well, allowing a secret ballot on every issue!
Meaning, the most eloquent oratory and persuasive intelligent argument has the best chance, as opposed to, aggressive bully boys!
And wouldn't our parliaments sound and look very different and far more civilised, if only reasoned argument held sway?
We could and should wire up both chambers, and indeed, all state parliaments, so that every issue could be subject to a virtual secret ballot!
Which by the way, is the very best way, for an inclusive democracy to actually function, according to actual democratic principles.
Biometric recognition keys, thermal imaging, computer facial recognition, smart cards and encryption, would prevent any other than the member, from recording a vote!
Given the variety of views, inside caucus/party rooms, we would at long last, have truly representative inclusive govt, rather than strong man leadership, that effectively stymies debate; and indeed, the essential long overdue reforms such debate might progress, or reflect current social mores!
Were there to be such a secret and electronically recorded ballot, we could perhaps have parliamentary style debate via video link, meaning, parliament could sit for ceremonial purposes, rather than to debate and or, pass legislation.
Even Hansard could be electronically recorded and archived on DVD's?
We have moved into the 21st century, while our parliaments, all of them, remain stubbornly locked in the 18th!
Rhrosty.

Australia's boom period is almost over. We face considerable financial problems. Our political system has degraded slowly since the 70's to a point that it is now not working. The people have lost faith in it.
Unless we can fix this and soon. Australia's problems, just surviving in the world, are magnified by the problems with our political situation. Double jeopardy. We face becoming a banana republic, or are we already there?

Fortunately Deakin, Parkes and the other drafters of the Constitution were sufficiently intelligent to create a working document that has stood the test of time this past century plus. Party politics are not always pretty but I think unless you want to defer to some sort of Politburo and adopt 5 year central plans as the way to go you really need to accept that party discipline will equate to voting blocks regardless of secrecy or "conscience" voting. It's called certainty Joel. Certainty without dictatorship. Krudd and Malcolm can posture all they want on Q&A (why they allow MPs on that forum I'll never know) but they cannot escape this truth. Good luck with your studies.

How many voters give their valuable vote to the candidate who offers the biggest bribe ? Was Romney right in saying 47% ? How do we make voters vote for the policies that will be successful for Australia as a whole.
Votes are valuable and should not be of equivalent value if presented by an incompetent, for whatever reason, or a presumable highly intelligent university graduate. But everyone must have a vote - the solution is to give extra votes to everyone who is of value to Australia. Examples could be the obvious Uni Graduates, Lawyers, Accountants, Doctors, those who contribute more than the average in Tax, Employers of more than say 5 people etc etc.
This should have the effect of raising the level of debate and in time governance, considerably.
Additionally stop compulsory voting immediately. If compulsion is needed to make you vote, your vote is worthless and may actually do damage

The Westminster system is broken. It'll take women's and men's legislatures to fix this mess.

If you can’t see that an imbalance of power between women and men is the source of all the problems introduced into Australia over the past two centuries, you’re not looking. If you can’t hear that governance by agreement between women’s and men’s legislatures is the solution, you’re not listening. If you don’t think it’s possible for Australians to lead the world in cleaning up the mess made by male privilege, you’re not thinking. C’mon peoples, look, listen, think, spread the word and let’s get busy, reform the Australian Constitution to provide for a women’s legislature.

As technology changes and reshapes the global economy capitalist nations have rightly engaged in a process of on-going and thorough economic reform (admittedly more pronounced in some states than others). Unfortunately our political systems have not been given the same attention. Is it any wonder our political system is showing signs of fatigue: we are running a 19th century political model in the 21st century lumbering along with a political system designed for a completely different set of circumstances. We need to shift our focus from economic to political reform. The introduction of citizen-initiated referendums would be one simple change that might drag our political system into the 21st century.

I disagree. I think the system is ok, but the quality of the players may not be up to scratch.

While much is said of Rudd, i personally think his intellect is vastly overrated. I mean every policy i have looked at hardly portrays Rudd matching the rhetoric he displayed prior to being elected.

I think better policy leadership will come when we have leaders that recognise the reality of policy difficulties for Western nations today. Only then will the public and players have a starting point to work with.

I mean carbon tax to change our ways, but we cant export enough of polluting materials.

I mean look at our growing industries; international students, online and casino gambling, and live animal trade while our quality industries go down and down.

I was hoping that the Coalition would have the guts to highlight some of these isses, and suggest why hard decisions could be made that encourage us to make some sacrifice for the longer term national interest.

We can better address the balance between consumption and production, and economic versus environmenal considerations, but i am still waiting for the right type of political leader that can lead on demonstrating complexity.

Come on Abbott, you only have Labor and Gillard to beat. I am one of the few academics that stick up your intellect. Dont be afraid to sell the truth and why we, as a nation, can do much better.

for example, if we are to be a lower cost naiton to atract investment, explore measures to help keep house and land prices witin the reach of orindary Austs. If that means some limitations on foreign ownership for residenctial property, so be it. If this means a loss of stamp duty for govts, so be it.

We cannot expect Austs to accept hard change, yet allows our developed assets become the toys of rich, often from corrupt countries.

If we are to accept foreign ownership of production, let them be limited to 49%, especially in case of authoritarian China.

Over the weekend, the media have happily reported that the Opposition will focus their efforts, in the final sitting week of the parliament, in trying to position the Prime Minister as an unreliable and unsatisfactory person to whom the truth is a stranger, that they will try to disrupt Question Time to put aside Standing Orders for debate on a matter of national importance namely, the PM's trust- worthyness. They will in all probability fail in this attempt as they have in all other such disruptive charades but they will, again, have trashed our parliamentary system and reduced the level of debate to the lowest common denominator.
the system is broken and needs a rewriting of the rules particularly the gimmick of attempting to set aside Standing Orders which allows an opposition Leader or delegate to jump onto a soap box to vent his or her spleen only to find that the motion is defeated. Perhaps, those speaking to such a motion need to be limited to a maximum of three minutes.

There are some fixable thing that need fixing in the Australian parliamentary system. Having taken an interest in US politics for fifty years the last thing we need is a President elected by the general public. The US system is more broken than our parliamentary system. Australia's success in dealing with the GFC shows that.

A learned body, formed from such people as the chief justices of each state court system, the Justices of the High Court elected representatives of university senior staff and maybe a few other groups, but no business representatives, could elect a president or recommend a panel of potential presidents to parliament. One of the duties of the president would be to chair the cabinet and ensure that cabinet is never a one man band, or a gang of four.

The president should have the right to comment on non security parliamentary and government actions and deliberations.

All our politicians need to attend and pass exams in some compulsory subjects such as economics, a broad course in science, the history of science, and maybe even the history of religion, in their first term in parliament.

I recall debates in parliament about public interest committees and the undesirability of not having governments pick winners. If governments had not picked winners in the fields of clean water, hospitals, decent state education systems, power generation, telephone services and many other fields we would be a very backwater society.

Countries need to apply the intellects of their most competent citizens to the government of their societies.

Foyle is correct. An elected President/Emperor/king whatever you call it, is the worst possible form of government. One man can never make good decisions in our complex society - even if 'advised' by his unelected cronies as in the USA.
We need neither a government, nor political parties - they are the death of democracy; we need a parliament of true independents who listen and debate, discuss and argue politely and then make decisions by consensus, having been advised by true experts and wise people who have the interests of the nation at heart, not their invisible god or the welfare of their family business or the shares they own in a multinational corporation.
Voting must not be compulsory, and the speaker/chairperson should rotate.
There is no need for a leader - there is need for rational, reasoned debate and laws that benefit everyone.

Well you didn't have to look to the bottom of the article to see it was penned by a naive youth. Can anyone past puberty not see that the worst people to govern Oz would be Turnbull, & KRudd, present ruler excepted of course.

You couldn't be more wrong Foyle, I can't imagine a worse choice of people to chose anything. I wouldn't trust such a group to pick a name for mt dog, let alone someone to govern real people. There could not be a group of people in Oz more inclined to approve of entrenched elitism & privilege.

In fact I think it is about time that all people on the public payroll were excluded from voting in any elections. After all they have a definite obvious conflict of interest, when they enter a polling station.

foyle I posted this article on Independent Australia web site

http://www.independentaustralia.net/category/australian-identity/republic/page/2/

And I think it might cover everything you said.

The Constitution is over 100 years old and I don't think it fits in with modern Australia. This is my idea of a bit of the constitution that can be updated

The way the president is elected/appointed is thinking outside the box, it could be improve a bit but I think people would get the idea of it.

The senate is not working the way that the constitution was set up for and that is to look after the states rights. With my idea the senate would look after the states more then they do now and no government could get control of the senate.

There is a bit more about the constitution and it is too much to put on here go and have a look and see what you think.

Australia’s Constitution assumes men own women.

Women were prohibited from speaking to or voting on it’s enactment, and from attending the first Parliament.

So the Parliament enfranchised women as men’s property in accordance with the convention prescribed by the Constitution.

Let no woman in Australia be uncertain that under the terms of the nation's Constitution, she is and shall remain, until such time as a women’s legislature is constituted, entirely in accordance with the law of the land the property of men.

There is no immigrant law which overrules this law.

Go figure?