Dear Is Mise,

Everyone nowadays wants to eat the cake and have it too...

The only thing that currently makes taxation wrong is the compulsion to use the money/currency which the state prints, rather than your own.

If you were allowed to use your own currency (or none at all), but still freely chose to use the money which governments print (including foreign currency due to international agreements between the states that issue it), then I could find nothing wrong about you being taxed over that money.

The money that states print comes with strings attached: if you choose to use it, then you must also abide by the conditions that come with the product, taxation included. Don't like those conditions - then don't use to product.

Poirot,

Thank you for clarifying that.
I guess it means I will be offing for 1-12 'Below-the-Line' in preference to multiple 'Above-the-Line' choices, as I would hope to have at least some say about the operation of my preferences.

In this interest, I wonder if another reasonable measure would be to limit the number of candidates fielded by any party to not more than the actual number of seats available? (In order to better ensure a reasonably broad spectrum of representation in the final outcome?)

In the end result I still believe some appropriate revision of the Senate election system is needed, and I would certainly not like to be stuck with having to number every box 'Below the Line' - now that I have this better understanding of the present 'Above the Line' distribution of Primary votes.

Can we yet have some hope of honour and conviction in the 'system'?
(When I think about a half-billion dollar, but non-binding, Plebiscite proposed on another matter, I have to shudder. One would hope at least for a simple non-compulsory question in the upcoming 2016 Census - if only to be used as a 'guide'? Surely this would serve the purpose, and at no extra cost?)

Yuyutsu,

I thought that all state sponsored compulsion was wrong in your book; why is compulsion to vote any different to compulsory registration of motor vehicles, dogs etc?

You cannot have your cake and eat it as well!

Strangely I agree with Poirot on the senate reforms.

These micro parties have given us Ricky Muir, Jackie Lambie, and Glen Lazarus all with the IQ of a pigeon, who hopefully, if there is a DD election I will never hear of again. These chumps would not have a prayer standing on their own, and represent no one except possibly the intellectually challenged.

What I do find amusing is the Shift that Dinner Tally is introducing to the Greens after shafting CM. Rather than be a echo chamber for the Labor party in parliament DNT is actually exercising the power he has, leaving Labor who initially proposed the senate changes looking like chumps.

What Phil goes apoplectic about is the chance of the greens and the libs swapping preferences as this clearly looks like a betrayal of the left. What Phil doesn't grasp is that for the greens to be anything other than a fringe protest party, it needs to get seats in the lower house, and the only seats it is like to take are those presently occupied by Labor. That's right, in parliament, labor and the greens are natural enemies.

It appears that DNT has a strategy:
1 preference swaps to rob labor,
2 To be taken seriously by moving its policies from the fringes to subjects that most voters care about, and to ditch or sideline the far left loonies such as Lee Rhiannon, CM, SHY and Bandt. All of which will take seats from Labor who is already bleeding union sponsorship and other funding.

From which the libs and greens profit and Labor loses.

Dear Is Mise,

<<I thought that all state sponsored compulsion was wrong in your book>>

Compulsion is wrong, not just by states but by any people or groups of people.

However, suppose there was a loaf of bread and the baker told me: "I would give you this loaf in exchange for one dollar plus your promise to distribute one third of it to birds and that you must eat the rest while seated on a chair". If you agree to this deal and take the bread, then you must follow up, give one third of it to the birds and eat the rest while seated on a chair. No compulsion there.

Had it not been compulsory to use that product that governments produce called "money" or "Australian dollar", but you freely chose to use it anyway, then you should not complain that part the producer's conditions include the paying of taxes, including the provision in small print that these may vary from time to time.

You may not on the one hand ask the state for favours but on the other hand reject their conditions.

Compulsory voting is wrong unless you agreed to be a citizen and accrue the benefits that come with it (but not including your God-given birthright to park your body in this continent).

Compulsory registration of motor vehicles is justified if you want to drive them on public roads which the state paved.

Compulsory registration of dogs would similarly only be justified if you want to take/allow them out to public spaces (but not if you intend to always keep them on your property).

So compulsion is wrong by anyone?

Suppose that someone tries to rob me by the compulsion of a knife threat and I use the compulsion of my military training to break his knife arm.

Is my counter compulsion unjustified?