While one can agree with most of this Everald! If we're going to have so much massive reform?
Why do it by half and leave the job half done?
We need to change the election rules that allow preference exchanges that completely emasculate every known democratic principle and allow someone with just 15% or less o the primary vote to win the seat! Or if you will a party which 85% of the electorate rejected!
Compulsory preferencing must be replaced by optional preferencing or proportional representation. And there's no rule that tells us it has to be the Hare-Clark system!
Taxation needs root and branch reform of if not possible? Jettisoned in its entirety and replaced with a far simpler flat tax without deductions of any sort and either as PAYE or PAYG that none can avoid and taken as the only tax taken or needed!
After that, has anybody ever questioned, other than archaic medieval tradition? Why do we need oppositions, given the inherently divided nature and robust division inside most party rooms?
Imagine how much money we could save if those who won the election were able to govern without opposition and were able to get all their legislation to the upper house, which would retain its powers to review and amend. And mean given the way most Aussie vote. The Senate would not only review and permit such legislation that it allowed passage but double as the only needed opposition!
And in effect save as much a 35 billion per, the cost of opposition for opposition's sake!
A further 70 annual billions could be returned to the budget bottom line by the dissolution of now completely unnecessary, road-block, state government!
Alan B.

Footnote: Imagine what we could do with a liberated one hundred annual billions
Some huge nation-building projects would be possible as well as significant surplus a far out as the eye can see.
And further enhanced by regional autonomy and direct, needs-based means-tested funding models.
Why we'd be able to crack on with super fast rapid rail and finish fibre to the home NBN!
After that, we can and should drought-proof the economy, not as difficult or as costly as some folk might think!
All that prevents it is the narrowly focused naysayers at the helm who as a cohort, lack vision and imagination or the political will!
Alan B.

So the Founding Fathers did not mean to give power to the Senate to vote down a government.

The Founding Fathers drafted the constitution which gave that power clearly and unequivocally.

There is only one conclusion. The Founding Fathers were fools or you are a fool.
which, I wonder?

You , at least are right about the need for a republic.

The reason, however, is that we need to have a President with express democratic power and authority to do sack a government when a crazed egotist like Whitlam or Jack Lang indicates an intention of tearing up the constitution under which he was elected. The people, in the elections following the crises of 1975 and 1932 clearly, with landslide votes showed what they wanted.

Obviously you only a genius like you is bright enough to know how wrong the overwhelming majority of voters were in the election those egoists brought on themselves.

«a once in a lifetime opportunity to make huge changes in the way Australia is governed.»

Yawn, the proposed changes are petty. The way Australia is governed is important for just a few - it's too lofty to seriously concern most of us.

What does affect us all, is not how Australia is governed, but how AUSTRALIANS are governed, that is, the level if intrusion of government on our private lives.

Anyone who is serious about a giant referendum must consider this as top priority.

(1) Indigenous Recognition.

The Australian Constitution is an Act of Parliament of Westminster. It is not possible to create a preamble to it. You will have to find another way to acknowledge indigenous ownership of the land in the constitution.

In fact the main problem with politics at the moment is it is full of professional politicians. The path to pre-selection is to have been a staffer for a politician in your party. This produces people who have spent their whole careers putting spin on every activity and when elected continue to do the same. It is impossible to work out what they really stand for.

This has occurred at the same time as an increase in tribalism. Supporters of political parties are less interested in whether "their" party is looking after their interests and more interested in whether they are giving it in the neck to liberals/conservatives i.e. people they think they dislike. So no one does anything except try and tear down what the previous mob did.

Because “so many Australians are utterly disenchanted with, or distrusting of, politics” does not mean “that there exists a once in a lifetime opportunity to make huge changes in the way Australia is governed.” Whose lifetime are we talking about? Is Everald thinking about his lifetime, that he has only his lifetime to 'fix’ things? Pretty optimistic at the age of 86. The statement makes no sense. Things will change over several lifetimes in the future.

“Voters have given up trying to find the right leader”, he says. Voters have nothing to do with finding leaders; they have no say in leaders; it's up to the parties. And so sorry, Everald, but there will be no “largest referendum in the history of Australia” in 2019. But we had The Biggest Morning Tea a week ago.

Indigenous recognition: racist and divisive. No thanks.
Republic: unnecessary and too expensive; stupid.
4,5 and 6: not going to happen.

Finally, who would listen to an obscure 86 year old? As an obscure 75 year old, I join Yuyutsu in yawing.