Oh come on Nick. This is just repackaging what you wrote the other month. Is there some reason you keep failing to address the issues I raised then? For your information, I repeat them here.

The problem is the systems of election to upper houses. Proportional representation makes for totally bad government.

To see just how bad things can be, remember Dee Margetts. Dee came from the WA Greens whom we fortunately lost in a subsequent election. Our Dee used to stand up and insist on changes she wanted made to various legislation - all on behalf of the less than 0.25% (that's 1/4 of 1%) of the Australian electorate that she represented. We still have Bob Brown who represents about the same. Steve Bracks is absolutely insane to choose to inflict this travesty on the Victorian electorate without even a referendum.

Direct election simply tends to mirror in the upper house what is in the lower house. Again, looking at the Senate, how many people take the time or have the discernment to vote below the line to rank candidates in the large type of electorates that Upper Houses have. Most people will simply vote above the line for whichever hacks the factions of the major parties have approved.

Given that we constantly complain about major parties not legislating for needs beyond the next election, there is a counter argument for the value of one party dominating the Parliament for some time. Although I can't credit Beattie for taking advantage of his majorities to push through reform of health and other areas when he should have done, nevertheless a system where a Premier needs to negotiate with what Keating liked to call "unrepresentative swill" is far from perfect as well.

Regards

Kevin

Scott & Nick, you say that "The problems of establishing a new upper house are not ... politically insurmountable.

What we need is political will to put the issue on the agenda, a commitment by all parties for improved accountability and an independent process to progress the issue. The people, through a referendum, will do the rest."

I can not conceive of Queensland politicians supporting any measures which increase their acountability or hamper their ability to pursue bad, sectional interest, policy. Nor, sadly, do I see much demand for such measures in the electorate. Dream on.

We don't need an upper House in Queensland. We don't need any upper houses anywhere. The bicameral or 2 house system began with the idea of a 'people's house' (House of Representatives/Legislative Assembly) and a house for the aristocracy and merchants (House of Lords/Senate/Legislative Council). Such a notion is completely anachronistic. Should an upper house be modelled on more democratic lines, it becomes merely another set of politicians voting on party lines, similar to the lower house, therefore redundant. Any attempt to make it different to the lower house such as through state representation in the Senate produces a distorted and unrepresentative makeup. Proportional representation, as pointed out by Kevin, also produces distortions. The NSW Upper House is enough evidence of this, with people being elected on a 1% or less primary vote and a share of preferences. These unrepresentative minnows sometimes end up holding the balance of power, which was clearly not the intention of the electorate. The major parties stack the upper houses with party hacks who, with little to do, turn to overseas junkets, Machiavellian political machinations, or booze for diversion during their 6-8 year terms before commencing a post parliament career on full pension.

Do away with all redundant, amachronistic, upper houses I say!

Aftre very long & careful thought, I can not think of anything we need less than an upper house.
It gives us government of the majority, by the minority. When you think minority, think long haired, radical ratbag, fringe.
Names like Brown come to mind.

Guys

Firstly it won't happen.

Secondly your assertion

'Queensland's weak unicameral parliamentary system has encouraged a lack of ministerial responsibility, political party dominance in public service appointments and secrecy in decision making.

These issues lie at the heart of the state's hospitals, childcare and energy scandals.'

That is simply wrong.

The scandals have been bought about by wasteful spending, mismanagement and lack of leadership. The fault lies squarely at the feet of Beattie and the inept bunch of long serving nohopers that form most of his cabinet.
That has absolutely nothing to do with the system of governance.

You want proof? Take a look at NSW where the problems are just as rife and in some cases much worse. NSW should have, because of numbers, a more effective opposition and there is an Upper House.

Nice try, but most people in Queensland would laugh at your excuse for Beattie's impotence.

Representation is either accurate and proportional or it isn't. The only way an upper house can be a check on the lower house is if it has a different representation, but once again, representation is either accurate and proportional or it isn't, so a different representation would mean that one house must be incorrectly represented. Needless to say, the concept of a bicameral legislature where both are intended to be a representation of the voters is moronic.

What is needed is a truly proportionally representative unicameral legislature, where a candidate or party who has received 1% of the votes would have 1% of the voting power in parliament and a candidate or party who has received 40% of the votes would have 40% of the voting power in parliament.

Until this happens, we cannot say we have a truly representative government.

Oh, come on all you guys and gals who are slamming Nick and Scott for suggesting an appropriate watchdog which might just provide the ultimate cure to Queensland's malaise in governance, presently provided by Teflon Pete and his ill accomplished team.

Let's quarantine the debate until we have all had the opportunity of reading the numerous responses to the December 2005 LCARC discussion paper: Access to administrative Justice in Queensland, which are due to be tabled in State Parliament circa June

Then perhaps the serious debaters of this isue might be spared some of the esoteric chaff which has been posted so far.

I think the Queenslanders are ahead of New South Wales in many areas. Queenslanders have lower state taxes and charges, they don't have our ludicrous RTA "pink slips" which are a joke. I don't think we are in a position to sneer at the Queensland health system either as there are holes in ours. Try the western New South Wales experience!.I have not seen much creative or complimentary legislation come out of the New South Wales upper house and from where I stand it is only a reward system for the party faithful who fail to be elected or represting a group the appointing party wants on side.

Oh come on Kevin. You’re as bad as you’re alleging Nick to be. You keep bringing up this canard of the “balance of power of unrepresentative minorities” but refuse to address arguments it.

In the federal sphere, the Bob Browns and Dee Margetts are unrepresentative but that’s because smaller states get equal number of senators to larger states. In a state based proportional representational system all party blocs in upper houses would be truly representative of their popularity with the voters. Even if an individual wins a seat with 43 primary votes and the rest in preferences due to a smart deal he or she made, then as much as you hate to admit it, he has still won office due to the preference of the voters. If a voter didn’t bother to check up to see where his vote was finally going then that is his problem. You can’t arrange an electoral system to accommodate slack voters, ESPECIALLY when it is at the expense of those minorities who would otherwise be denied political representation.
As for small parties or individual members having the pivotal say on the passage of major party legislation, does is ever occur to you that if the major party needs support then it must be a minority in the first place, and as such what validity is there that its legislation must get through?
There is no shame in two parties getting together and passing two pieces of legislation where overall, representatives of a majority of the people preferred the law as it will become to as it was.
Where there is shame is in the (not unique) circumstances of the federal lower house election of 1998. Then, under single member voting, not only did the majority of voters not get their preferred PM (Beazley actually got more preference votes than Howard) but the majority of voters also didn’t get their first choice as their representative in the House of Representatives. What an electoral system! The majority didn’t want that P.M. and the average voter ends up with someone else as his MP.

Dream on, indeed. It's very Australian to criticise, and particularly to criticise new ideas, but the fact is that we need some improvement to parliamentary democracy. People are losing confidence in it, and we need to start considering alternatives rather than just cynically attacking ideas.

An upper house for Queensland could provide much-needed review of the parliamentary executive. I've heard it said that the best Qld legislation of the 1990s was when Liz Cunningham had the balance of power. Legislation was checked and negotiated much more carefully than when one party has a clear majority. It is arguable that a minority party having a balance of power in the Senate has similarly checked excesses of both Labor and Liberal Governments, a check that is now absent.

We want and need an executive branch that can act decisively, rather than have Israeli, Italian or Indian(?) style Parliaments where the executive doesn't have a clear majority.

And yet an upper house could help the Legislature as a whole become more independent. This would validate the authority of the parliamentary executive acting through the Legislature, because the Legislature would not simply be its rubber stamp.

Hold on to dreams. We need them right now.

Very necessary Fitzgerald Inquiry induced reforms have slipped. Politicians remain politicians, and can never have too much scrutiny, especially when in government and wield so much power. Yet they are more than prepared to foist extreme levels of scrutiny and social engineering on the people of Queensland, by way of legislation. Once in power both sides of politics, either Labor with its socialist foundations; or the Nationals, who have dominated Queensland conservative politics, with their apparently agrarian socialist tendencies, use that power without much regard to Queenslanders rights.

At last Friday's conference that debated reintroducing an Upper House in Qld, mostly attended by academics and lawyers, and too few ordinary people, the audience heard the not unexpected news from Qld Labor Minister Reynolds, that Labor believed everything was okay, democracy was working, and that the ALP would not support an Upper House or Legislative Council being reintroduced. Even more disappointing, but also not entirely unexpected, Mark McArdle MP representing the Coalition, also advised that the Opposition does not support it either - they simply prefer to tinker with processes and appointments, like the Information Commissioner.

We know that at the last election, the ALP secured around 47% of the vote but won over 70% or 63 of the seats of the 89 seats. The Liberals achieved 18.5% (or one third of Labor's total) of the vote but only won 5 seats; the Nationals got less than the Liberals vote, just under 17% but won 15 seats.

Here's some info from the conference. The few Parliamentary Committees are dominated by the ALP. The chairs and majority of the members on the Committees are ALP MP's. We already know that the Information Commissioner was entirely an ALP political appointment. The Scrutiny of Legislation Committee is supposed to scrutinise new legislation to assure legislation conforms with law, that natural justice provisions apply and that human rights are observed. Experience shows that they don't do their job effectively. Apparently a third of requests for facts by the Committee to government departments go unanswered, even though ALP dominated.

This isn't good enough.

Regards, Derek Sheppard

The Fitzgerald Inquiry was probably a political mistake - the maxim that you don't hold inquiries unless you know the outcomes, was overlooked, hopefully purposely. Fitzgerald's disaffection with the Nationals and the ALP shows that neither side appreciated the importance and quality of his work. I suspect even he possibly underestimated party poltical machines working to erode true parliamentary democratic reforms to ensure power is retained at any cost.

You would expect the Opposition to recognise the depleted state of parliamentary democracy and have policies that seek to remedy the situation. Where are these policies?

But do they want to be accountable, transparent and subject to parliamentary scrutiny? Triennial elections are a long way from enough to assure democracy.

Politicians do themselves and parliamentary representative democracy a disservice by not ensuring that there is real separation of powers, by ensuring the executive is separate from and overseen by representative, proportionately elected members of Parliament, and in the absence of the political will for a Legislative Council, there must be at least a Parliamentary Committee system that has real powers to effectively scrutinise both legislation and the exceutive's administration. Anything less makes a complete mockery of parliamentary democracy, will erode the people's confidence in it, and worse, lessen the quality of and respect for legislation, and its administration. Who accepts decisions affecting our lives by all knowing, yet flawed leaders are more important than due process?

Government in Queensland borders on totalitarian. It's currently run from Premier Beattie's office. He governs with less than half the votes cast in the 2004 election (even less after 3 by-elections), and yet can do whatever he and the ALP parliamentary arm wants, implement variants of ALP policy (even though over half the voters didn't want it, and hardly a mandate), pass any legislation or regulations (in fast time, with no or little effective scrutiny or analysis), irregardless of the rights and interests of the people, because every other check and balance has been effectvely nobbled.

What does the Opposition intend to do - anything at all, just a little or nothing?

Regards, Derek Sheppard

The thought of an upper house reminds me of the waste and corruption of the NSW upper house.
If we do have an upper house in QLD we will see some of the dropkicks (Politicians)from the past edging their way back into politics.

Queensland needs an upper house like I need a hole in the head. Maybe when upper houses were not the tools of the lower house, but not any more. Do we really need more politicians duplicating the work of other politicians with the attended staff and expense? If this is part of the Family First platform, I will not be voting for the party. This for me is a show-stopper. Please consign this to the vault of very bad ideas, and face really important issues like speaking out against Halloween which just plants the ideas in kids minds that the spiritual realm is just fairy tales and not to be taken seriously.

Yeah i gotta agree with the Wanderer. What's the diff? Lets say we shift all of Beattie's backbenchers into an upper house, nothing would change. Same dog, different hair cut. Nuff said.