We have too many layers of government and too many politicians as it is. This is resulting in, among other things, unnecessary regulations, poor coordination of public policy and turf wars. How can more Coalition or Labor Party soldiers add anything to government except extra overheads?

Many of the problems the authors discuss come from the undemocratic nature of our Political Parties and out two Party system of government. Have a look at city councils (eg the Brisbane City Council) where Party politics is on the rise and is wasting resources on squabbles.

The notion that increasing the number of politicians will do nothing but increase overheads is false economy on not based on realities on the ground. The cost of a few additional pollies is chicken feed compared to the misallocations and downright waste that is already taking place. And the last thing any system with these kinds of problems needs is fewer auditors.

The essential role of an upper house is as an auditor of government. And I doubt that there is anyone in Queensland that seriously believes we have too much auditing of government. If an upper house can cut waste by only 5% then you could pay each MP $10 million a year and still have stacks of change.

The problem in Queensland is exacerbated by a Constitution that has only a few provisions that cannot be altered by the government of the day. The normal requirement in constitutions all over the world is that they may only be altered by referendum but not in Queensland.

And given that the removal of the original chamber was fraudulent, it must be restored. The irony is that it was the very attribute of the old chamber that "Red Ted" disapproved of, its unrepresentative appointed nature, that he abused to bring about its closure.

Beattie comes from a long tradition of flesh crawling hypocrites.

The Senate is said to be "apart from the Senate of the United States of America, the most powerful legislative upper chamber in the world." (parliament of Australia website). However under Howard the Senate been a tame pussy cat in review and a rubber stamp for the Lower House.

Most people are unaware that the Senate can equally give rise to legislation. Ever wondered how people have come to the view that it has a narrow, reactive role?

It is also said that "The framers of the Constitution intended that the primary role of the Senate would be to protect the interests of the less populous states in the federal Parliament by giving equal representation to all states." However this is not so either because party whips have ensured that all members toe the party line.

Taking the last ten years for example there have been many opportunities for the Australian Senate to fulfill its role as a house of review, however it has continued to perform that role well spasmodically and rarely when the PM has had the numbers to ensure otherwise.

Senior politicians from both sides have referred to the upper house as unrepresentative swill or words to that effect and maybe they sometimes have a point.

I see no benefit whatsoever in Queensland introducing an upper house. The policies of political parties are made outside the house of parliament, they feel free to flex those policies as they wish and resist public discussion of policies between elections.

Were it not for committee work, few members outside of the all-powerful Executive would ever feel useful as anything but rent-a-crowd for votes in the house. But now the number of committees and their relative independence are being curtailed.

Give longer terms to the lower houses and have done with it, but do not expect more politicians (in lower or upper houses) to be able to do a quality, independent job when they are required by their party to stick religiously to the script they have been given.

In my 8 years as a lower house MP in the WA Parliament, I never - not even once - found a practical justification for the continuation of the two house system in this state. Although upper house MPs are nominally elected by the people, the reality was that, in the absence of upper house electorates where candidates actually had to go out and sell themselves to electors, MPs were 'elected' by their parties, thereby ensuring that internal party politics were more important than winning the hearts and minds of electors.
The quality of upper house MPs is, in my experience, far worse than lower house MPs. Most power brokers in the larger parties are upper house MPs. Because of the way that the WA upper house operated, most of its members were underworked, thereby leaving them with time on their hands to undertake party political activities and hence do little meaningful work of potential benefit to citizens of the state. My perception was that upper house MPs took more overseas junkets than their lower house colleagues, usually with no or only marginal subsequent benefits being provided to the Parliament or the public.
If you want to improve the practice of democracy in Australia (as opposed to the theory of democracy), my preference is to abolish all upper houses - including the federal senate - and increase the number of seats in each lower house of Parliament. In this way, every MP will become answerable to electors and have a far better chance of governing for the benefit of those electors rather than for themselves or their party.

Bernie, I was once advised by a key ALP numbers wallah that the main reason for having an upper house was the very reason you have criticised them. Upper houses are needed as a suitable receptacle for dead wood. Without them the lower houses are clogged with people who are long past their use-by date. And the upper house provides a suitable half way house before being tossed out altogether.

This opinion was expressed by a person with a very keen eye on the performance of MLAs and a keen understanding of the implications of not having an upper house in Queensland.

It is a fact of life that party hacks will occupy a portion of all seats available so the more of them that are in the upper house, the better.

But all this aside, at least with two chambers there is some prospect of a functioning committee system to investigate the most important issues and provide properly considered positions, including dissenting ones. Queensland hasn't had an effective committee system since 1989. The last dissenting opinion of note was that provided by Labor in opposing the Wolfdene Dam.

Without an effective upper house you hand more power to the even more perfidious evil of bureaucratic control of the flow of information.

You make some good points, Perseus, and I'm of the view that our democracy needs more reforms than just the abolition of all upper houses throughout Australia. The dead wood you correctly identify would disappear if, for example, the major political parties chose their parliamentary candidates through a vote of all party members, not just by union representatives and a few elected party members in the ALP and not just by a small elite within the Liberals.

Expanded lower houses - say, an additional 30% of seats - would allow the committee system to operate well in those houses. I was a member of such committees for the 8 years I was in Parliament and we mostly did very useful work (but not always!).