or you can try democracy: instead of voting for people or parties, you vote for laws and programs through referenda initiated by citizens. but you'll have to go farther than tasmania.

the important part of your post is your english. "needs to be re-thought" is very characteristic of ozzie political discussion. it's always in the passive voice because you can't actually do anything in politics, unless you're a politician. then you don't need to do anything, as you're already on top. that leads to a remarkable fatalism in the national character, a profound conviction that nothing can be done.

until the ozzians get off their collective knees, nothing will be done.

If this article is anything to go by, it looks as if the massive preponderance of intention to vote for the Labor Party revealed(?) by the opinion polls is foreseen as being negated in the actual outcome of the vote on election day! John Phillimore is dragging a red herring across the path to public understanding of such a result.

He is attempting to establish that we should at every level not be voting for persons, but rather political parties, and that the paradox of "Winning but losing...", should it 'inexplicably' happen, will have been due to our collective failure to 're-think' our electoral system along such lines.

How could such a lead (of around ten percentage points) come to be negated?

There are several answers. The first is that the opinion polls have not been accurate.

A second answer is that voters will have changed their minds after having been 'opinion polled'. This is a very satisfying answer, for it almost certainly would mean that this most rivetting of election campaigns has thoroughly engaged the voting public.

A third answer is that the opinion polls of genuine intending voters were broadly correct, but that some other factor, or factors, operated to cancel out this convincing lead by the time the official results were declared.

It seems that John Phillimore is foreshadowing the scenario of the third answer as being applicable. Conventional wisdom has it that the 'other factor' operating to produce a result at variance with the opinion polls is a 'targetting of the marginals'. Given that, it is strange that in this context no mention has been made of the paradoxical 1987 Federal election result, for which 'targetting of the marginals' was given the credit.

It is officially documented that an electoral enrolment accountancy discrepancy of 204,880 enrolments existed at the close of rolls for the 1987 Federal elections. Translated into votes, and appropriately distributed, that could have changed numerous marginals! Needless to say such votes, not being those of real electors, would have been unable to have been forecast by opinion polls.

Happening again?

Boazy: "Unless a man is born again, he will not see the kingdom of God"

Heard in the pub the other night: 'The trouble with born again Christians is that they all seem to acquire brain damage at birth'.

but do consider democracy, after you find out what it is.

Talk about swallowing a camel and straining at a gnat!

50 - 51- 52 percent who cares?

The whole idea of one vote for each person is ridiculous. Some, such as I, should get 2 or 3 votes in view of our understanding, altruism, and thoughtfulness :-)

The Whitlam government tried a referendum to enshrine one vote one value in the Constitution. Unfortunately, they tried to substitute their own gerrymander for the one they had suffered--instead of the geographical size of the electorate being used to determine (in part) the number of voters, they proposed that the total population be used. So the referendum was defeated.

The High Court refused to rule that an election with grossly unequal electorate sizes was unconstitutional. A new appeal that might produce a different outcome, now that the Court has decided that the principal purpose of the Constitution is to set up a parliamentary democracy (and not, as was held earlier, to provide free trade between the states.)

Some form of proportional representation might deal with the problem. There might, however, be more minority governments. And there would be more informal votes. Since Labor suffers disproportionately from informal votes, they will not be in a hurry to introduce complicated voting.