The British election results have got more thinking about electoral reform.

Here is the difficulty. A loathing for, say, the ALP does not always translate into a passion for the Libs. The converse holds with equal force. I know many people who hate the Libs vehemently but are at best lukewarm about the ALP.

The truth is we know who we hate. It's a bit more difficult to know who we love.

Minor parties and independents seldom get elected for the lower house. It always seems to boil down to either the Libs or the ALP.

What we need is an electoral system that allows us to express, not our support, but our dislike. Hence introducing the:

* BIG BROTHER OPTION *

We build big brother houses in every constituency. All wannabe members of parliament have to enter the big brother house for their constituency. Every week the voters get to say who is EXPELLED.

In other words we vote on who we like LEAST among the candidates. Who we hate the most if you like.

The last person left in the big brother house gets to represent that constituency until the next election.

If you don’t like that here is another system:

$ THE EBAY OPTION $

All constituencies are auctioned off on eBay. The constituency is sold to the highest bidder who represents the constituency for the term of the parliament. The proceeds of the auction are distributed evenly among the voters.

This has the merit of cutting out all the advertising agencies, electoral advisers, pollsters, marketing consultants and so on who make their living advising political parties how to con us into voting for them. We, the voters, get the cash instead.