<<I would not want to vote on all bills proposed to the parliament. I do not want to spend the time informing myself as to the merits and demerits of each piece of legislation>>

That's an excellent point, David, but it can be easily solved by a system of proxies. If you are not inclined to vote yourself, then hand over this right (temporarily for a specific vote, for a period of time, or indefinitely, as you wish) to someone you trust - it could be your wife, or a friend who is more interested in politics, or someone who's wisdom you appreciate; and if you don't know or trust anybody better, you can always fall back on your current favourite senator, so for those who want no change, things can remain as they are.

Overall the idea is good, but my concern is about those who do not have or use the internet - surely they cannot be left out, so there should also be other ways to vote, by phone and by visiting a physical location.

<<Or if it wasn’t, we’d very likely get a bias in the number of voters towards those with strong vested interests>>

Which is exactly as it should be - suppose parliament proposed to ear-mark all Jews, then I see nothing wrong with a higher turnout among Jews, who would have an extreme vested interest relative to others who don't really care.

<<but I can’t imagine it would be better for the country or our collective future>>

A "country" and a "collective" are inanimate objects - nothing whatsoever can cause them pain whereas individual people can be hurt very much by legislation. Therefore, leave it to those who are liable to be hurt and should they not care about their inanimate creations, then it would be an indicator that those creations are probably not worth caring for!

Why not simply get rid of the senate?

<<Why not simply get rid of the senate?>>

Because then you are left even more than now at the mercy of whoever is in power in parliament, even more helpless than now against whatever evil decrees they want to make.

now at the mercy of whoever is in power in parliament, helpless now against whatever evil decrees they want to make.

Are you on drugs? And who will ensure the website you visit will be 100% secure? Microsoft perhaps? Or the creators of those infernal voting machines the yanks use that have been shown to be corruptible a thousand times over!

Anything that involves a computer program to this day is not trust worthy, I don't care who programmed it!

But then again we put our trust in models to tell us the climate and form policies on the crap data that comes out of them, so I guess anythings possible in this day and age, what a joke!

What do these comments really mean.

"Why not simply get rid of the senate?" SM

"Just get rid of the senate." Belly

Is it all about democracy? No, its all about get rid of your political enemies, muzzle those contrary voices and have us all singing from the same 'song sheet'. Here in unison we have the conservative right as espoused by SM and my friend from the conservative left Belly singing like two song birds. "Get rid of the Senate la la la." Don't be fooled, what they are really on about is get rid of our political opponents, The Greens, get rid of any dissenting voices, any political opposition. Then we can 'enjoy' a truly dictatorial conservative state.