Members of parliament are elected as individuals.
That they belong to a political party is incidental and is only one
factor that you should apply when deciding how to vote.

There could be matters of principle as the reason to leave a party.
That would probably make him a more honest member.

If you want to elect parties - fine, but do so, change the electoral system so that one votes for a party-list. The regional system is dead anyway when most voters live in big cities: it makes no sense that one voter has more influencing power because they happened to rent a unit on one side of the street while another has no power at all because they rented on the other side of the street where is a "safe seat".

A party-list with proportional representation is far more fair than the way it is now.

Fairer still, is to have citizens vote on the actual issues rather than on the people that are supposed to serve those issues.

As I said in my last post, as a matter of principle, elected reps should not be able to change parties.

But there is a bigger principle that could override this. If they were to change to a party that is clearly a whole lot better, then it would arguably be for the good of the constituency and the country.

So if any sitting Lib, Lab, Katter, Green, Family First or independent member wanted to jump across to the Stable Population Party, then I’d be all for it!!

http://www.populationparty.org.au/

As I have said for many years now, our democratic rights are gone once we exit the polling booth.

To answer the question, no, they should not be allowed to jump ship.

They should resign and whoever received the nect highest votes, shoud replace them, as aftervall, that's what the electorate wanted.

Rectub, I totally agree that an mp should resign and the the next politician with the highest vote in the electorate of the resigning mp should replace him. In using that system it might make a political party more responsible and adhere to the wishes of the people and not the parties policies which harm the people.

Anything is worth a look at and implementation from the system we now have.

It might just force the politicians to act for and serve the wishes of the people in their electorates.

You're a brave, or foolish man david f.

To start with few politicians even try to show us the contents of their conscience, & there is nothing like enough information available for us to know that of each candidate.

Secondly, without the party analysis of many issues, few MP would understand many of the subjects sufficiently to know how to vote. In fact many of them would have trouble deciding how to vote, if asked, which way was up.

Thirdly unfortunately, if many MPs voted from conscience, they would be voting from a black hole. This would definitely be the case if we could but see into the conscience of the Greens. They are very careful not to let anyone see what a nest of vipers reside in there. The few glimpses of what does escape from their consciences occasionally are very frightening indeed.