I've hesitated to post this because it's not fully developed, to say the least, but I may as well open it up to discussion.
It's a suggestion of a change to how we select our Members of Parliament that, although quite different, surprisingly appears to require only minor constitutional change and is still rightly called a modified-Westminster system.
I've fleshed out the idea with some suggested numbers (candidate numbers, timelines, etc.) and a few explanations. The numbers don't matter that much - there can be variations - they're there simply to show how the new mechanisms could work as a whole.
You'll note that I'm obviously not a constitutional lawyer ... but that may be a good thing.
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A New Electoral System?
Politicians. Most of us hate most of them. So why not do something about it? Since politicians aren't serving us, there's little harm, and possibly much to gain, in replacing the method by which we choose them. Here's an idea for a major change to our Parliament.
Firstly, leave the Senate mostly as is. There may or may not be valid arguments about preference sharing (in our "instant run-off" vote tallying system), but that's a minor point. The Senate would: become the house of "professional" politicians; remain a house of review; remain the "States' House"; and, uphold standards (not that our Senators have been doing much of that in recent times). Forbid the Senate from providing ministers to leave them completely unfettered to hold hearings and enquiries - something they do now but need to do more often, and better, IMHO.
For the House of Representatives, have something like the following:
- Four-year fixed-term elections.
- One year before the election, in each seat, randomly select a "jury" of, say, 25 suitable people - e.g. 21 years or older, no outstanding convictions, citizen for at least 10 years.
- Over the following months, each jury of 25 candidates gets together (e.g. some weekend retreats, meetings, mixers, debates, etc.), where the members get to know one another and rank each other in order of preference until there are, say, 5 survivors - the details of how don't matter at this stage only that they self-select the "best" five for the job of representing the electorate.
- The 5 surviving jurors and the current seat incumbent (providing he/she has served no more than two preceding terms and is a volunteer to stand again) form a list of 6 (max.) candidates for that seat at the next election.
- Candidates receive briefings from government departments (e.g. presentations in lecture halls) in order to form their views and would have access to some parliamentary resources (to a modest degree) to further their fact finding and fine-tune their platform.
- Each candidate gets a set advertising budget, e.g. a CV in "glossy brochure" form (fact-checked before publication), a page (or micro-site) on an election web site, some town hall debates, a few radio spots and a YouTube video (or similar).
- Hold the election a few months before the projected end of term.
- Electees form an incoming Parliament (along with whomever remains incumbent) and discuss selections for government and parliamentary roles (the outgoing government acts in a caretaker role as is the convention now).
- Electees have until their term commences to divest all financial instruments, property investments (save one main residence) and any commercial or foreign affiliations (they will be compensated for reasonable losses).
- Electees take their places in Parliament and represent their constituents. (Well, d'uh, but I say it for completeness).
- No political parties, no party whips, and no outside affiliations permitted.
- All electoral activities are state-funded - there would be no such thing as a party or political donation, and in fact, any approach along such lines would be treated as an attempt to bribe an official.
- No gifts or hospitality permitted at all - do away with the gift register and its threshhold of reporting - all gifts/hospitality are 'attempts to influence' and should be treated as such.
- Any attempt to influence jury selection, candidate selection or electoral processes would be treated in a similar way to jury tampering, election fraud, coercion or bribery, and judged harshly.
By way of explanation, it was no accident that I use the term "jury" to describe the randomly selected group as I want not only to convey how selection would work but also to reinforce that this mechanism has been with us for centuries and works very well. "Sortition" (you can look up that term, if you want) is the process used in most, if not all, common law countries for jury selection and I doubt this will change.
In Australia, we have compulsory voting and, generally, people like to vote. I suggest in this system restraining sortition to candidate selection, rather than directly selecting office-bearers as the ancient Greeks did. Why? Because it's not the election that is the problem; it's the candidates and everything that goes with them in our current system - political parties, fundraisers, donations, lobbying, private forums, vested interests, lucrative jobs for ex-politicians, branch stacking, mouthpiece think-tanks, poor representation of constituents (which often manifests as utter disdain for the electorate-at-large) and, dare I say it, occasional episodes of corruption.
Now for a few more explanations ...
None in the House of Reps need to be a professional politician - it's supposed to be a government
of the people
for the people. They don't need to be a lawyer - there are a plethora of lawyers in government departments and an entire section (the Office of Parliamentary Counsel) that drafts legislation with all the necessary legalese. They simply have to know their constituents and represent their views in guiding the public service to set and enact policy. And that guidance rarely comes from MPs (well, not good gudiance) - guidance comes from expert policy sections of the government departments, from committees, enquiries, hearings, public submissions and so on.
Banning parties doesn't mean there won't be cliques or power groups that arise - I'm sure that would still happen - but no political parties means that the "worst of the worst" would be gone (e.g. party whips ordering backbenchers, under threat of disendorsement, which way to vote regardless of the prevailing view in their electorate or the backbenchers' own conclusions) and there'd be no political donations (with the ever-present suggestion, if not reality, that donors expect a return on their investment).
One could argue that, with this kind of House of Reps, we would need a more professional ministerial team. Having thought about that at length I don't think that's necesary. I think a healthy cross-section of experience and viewpoints is made available to the Parliament through the mechansim of initially selecting a large number of jurors and selection of the candidates to stand at the election. Certainly, there are quite a number of "ordinary" people in our current Parliament (not necessarily a bad thing) and many of our current ministers are not experts - it's not their job to be the expert. Whereas clear separation of the executive from the legislature in a USA-style system has a certain appeal, the Westminster approach (ministers in parliament) provides well enough for accountability (IMHO), protects ministerial speech as much as for any other parliamentarian and permits questioning of ministers under parliamentary privilege without having to convene an enquiry. Ultimately, this is a debate separate to, but interlinked with, any change in parliamentary candidate selection method. I have some ideas on how Government could be formed within this form of parliament that I will expand on later.
As the Governor General (and/or Monarchy) is a titular role, it seems purely cosmetic (and a distraction) to change that arrangement. But, change it if a majority so desires.
From my layman's point of view, I think it closer to the optimum to retain voting and our bicameral system, and change how we select candidates. I can't presently think of a method by which we could remove inherent bias and potential for corruption in candidate selection without randomising and protecting that process. Every other method I can think of requires foreknowledge of candidates and is therefore open to gaming or undue influence.
On the other hand, once candidate juries are selected they could be prone to attempts to influence, but there we can provide them legal protection to a similar degree as court juries - not perfect but far better than anything we currently have, IMHO. The down-selection from, say, 25 to 5 is there to cater for those who, after random selection, really can't do the job, as judged by a jury of their peers (in a similar way to self-selection of a jury foreman) and promote those who impress that jury with their ability. Though, of course, it is by no means certain, one hopes that candidates who have suspect affiliations or are too ideological will become known within the jury and not selected to the group of 5.
... continued below due to character limit ...