Sacha Blumen notes that there have been suggestions that the NSW Labor Party dissolve the Legislative Council which is the upper house in the NSW Parliament.
The Westminster parliamentary system combines the executive and legislative in the lower house. In some parliamentary systems, such as Queensland's and New Zealand's the parliament is unicameral - only has one house. Most however are bicameral and operate with an Assembly (lower house) and Council (upper house).
The Washington System modeled its Congress on the Westminster system minus the executive being in the legislative. However it saw the upper house as being of federal character and representing the states rather than the House which was national in character and represented the people.
At the state level in Australia there isn't so much of that form of split representation. It was originally a compromise between Australian republicans and monarchists; it was originally intended that the upper house would be titled in the same manner as the House of Lords. Dan Deniehy's bunyip aristocracy speech comes from pillorising that constitutional plan.
However, in a Westminster system and the Australian mechanism of block voting and party discipline which Labor has perfected, it is important that there be something to counter executive power. Unlike Washington, in Westminster the executive has complete control of the legislature and money bills. Which is a heady combination for any executive seeking to expand its power and they all do at all times.
It is important that some other body act as a check on the executive. In the Australian forms of Westminster this means checks on the lower house. Currently an upper house is but one mechanism to achieve that.
Queensland suicide squadded their upper house when the Governor was overseas and a politically compliant Lieutenant Governor was instituted. I don't see how it could be done in NSW. Either way it would be bad policy and only lead to poorer governance than exists now.
A sketch of a new Queensland constitution. The main change is the revival of the Legislative Council (Upper House) as a jury selected by lot from the population at large. The constitution is divided into two elements, a static constitution changeable only by popular referendum, and a dynamic constitution changeable by a supermajority of both houses of parliament.
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cam : Nice: Much simpler than mine. It also plugs a needed hole in the Qld system by making parliament bicameral. This is interesting for the Council;
Mixing political specialists, with non-political specialists (presumably of good public character) and sortitionists.
cam
adam : My reasoning there: Although a pure sortitionist chamber has its appeal, I added this because of the Legislative Council\'s role as an upper house. The partisan members exist to defend the policies of the government in the upper house; they may well appoint a Leader of the Government in the Legislative Council.
The non-partisan members are as you say intended to be the great and good from the community. The government could use it to eg appoint a representatives of the indigenous community. It could also be a training ground for Governors.
I still intend the sortitioned element to completely dominate the voting; you may note the worst ratio is 20:3:3.
I think this constitution is mainly shorter because of the elision of a Bill of Rights. I had originally started on a federal constitution. It may have been longer as the dynamic section was intended to bar the feds from domains left to the states, like policing and education.
cam : It is probably informative: that independently, we both made one house in a bicameral parliament dominated by sortition, yet we both put specialists in there, with the intent of a specialist leading that body.
cam
adam : Expertise: Sortition without experts is a talkback radio audience, or the Athenian democracy, or a mob. It leaves your government wide open to being kneecapped by unintuitive results.
cam : I disagree with that: People are wiser than the media makes out when it segments markets. Another purpose for sortition is to pull out the hobbyist and other non-practicing specialists who the public process would otherwise disqualify. The citizen commenteriat fits that description.
cam
adam : Well: ... the citizen commentariat are more or less self-educated experts. The thing is people have a whole set of political folk-beliefs, like the worth of protectionism, etc, but there are unintuitive results out there, which experts are aware of, that make experts reluctant to chase these solutions. All expert domains, eg medicine, have these problems, which non-specialists aren\'t aware of, because they don\'t have time.
Evidence from modern experience with sortition is that citizen juries go through a similar education process when they have time to digest the results, but without the same debts to faction or worries about getting re-elected; just a concern about being able to go back to their day to day lives having improved matters in the common weal.
Without the input of experts - not leadership, but access to the advice therof - you risk rash and damaging populist action.
cam : by leadership i dont mean discipline: IIRC the albertan sortitionists went through six weekends of training and education on the issues. This would be a good area for the APH library to have a wider role.
Cam
adam : That\'s the sort of thing: ... I was imagining.
