Another looming constitutional problem for the nation is the long-term impact on our democracy of the provisions of section 24 of the Constitution, which provides that the House of Representatives will always be as nearly as possible twice the size of the Senate.
This nexus means that every time the House of Representatives gets new members because of natural growth in the population, the Senate will also grow in numbers. As it does so, the number of votes needed to secure a quota for representation will fall.
The result will be that the balance of power will increasingly fall to ever smaller and more unrepresentative minority and single-issue parties, parties and individuals who will be able to shape national policy powerfully while representing no more than the fringe of national thinking.
This is not a recipe for good government and it is not a good recipe for improving the standing of the political system generally.
The Senate does not operate now in the way the founders of the constitution imagined it would, that is as a body representing the states. Senators vote along party lines, not as representatives of Victoria or Queensland or Western Australia.
We either have to break the constitutional nexus between the two houses, or if that is impossible, move away from elections at large—by establishing regional electorates for Senators within the state, a change that would not require change to the constitution. The aim has to be to make the election of Senators as representative as possible; where a clear majority is needed to secure election.
Senators who secure a primary vote of something like 5 per cent or less, and who wait to be topped up in the distribution, are kidding themselves and us with it.