Victoria, NSW & Qld could out vote the other states if based upon population. Needs to be prevented.
Why?
What pronciple applies here that says democracy should be suspended for certain geographic subdivisions (ie states), but should not be suspended within those geographic subdivisions?
The infamous Joh government in Queensland was sustained by such intra-state suspension of democracy to give rural people greater power than urbanites, and this is generally viewed as a bad thing.
Why is it unacceptable for a handful of peanut farmers in Kingaroy to override millions of Brisbanites; But acceptable for a handful of Tasmanians to have the same Senate power as millions of Victorians?
The City of Brisbane (just the local government area) has nearly three times the population of the state of Tasmania. Yet Brisbane has to share her senators with the rest of the state of Queensland. Why? Why should Brisbane get less representation in the Senate than Tasmania? It seems to be purely a matter of semantics; We call this little piece of geography a "state", so it gets seven senators; That piece we call a "Local Government Area", so it gets to share Senate representation with 76 other LGAs, giving it one eleventh of a senator.
Are Tasmanians really so much smarter than New South Welshmen that they deserve fifteen times the influence in the Senate? Or are states always so
politically uniform that they should be treated as though they were individual persons? Do rural Tasmanians share so much more in common with Hobartians than they do with rural Victorians, (who always agree with Melbournites), such that it makes sense to treat states as though they were voters?
The whole point of democracy is to prevent a minority from wielding excessive power. A majority of citizens should be able to overrule the desires of a tiny minority of their peers. That's what democracy IS.
And yet, when countries have federal structures, all of a sudden we are expected to treat states as though they are equal individuals, despite massive disparities in population. And nobody seems to question why.
We should declare each LGA in Queensland to be its own state. But that still would be unfair, as Brisbane contains far more people than Cairns or Townsville. So maybe each suburb in Brisbane should be a state. But still, there would be inequity. Maybe each household? No, some households are much bigger than others. It seems that the only fair political subdivision is the individual voter.
Lets give each voter equal power to elect senators, and stop pretending that by moving to Hobart, an Australian becomes eleven times as important as he was when he lived in Mount Isa, and fifteen times as important as he was when he lived in Gosford.
