Federal election a charade

Congratulations to Member for McMillan Russell Broadbent on his well deserved victory in the federal election.

He represents us very well indeed and I hope he shall for a long time to come.

Unfortunately, the election overall was very disappointing and a bit of a charade. We are absolutely no better off than before the election and all it has really achieved was to waste taxpayers’ money and resources.

The senate problem remains, some new faces, perhaps but they really are a very highly paid and overfunded group of self interested people, who contribute very little to our nation’s interest It is high time that the senate is abolished.

It has proved far too ineffective for far too long. There is absolutely no reason why it should prevail.

We have an opposition in the house of representatives and their main job should be the nation’s watchdog in the house instead of being a group of blamers and ineffectual snivellers. Opposition of whatever party should lift their game and properly protect our interests.

There are three other areas which need to be urgently addressed.

First, the period of each parliament: it should be a fixed term of four years with an election on a fixed date.

Compulsory voting can lead to the donkey vote, giving a misleading result and it also means some people may simply have their names crossed of the roll.

It is time we abandoned this undemocratic practice.

Likewise it is far overdue for us to continue to allow parliamentarians to take advantage of the outdated ‘parliamentary privilege’.

Finally, it would cut several millions from the enormous and obscene costs of holding an election, if the immediate introduction of electronic voting was implemented. Richard Pitt Warragul