Here's a more stable and balanced way to improve the Australian Senate

The Australian Parliament is in need of reform. But the options in the Prime Minister's discussion paper on resolving deadlocks between the two houses of parliament are not the way to achieve that reform. They would undermine the important role of the Senate.

The reform debate has focused on claims that the Senate is obstructionist and unrepresentative. Those claims just don't stand up. Despite the government's difficulty getting a number of high-profile bills through the Senate, the fact remains that the Senate has passed more than 95 per cent of the government's bills since the last election.

The Senate gives a voice to the people of the smaller states, helping to balance their relative lack of representation in the House of Representatives. The system of proportional representation used to elect the Senate also accurately reflects people's votes, giving those who vote for independents and minor parties a voice. They have great difficulty getting that voice through the House of Representatives.

The reason the government does not control the Senate is because it hasn't managed to get the majority of votes in Senate elections.

But I do think we can improve the constitutional arrangements defining our parliament without damaging the Senate. The aim of reform should be to improve the processes and accountability of parliament, not to force the passage of all government legislation.

The Prime Minister's discussion paper offers two options for reform - a joint sitting without an election and a joint sitting following an ordinary election.

The first provides that if a bill is rejected twice by the Senate, the government could then call a joint sitting of both houses to decide on the bill without first calling an election. It is clearly unacceptable.

Such a system would effectively end the Senate's power to reject objectionable legislation as governments by definition control the larger House of Representatives. Without an election, controversial legislation would generally be easily passed through a joint sitting using those numbers.

Under this option the Senate would join the House as a rubber stamp to the legislative agenda of the executive.

The second option is based on a proposal by former commonwealth attorney-general Michael Lavarch. The major difference is that Lavarch proposed that it be combined with fixed four-year terms for both the House and the Senate. The discussion paper does not canvass fixed-term elections.

The Lavarch-like option is better. It proposes that legislation could be put to a joint sitting after it is rejected twice by the Senate, an election is held and the legislation is rejected by the Senate one more time after the election. It has the virtue of putting the issues to the people. But it would again change the balance of power between the executive and the parliament.

I propose a system which would have fixed three-year terms for the House of Representatives, with half-Senate elections every election.

A government could hold a joint sitting after a fixed-term election to vote on legislation which had (1) originally been detailed in the government's election manifesto, (2) subsequently been introduced to parliament within the first year of the government's three-year term, (3) been rejected twice under the present requirements for a double-dissolution trigger, and (4) been put to the people again at the next election.

My proposal has a number of advantages.

It extends the average length of time between elections. Over my 28 years in the Senate there have been elections approximately every 2 1/2 years. A guaranteed three-year term would give governments more time to implement their program, yet continue to allow senators to be elected for six-year terms. It would also remove some of the uncertainty surrounding the timing of elections.

It also introduces a measure of stability by having senators who are not too closely focused on the short-term imperatives of their re-election. It allows a broader perspective on issues in the house of review, rather than a focus on the more immediate parliamentary cycle.

The focus of most comment in the lead-up to the discussion paper has been on the Senate as a problem. But the real problem is that the present system does not provide a predictable system for resolving deadlocks. Deadlocks are a problem caused not by the Senate itself, but by irreconcilable differences between the House of Representatives and the Senate, and more particularly between the major political parties.

There is an opportunity to reform the Australian Parliament but that reform needs to be balanced. My reform option provides minimal changes to our parliamentary system, yet offers governments a workable system by which deadlocks can be resolved.