Prime Minister Harper says Canadians in Australia have Senate envy – wanting one like theirs.
It works the other way too, and with good reason.
This is political columnist Mike Steketee from The Australian newspaper some years ago:
“The Senate never fulfilled its intended purpose as a states house and yet to this day Tasmania, with 307,000 voters, has as many senators – that is, 12 – as NSW, with about 3.7 million voters…. [A] vote for the Senate in Tasmania is worth more than 10 times that in NSW, putting a dent in the frequent boast that Federation gave us the most democratic system in the world.”
Elected upper houses are always rich, rural and reactionary by design. Just because you let people vote for 'em doesn't make them democratic
