Do men and women both desire sex just as much?

Often lamented in our modern society is the ongoing collapse of the standard family unit. The notion of a father, mother and two, three, four or more kids living harmoniously under one roof, so essential to the '50s era America dream, is becoming just as elusive as its name suggests - a dream.

We don't have to rely on anecdotal evidence to prove this, just a quick look at the statistics will do. In 1900 the average Australian household contained 4.5 people. By 1960 that number had declined to 3.5, and is now down past 2.5 today, and still dropping.

There are two predominate causes of this, firstly, smaller family sizes. Australia's average fertility rate (the number of babies born per woman) has fallen from a high of 3.5 in 1960 to around 1.9 now. Even that figure has only crept up in recent years due to higher birth rates among newly arrived immigrants.

The second cause however, is how much the divorce rate has skyrocketed in recent years. 43% of marriages in Australia now end in divorce. As high as this figure is, in many countries the rate is even higher, including 53% in the US, 55% in France, 61% in Spain and, apparently, 71% in Belgium. Historically, the divorce rate was virtually zero up until the 1940s, then shot up from the '70s onwards. This had contributed to over 20% of households in Australia now being 'single-person' households, quite a waste given that figure comes out to over 2 million extra inhabited houses. That's two million extra fridges running all the time, two million extra dishwashers, washing machines and microwaves, probably well over two million TV's, and so on. All needlessly draining electricity from our power grid, not to mention the added costs of manufacturing and importing them all. The economic costs of such a spiraling divorce rate are no doubt enormous.

But anyway, why has this change occurred?

First off, we should acknowledge the nature of marriage as a historical institution. Up until well into the 20th century most marriages were, lets not sugarcoat it, tantamount to a form of slavery. Women served as the child-rearers and servants of their husbands. Women had few political rights, rarely were financially independent, and were expected to remain loyal to their husbands and cover up their bodies in public. European women in 1900 were in many ways similar to Middle Eastern women today.

Evidence backing up this comparison also comes in the form of divorce rates in many Islamic countries shooting up in recent years. The divorce rate is now 14% in Iran, and 17% in Egypt. Concurrently, women were finally granted the right to vote in Kuwait in 2006, and plans are now afoot to allow women to legally drive in Saudi Arabia from 2015 onward. Conservative attitudes to women are quickly dying out worldwide, although 'quickly' on the scale of the entire world still means this is happening over a period of several generations.

So what does this have to do with sexual desire? Well looking at British figures when it comes to the divorce rate -

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/jan/28/divorce-rates-marriage-ons

We can see that 65% of divorces are initiated by women rather than men. Of those, over 50% cite 'behavior' as the main reason.

When I first saw these figures a while ago, I was quite surprised. Surely men, given they are still most often the income-earners in any partnership, would be more likely to divorce their wives then the other way round? In the vast majority of divorce cases it is the women who receive custody of the children and require alimony payments from their former partners. Given that this isn't the case, then from these figures we can come to the conclusion that women are getting sick of being 'wives' much more often and more quickly than men are getting sick of being 'husbands'. Even given their financial disadvantage, far more women then men are willing to divorce their partners and once more contend with single-hood.

So why is this?

Well here we come to today's topic.

While it is a hotly debated one, liable to make tempers flare and maybe even provoke accusations of sexism, one has to end up confronting the question of what role sexual desire plays in relationships. The old stereotype is, of course, that men overwhelmingly desire sex more than women. Personally I think this is very likely true. In the vast majority of cases, I don't think its even close.

We shall return to this in a moment however, for even if it isn't true there are a number of other statistics we can look at to discern whether an imbalance in sexual desire is a key factor in destabilizing so many relationships.

First off, there's people's preference when it comes to how they best achieve sexual satisfaction, most commonly involving orgasms. You'd think sex would easily triumph over all other methods, but according to a recent survey, a whopping 41% of women say they actually prefer masturbation over sex -

http://www.cosmopolitan.com/celebrity/news/female-masturbation-infographic

Despite spending quite a while searching online, I couldn't find a comparable figure for men. Since I'd be willing to bet it is nowhere near that high I'll submit a figure of 10%, and even that's probably being generous. If anybody gets ahold of any better figures I'd be happy to use them. In essence, this means that even if women desire sex just as much as men, far more often they are willing to go and take care of business at home, by themselves. This would obviously cause a corresponding lack of desire for actual, physical contact with other people.

A second factor to be taken into account, and in which there also seems to be a significant difference, is the frequency of homosexual behavior when it comes to men and women. Surveys differ, but according to this article -

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sax-sex/201004/why-are-so-many-girls-lesbian-or-bisexual

Around 15% of women now identify as lesbian or bisexual, compared to just 5% of men who identify as being gay. Many other surveys back up this reality. While I struggle to think of a scientific reason for this discrepancy, it very much seems to exist, and so is one we shouldn't just ignore.

A third figure we could throw into the mix is the uneven ratio of men to women in our society. In many third world countries this ratio is seriously skewed in favour of males due to the frequent use of sex-selective abortion. By mid-century China could have somewhere in the vicinity of 100 million more men than women, and India around 50 million. In Australia the overall gender ratio is slightly in favour of women, but this is largely due to women's longer life expectancy. While they may make up 54% of the population over 65, they make up only 49% of the population under 55.

So in determining how great a gender-based imbalance in sexual desire there may be in our society, before we even start talking about people's inherent desires, we get the following formula -

Portion of women who prefer sex to masturbation (59%) X portion who are heterosexual (85%) X portion of the population (under age 55 - 49%) = 0.246

We then divide this by the respective figures for men -

Portion of men who prefer sex to masturbation (90%) X portion who are heterosexual (95%) X portion of the population (under age 55 - 51%) = 0.436

0.246/0.436 = 0.56

So to summarize, even if we assumed that women are just as virile as men, their overall demand for heterosexual, physical contact comes out at just 56% that of men.

This is before we even get into the actual figures concerning sexual desire. In a 2007 national British survey, 95% of men and 71% of women reported masturbating at some point in their lives. Probably more useful however are the results as to who had masturbated within a recent time-frame, implying a greater frequency. 53% of men and just 18% of women reported masturbating in the four weeks before the survey. Another study carried out by the university of Chicago in the US found that 61% of men and just 38% of women admitted to masturbating in the past year.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masturbation#Frequency.2C_age.2C_and_sex
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/all-about-sex/200903/how-common-is-masturbation-really

There are other surveys we could look at, but the overall trend is that men tend to masturbate at least twice as often as women. Even this estimate is probably conservative. If we plug such a result back into our earlier formula, we get this.

Women - 0.59X0.85X0.49X0.5 = 0.123
Men - 0.9X0.95X0.51X1 = 0.436

0.123X0.436 = 0.28

So ultimately, if we accept the accuracy of all these statistics, women's overall desire to be sexually intimate with men in our society is just 28% that of men's respective desire to be intimate with women. That's a ratio of nearly 4:1.

I've gotta say, this would seem to explain a lot. Is it any wonder then, that looking back at the above divorce statistics, women cited 'adultery' as a reason for breaking up with partner almost twice as often as men did? Is it any wonder that the vast majority, somewhere in the vicinity of 99%, of all prostitution is carried out with men as the clients? Is it any wonder that men's sexual desire is discussed and focused on in our society to a much greater extent than women's?

Since this is such a hot-button issue, I shall say no more on it. I urge people to make of this analysis what you will. If you can find better figures, then feel free to come to your own conclusions, or even send them to me and I might update this post.

Peace out

Why Rolling Stone's '500 Greatest Songs of All Time' list is a load of bullsh*t

In my usual, daily rummaging about on the internet, I recently came across a list with an ambitious title - 'Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time'.

 The 2010 version, which I looked at, can be found here -

http://www.last.fm/user/RadioKaKa/journal/2013/05/10/5tkd33_rolling_stone's_500_greatest_songs_of_all_time_(2010_edition)

Intrigued, I perused the list at length, even plugging a few of the more obscure songs into Youtube to have a listen. Within a short period of time however, I'd come to a firm conclusion.

Much of the list is just complete and utter bullsh*t.

I mean really, I struggle to find something on the list I have no issue with. So many great (not to mention wildly successful) bands are omitted that its just not funny. Even when it comes to the bands they have included, the list has a tendency to over-emphasize them, giving them even more spots then they deserve, and even those spots are often given to less popular and well, less-than-spectacular, songs.

The most common band on the list is, and I don't dispute this, the Beatles. But even here they seem to have gone a bit far. No fewer than 23 Beatles songs are on the list. Certainly songs like 'Hey Jude', 'Let It Be' and 'Come Together' deserve high spots, but about half the songs are not as well known. Not everything the Beatles did was so fantastic. I hadn't even heard of songs like 'Norwegian Wood' or 'I Saw Her Standing There', and after having a listen on Youtube, I'm not surprised, they're pretty ordinary, especially compared to some of the Beatles' later works.

Many tracks from less popular albums like 'A Hard Day's Night' and 'Help!' are included rather than songs from 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heats Club Band', a much more popular and seminal album. Frustratingly, Sgt. Pepper's later topped Rolling Stone's list of the '500 Greatest Albums of All Time', which begs the question, well then why weren't more songs from it included? Where the hell is 'Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds'? Overall I'd have put maybe ten or twelve Beatles songs on the list rather than 23, and definitely changed and re-ordered some of the remaining ones.

The list focuses heavily on earlier acts. To some extent this is understandable. I appreciate Rolling Stone giving extra points for originality and innovation, which earlier bands are going to have in spades. Still, they might have overdone it a bit. Almost 40% of the songs are from the 1960s, and another 26% from the '70s. Bizarrely, the '50s somehow get more songs included than the '80s. Seriously, aside perhaps from playing a few nostalgic Elvis tracks, who stills listens to music from the '50s? Did anyone even listen at the time? Weren't we too busy witch-hunting Commies?

After the Beatles, the next most common acts are The Rolling Stones (who would have thought?), Bob Dylan and Elvis Presley. Now of course these giants of music are deserving of high praise (I don't disagree for instance with the choice of #1 song - 'Like A Rolling Stone' by Bob Dylan) but such older acts are way more prominent than they should be. Now I'd like to make it clear that I'm not some punk kid who only thinks music was invented after the year 2000, nor however, am I a golden oldie who still listens to music from the '50s. Hell the Beatles are just about the only act from the '60s I still listen to.

My point is, there is an overall way of judging how successful some of these older artists were. Elvis of course was the second biggest act in the history of music in terms of album sales, after the Beatles. Bob Dylan however wasn't even close. The Beatles and Elvis come first and second respectively, but Bob Dylan is far from third. In fact, he tops out at number #46.

Seriously, he's behind Taylor Swift and the Backstreet Boys.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_music_artists

NOT of course, that I'm saying Taylor Swift is anywhere near as talented as Bob Dylan, but the truth of the matter is that even in his day Bob Dylan was not one of the world's biggest acts. He's beaten by a number of others. Aside from 'Like A Rolling Stone' and 'The Times They Are a-Changin' I'm not sure how many of his 13 current positions on the list he really deserves. They may have sounded good at the time, but many of them sound very dated now. Sure we can have a few sentimental shouts outs to these pioneers of modern music, but ultimately the list is of the 500 'greatest' songs of all time. If they sound dated, that has to detract from their value somewhat, as many songs from the '50s and '60s now do.

Wikipedia's list includes every music act to ever sell more than 75 million albums. 91 acts are listed in total. Going down the list, Michael Jackson and Madonna place 3rd and 4th. But looking at Rolling Stone's list they receive only two spots and one spot respectively, I think you'd have to give both of them a few more. Rounding out the Top Five is Led Zeppelin, who receive a reasonable six spots (Stairway to Heaven, Whole Lotta Love, Kashmir etc, though I wonder what happened to the 'Immigrant Song'?

Going down the list, my spirits are not lifted. Yes a few spots are given to bands like Elton John, AC/DC and Queen, but most of the bands are simply not very interesting. You can't even use the excuse that the bands were successful in terms of sheer album sales, as a great number were no more than moderately successful. Included are 'The Clash' a punk band from the '60s that doesn't even make Wikipedia's list, nor does 'The Ronettes', a '60s girls group, or 'Prince and the Revolution' an obscure '80s band that was only active for a few years.

Getting to the bottom of the list of 500 songs, what had previously been disappointing becomes truly cringe-worthy. Justin Timberlake even gets a song (seriously, Justin f*cking Timberlake!) along with acts such as Kelly Clarkson, Kanye West and The Pixies.

However, there is a flipside to all this bullsh*t. There are plenty of songs at the bottom I have no problems kicking off the list.

So, lets being shall we?

The single greatest flaw in the list, the most stupidly insulting part of this whole farce, and the first thing I checked when I came across it, and was horrified to discover, is the almost complete absence of progressive Rock. There's no Genesis, no Jethro Tull, no King Crimson or Emerson, Lake and Palmer, no Gentle Giant. The only saving grace is the inclusion of three songs by Pink Floyd, but this is such a pitiful number out of 500 that it simply has to be corrected.

First off, we need to add some Genesis.

In its own right, Genesis is one of the top 25 most successful music acts of all time (way ahead of our old friend Bob Dylan, and active only a few years later than him) selling an estimated 130 million albums. Including the albums sold by its constituent members when they later went off on their solo careers, this number more than doubles. Phil Collins, a former Genesis member, himself sold 150 million more albums (far more than Paul McCartney, by comparison, when he went off on his own solo career). Other members like Peter Gabriel and Steve Hackett also had successful solo careers. If you combine these figures, and plug the total into the list of the most successful bands of all time (and I don't see why you shouldn't) Genesis and its individual members come out as at least the 6th most successful music group in history. It actually puts them ahead of Pink Floyd. To totally omit Genesis, or any of its constituent members, from a list of the 500 best songs of all time is just insulting.

So lets get cracking -

Land of Confusion (1986) by Geneis is a terrific song with an even more terrifying music video and, even more impressively, is actually about an interesting topic, in this case the Cold War -

I would then follow this up with 'Old Medley' (1993), a compilation of several of Genesis' earlier songs (its total length is over 19 minutes, but this isn't quite the longest on Rolling Stone's list. I do give them credit for including a number of longer songs, rather than sticking to the 3-4 minute tracks so common mostly because they can fit between radio add breaks) -

There are a number of other fantastic Genesis songs I'd like to insert into the list (pretty much the entirety of the album 'The Way We Walk: Volume Two' for instance) but lets not be greedy. 

Moving on to Phil Collins, who could forget this? - 

In The Air Tonight (1980)

Peter Gabriel too I would consider worthy of at least one song, and even that's being stingy. There are a number of possible options - 'Solsbury Hill', 'Red Rain', 'Come talk to Me', 'Here Comes the Flood', 'Kiss That Frog' or 'Big Time' just to name a few. In the end though I think this is the best choice - 

Sledgehammer (1986)

When it comes to Emerson, Lake and Palmer, its not hard to choose -

Fanfare For the Common Man (1977 - though based on a piece written in 1942)

Jethro Tull, again, has an obvious choice - 

Skating Away (on the Thin Ice of the New Day) (1974)

 

Steering away from the progressive rock genre, one should consider the works of Mike Oldfield, probably one of the most talented musicians of the 20th century. In his albums he typically plays every single instrument, recording them separately and then combining them all together into each track. There are a number of possible options, 'Sentinel' was a track made famous by its use in the film 'The Exorcist'. 'Far Above the Clouds' is another option. But in the end my preference would be 'The Bell' from the album 'Tubular Bells II' -

The Bell (1992)

Didn't recognize the voice of the 'Master of Ceremonies' from that track who introduces each instrument? Go look it up, I implore you.

Another grossly overlooked act in Rolling Stone's list is Billy Joel, an absolute legend of music and the 18th best selling music artist of all time. He receives only one song, 'Piano Man', which was his earliest hit. A number of other songs should be included. My first choice would be this - 

We Didn't Start the Fire (1989)

Other songs that could be included are 'Goodnight Saigon', 'Uptown Girl', 'River of Dreams', 'Leningrad' and 'Downeaster Alexa', among others. Billy Joel really is deserving of at least four or five spots on the list.

Anyway, those are just some of the more egregious problems I have with Rolling Stone's list. A number of other famous songs seem to be missing in action. What about 'Wonderwall' by Oasis? Or 'Summer of '69' by Bryan Adams? Bon Jovi is one of the top 40 acts of all time, and I think deserving of at least one song. 'Livin on a Prayer' or 'It's My Life' are both viable options. Several classic songs by '80s band 'Frankie Goes to Hollywood' could be included, such as 'Relax' or 'Two Tribes'. Honestly, if I was to bother doing a full review of Rolling Stone's list, I don't think more than half the songs on it would remain at the end. 

So to conclude, that is a brief summary of why Rolling Stone's list of the '500 Greatest Songs of All Time' is a load of bullsh*t.

How to fix Australia's electoral system

There are ultimately many different ways a democracy can function. In Australia we use a modification of the Westminster system, whereby the Executive Branch of government (headed by the Prime Minister and their Cabinet) is drawn directly from the legislature. This contrasts with the American system, where the Executive is headed by a completely separate President, and the Cabinet (composed of 'Secretaries' rather than 'Ministers') is appointed by the President, rather than being elected to and drawn from congress. The American President also fulfills both of the roles of 'Head of Government' and 'Head of State', roles filled in Australia by the Prime Minister and Governor-General respectively (although technically the reigning British monarch still remains Australia's Head of State, much to the chagrin of those of us with any common sense).

In short, there are many variations on what we can call a 'democracy'. Each has their own pros and cons. In the wake of the 2013 Australian Federal elections, where the results were at times startlingly strange (the election to the Senate of a candidate from the little-known 'Motoring Enthusiasts' Party from Victoria and the even more obscure 'Sports Enthusiasts' Party from WA being the most egregious examples) many have started to wonder whether the Australian electoral system is in need of some reforms. 

I think this is absolutely the case, here are my suggestions.

• Increase Senate candidacy fees

The current guidelines for forming a political party in Australia are pretty simple, and for the most part I have no desire to see them changed. To form one all you need is a $500 registration fee and the signatures of 500 people (who must of course be eligible voters listed on the electoral roll). These requirements are there as a modest barrier to prevent people forming any number of parties on a whim, or just for a joke (Britain for instance used to have a 'Monster Raving Loony' Party that was heavily inspired by Monty Python sketches).

In addition, if you want your party to actually run candidates than the fee for running for a seat in the Federal House of Representatives is currently $1000. This means that any party that wants to contest all 150 Australian lower house seats needs to scrounge $150,000 from somewhere. Typically only a handful of the larger minor parties, such as the Greens and Family First, can do this (it should also be noted that by winning more than 4% of the vote, on both lower house and Senate tickets, the candidate's party will then get its money back). This ensures that micro-parties only tend to be able to contest a limited number of seats. In the 2013 election over a thousand candidates ran nationwide, a record number, but the current system meant that no more than a dozen or so candidates ran in all but a handful of seats (the most was the division of Melbourne, containing Melbourne's CBD, which had 16 candidates). While increasing lower house candidacy fees might be necessary in future, at the moment the system is still workable.

The Senate however is a different matter, and the source of most of the problems that have many people complaining about the 'farce' Australia's electoral system has become. The fee to run as a candidate is double the lower house fee at $2000. For anyone out there who intends to reform Australia's democratic process this is the first area you probably want to look at. Since the Senate fee isn't all that much higher, and the corresponding ballot paper is distributed on a statewide basis rather than to individual electorates as is the case with the lower house, an impractically large number of candidates have been clogging up the ballot lately. This is particularly obvious in the larger states. In the 2013 election 97 different candidates were listed on the Victorian ballot and 110 on the New South Wales' ballot. The ballot was literally three-feet across. This is not practical, we simply can't have an electoral system where to go and vote properly you need to take the morning off.

The solution would seem to be simple, raise the fees. Instead of $2000, make it $5000, or even $10,000. Such fees may make it seem that the system is being unfair to minor parties, and to some extent this is true, but the case shouldn't really be that hard to argue. The argument should be framed as not trying to shut out minor parties, but just 'micro' parties. Remember of course that to run a candidate in every lower house seat nationwide requires fees totaling $150,000. If the fee for each Senate candidate is $10,000, then that translates into a nationwide cost of only $60,000, still considerably less than for the lower house overall.

Such extra fees could also serve as a small source of revenue. The 2007 and 2010 elections both cost about $160 million each to run. In 2013 there were over 500 Senate candidates nationwide. If they each paid $10,000 to run (though the idea of course is to decrease that number significantly) that would raise over $5 million, plus an extra $1 million and a bit from the lower house. Its not a very large number, but such fees do add up over time.

The result would be a more manageable political scene. The whole point of having a preferential voting system (and overall I think such a system is absolutely essential to any democracy) is to prevent the sort of monolithic, two-party duopoly that plagues many countries, notably the United States. The disadvantage the current system gives us is that instead of a two-party system, we have a hundred-party system.

A ten or fifteen-party system would be much more desirable, nor would it really reduce the diversity of our current political scene. Many micro parties seem basically redundant anyway. Do we really need a 'Rise Up Australia' Party and a 'Stable Population' Party alongside 'One Nation'? Couldn't we just arrange for all the bigots and xenophobes to gather in one party, rather than have multiple duplicates of them clogging up our Senate ballots? Do the 'Australian Christians' and 'Family First' really have to be separate parties? Why couldn't the 'Socialist Alliance', the 'Socialist Equality' Party and the 'Communist' Party all merge? Hell they might actually win upwards of one percent of the vote if they did. If the fee to run as a candidate was $10,000 or higher, then many such parties couldn't easily compete by themselves, and might be compelled to merge with similarly fringe political activists, simplifying the whole system. A greater degree of cooperation would be useful here.

• Voluntary preferential voting

This one should really be a no-brainer, and one wonders why on Earth it hasn't already been introduced by now. Currently, there are two ways of tackling the Senate ballot. You can either put a number ‘1’ in just one box ‘above the line’, or you can number every single box ‘below the line’. An above the line vote means that you’re not only voting for the party in question, but you’re allowing your vote to be passed down whatever preference route that party sees fit. i.e. if you voted for the Greens, eventually your vote will presumably end up with the Labor Party rather than the Liberals.

A ‘below the line’ vote means you’ve decided to order your preferences how you see fit. Given that in the 2013 election some States had ballots with around a hundred different candidates, only 2% of people now choose this option. This has led to the practice, undesirable to say the least, of minor parties swapping their preferences with other parties based not on their ideological similarities, but just on their size. i.e. minor left-wing parties will tend to preference minor far-right parties over the major parties. In this past election preferences from the Sex Party (a socially progressive party, basically the opposite of Family First) helped elect a candidate from the ‘Liberal Democrats’ in NSW. The Liberal Democrats are a far-right ‘libertarian’ party that is vehemently anti-taxation and anti-government. It is doubtful that most Sex Party voters, who would probably see themselves as overwhelmingly progressive, knew what they were getting themselves into.

So the solution is really quite simple, and wouldn't even require a change to the layout of the ballot. The ‘above the line’ option would remain unchanged, while as for the ‘below the line’ option voters should no longer have to fill out every box, but just as many as they see fit. You could write just one number, or five, or dutifully fill all of them out. So if you wanted to vote for the Sex Party, but also make sure your preferences didn't end up right-of-center, you could put Sex Party first, the Greens second, then Labor third, and that's it. Beyond that your vote would disappear off into the aether, rather than run the risk of it ending up with a party you didn't want to vote for in the first place. Simple yes?

• Make the Senate nationally proportionate

There are three main reasons why Australia has a second house of parliament. The first is for it to be a 'house of review'. Senators are elected to six year, rather than three/four year, terms. This serves the purpose of stabilizing our political system, meaning that even a large swing in the lower house against a sitting government may not translate into a new party also gaining control of the senate, and thus the entire parliament.

Secondly, it is the main arena in which minor parties can have a say. While minor parties and independents rarely hold the balance of power in the lower house, this is the norm in the Senate. It is also a way of combating gerrymandering, which can affect any parliament that is composed of representatives from individual electorates rather than through proportional representation. On many occasions a party can gain power with a slim majority of seats, and yet have received somewhat less than half the vote. Ideally this should not occur in the Senate.

This concern though, also ties into the third reason, which is that the Senate is also meant to be a 'state's house'. When the six Australian colonies federated in 1901 it was a necessary compromise that an equal number of senators were to represent each state. Herein lies a big problem. The Senate suffers from a distortion far greater than any caused by the electorate system of the lower house. Each of Australia's six States (not to mention it's territories) have different populations. New South Wales has over seven million people, while Tasmania has half a million. This means that a Tasmanian voter has roughly 15 times as much representation in the federal Senate as a NSW voter.

This system is unfair, obsolete, and ideally should be changed. Australia has been a unified country now for over a hundred years. There is no realistic prospect of its federation being dissolved (despite the hollow complaints of Western Australians whenever the Federal government tries to impose a new mining tax). Members of the Senate would instead be chosen based on a nationwide proportionate system.

This ultimately means that the voting system would not change a great deal. A quota would now be just over 1.3% of the national vote, rather than 14% or so of the vote in any of the six states (or in reality twice that at 2.6%, if Senators continued to serve 6 year terms). In the 2013 election the coalition was able to win 33 Senate Seats, Labor 25 and the Greens 10. Between them the three biggest parties were able to control 89% of the Senate with 76% of the vote.

By comparison, under a nationwide proportional voting system, the composition of the senate would be as follows, looking at the 2013 results counted out so far -

Liberal/National - 37.43% - 28.4 seats

Labor - 30.45% - 23.1 seats

Greens - 8.69% - 6.6 seats

Palmer United - 5.06% - 3.8 seats

Liberal Democrats - 3.77% - 2.9 seats

Xenophon Group - 2.11% - 1.6 seats

Australian Sex - 1.38% - 1.1 seats

Others - 10.7% - 8.1 seats

Approximately 58 out of 76 Senate seats would be held by the three major parties, or about 76%, which lines up properly with the portion of the vote that they won. A mix of the major and minor parties would control the remaining 18 seats (as there would be quite a lot of major party votes left over and, depending on how the preferences flowed, they could win a few more) again lining up appropriately. Since parties would have to compete on a national level, and combined with preferential voting being made voluntary, this should help prevent the ascension to the Senate of tiny, single-issue, Mickey Mouse parties like the Motoring Enthusiasts from Victoria or the Sports Party from WA. The latter has apparently been elected to the senate despite winning only 1900 votes, or a fifth of one percent of the WA electorate. Given that no party controls a majority in the Senate, it is perfectly possible that some bills will pass or fail in the next three years based on the whims of a candidate elected by such a tiny number of people. This is not democratic and steps should be implemented to prevent it from reoccurring.

While it would be ideal, there are two reasons why such a system will probably not come about any time soon. First of all, Senators from minor States would surely protest against it. Tasmania, South Australia, Western Australia and the Territories have 5.3 million people between them, only a quarter of Australia's population, yet together have a 40-36 majority in the Senate. Tangent to this is the likelihood that at least one of the major parties would be opposed to it because they happen to be stronger in those smaller states. Given that Labor tends to dominate in Tasmania, South Australia and the ACT, it would likely be them.

Secondly, there's a fair chance that both major parties would oppose it anyway, because it would erode their power compared to minor parties in general. Labor, the Coalition, and even the Greens are probably pretty happy with their current, privileged situation where they are able to control 9/10 of the Senate with 3/4 of the votes.

Also worth noting

• Stick with compulsory balloting

Amid these other arguments, one that is often brought up is whether Australia should end compulsory voting entirely. There are various arguments either way, but ultimately I am still in favor of the practice. Most of the arguments against it run something along the lines of - 'no one should be forced to cast a vote, as it infringes upon their civil liberties'. These arguments are neatly countered by the fact that voting is not technically compulsory, only balloting is. All any Australian citizen is required to do is register on the electoral roll, turn up at a polling station on election day (or a pre-poll station shortly beforehand or submit a postal vote), take a ballot, go into the voting booth, then come out and submit that ballot in a box. What a voter does in the voting booth is, to use an old cliche, between them and God. It is completely private, and there is no way someone can be prosecuted for not marking the ballot, or filling in out improperly. About 5% of ballots cast in Australian elections fall under this definition, being called 'informal ballots'. Nor is Australia unique in having such a system. 22 countries worldwide have compulsory voting systems, although only about ten of them regularly enforce it.

Wikipedia's article on Compulsory voting neatly sums up the arguments for and against it here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_voting

• I know its tired but...yes, the Republic

This is so long overdue it borders on the ridiculous. There have been plenty of other essays written on this topic over the years, so I imagine everything worth saying has already been said on this issue. I would just like to note here that I am absolutely in favor of Australian becoming a Republic. I would also favor the minimalist model, whereby things pretty much stay the way they are. All that really changes is that we take a marker to the constitution and wherever it says 'Governor-General' we cross it out and write 'President'. The President would continue to be appointed by the Prime Minister and remain a ceremonial position, and would completely replace the reigning British monarch of the time as Australia's official Head of State. This is another reform that should really be a no-brainer.