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Matthew Clemence left a comment for Marie Heartwood

"Loved your comment in "Why the opposition parties should cooperate in 2015" by John Deverell. Australia is my country of birth (but Canada is by choice), and its great to here a canadian speack of our voting systems with such glee, even…"

Mar 9, 2012

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Electoral District (Riding): Ontario: Renfrew--Nipissing--Pembroke

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At 1:26am on March 9, 2012, Matthew Clemence said…: Loved your comment in "Why the opposition parties should cooperate in 2015" by John Deverell.

Australia is my country of birth (but Canada is by choice), and its great to here a canadian speack of our voting systems with such glee, even though I'm afaid you might be a bit disappointed its not as good as you put it cuz while the house is elected via AV (called preference voting down here, but I prefer AV), there is still a very stong party culture in Aus as well (unsarally personefied by the party leaders, "who are you voting for? Rudd or Howard?") which limits canadate and riding indepedence.

ATM, with a hung parliment (as hung as you can get as there is only a 1 member deterence between the ALP and the coalition between the two right wing partied, Liberals and Nationals, who have been in coalition snice time begen and just need to merge imho), there is more of a voice from the indys, Greens (who hold the balance in the senate), and backbenches cuz if the ALP loses a member, it loses goverment. If they had a majority, things be very different.

IMHO, while AV is a better system that fixes half of the issues with FPTP and still allows for a simular but fairier result (majority goverments with at min 51% endorsement of the population, instead of 40% of the vote), it is only one solution to the issue as there needs to be more votes w/o party lines in the parliment as Paul Martin tried to do (one of a very few things he did right).

I agree with you that in addision to AV in the house, you need a PR voting system in the Senate (hence why it needs to stay, not be killed as the NDP/Bloc wants to do, the only thing I fundamentally disagree with the NDP on) and how we do it in Aus can work very well in Canada, as Harper (again, one of a VERY VERY few things I agree with him on) expressed to the Aus Senate back in 2007.

I am gald with the evolution of parliment though, and would not like to go back to your "Option 1" as that would be a regression imho. The cabinats, inculding the party leader, shoudl be moslty detremined in a party primary imho. My model for a united Lib-NDP party, with minor parties like the United and Action partied, has a system like this.

Anyway, thats my 2 cents, keep up the good commenting, how to see ya on facebook!

Cheers!

Matthew Clemence