Appointments:
Appointments are one of those powers that you can\'t get rid of because doing so would inhibit the Governments\'s ability to govern. All you can do is try and reduce the impact of gross partisanship. My thought was to give the Opposition greater access in order to discover and publicise when partisan hacks display bias. That ought to eliminate the extremes.
Does Australia have Senate approval of high level appointments in a similar way to the Advise and Consent in the US constitution? I wouldn\'t think that is a solution by itself anyway. It\'s of no help when both houses are held by the Government. And when the Government doesn\'t hold the Senate…well if I was PM and unscrupulous, I\'d put forward Wilson Tuckey\'s name for head of ATSIC, and then nominate the not-quite-so-extremist that I really wanted and appear to be compromising. The Advice and Consent system is too easy to game.
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