# adam commented : Size: The various sortition proposals for the House of Lords were an inspiration for my suggestions as it happens. The Queensland Legislative Council is the only world parliament less powerful :)

The current House of Lords is larger than the House of Commons by about 100 members. It used to be much larger, with a kind of amateur idea that though the most political may be there full time, many peers would just drop in on the issues that interested them.

Seems to me the Tories could grab this issue of constitutional reform from Labour, and appointment by sortition might better suit their traditional conception of the house as an amateur venue (whilst obviously ditching the hereditary nonsense). There\'s plenty to criticise Blair and Labour with their half-hearted reform of purely appointed life peers - \"Tony\'s cronies\" seems to be the nickname. Last I checked though, the Conservatives\' policy was a 100 seat upper house inspired by the US Senate.

# cam commented : Formalisation of No Confidence votes: is interesting. It gives concrete process to the practice. So far three of the four have included sortition in one form or another. That seems to be the next step in legislative/executive constitutionality.

cam

# Alan commented : sortition: The Citizens Assemblies in British Columbia, Ontario and the Netherlands (where citizens assembly has the unfortunate translation, to English-speaking ears anyway, of \'burgerforum\') have given sortition a large push.

Mt proposal is based on that. Electing a president is an obvious function for a sortitive body. I\'m not quite so sure about using a citizens assembly as a permanent legislative body. It strikes me, incdentally, that a Citizens Assembly would be an excellent way to deal with the republican issue in Australia.

# cam commented : Nice: Much simpler than mine. It also plugs a needed hole in the Qld system by making parliament bicameral. This is interesting for the Council;

At most 3 partisan and 3 non-partisan members may be appointed by the government of the day

Mixing political specialists, with non-political specialists (presumably of good public character) and sortitionists.

cam

# adam commented : My reasoning there: Although a pure sortitionist chamber has its appeal, I added this because of the Legislative Council\'s role as an upper house. The partisan members exist to defend the policies of the government in the upper house; they may well appoint a Leader of the Government in the Legislative Council.

The non-partisan members are as you say intended to be the great and good from the community. The government could use it to eg appoint a representatives of the indigenous community. It could also be a training ground for Governors.

I still intend the sortitioned element to completely dominate the voting; you may note the worst ratio is 20:3:3.

I think this constitution is mainly shorter because of the elision of a Bill of Rights. I had originally started on a federal constitution. It may have been longer as the dynamic section was intended to bar the feds from domains left to the states, like policing and education.

# cam commented : It is probably informative: that independently, we both made one house in a bicameral parliament dominated by sortition, yet we both put specialists in there, with the intent of a specialist leading that body.

cam

# adam commented : Expertise: Sortition without experts is a talkback radio audience, or the Athenian democracy, or a mob. It leaves your government wide open to being kneecapped by unintuitive results.

# cam commented : I disagree with that: People are wiser than the media makes out when it segments markets. Another purpose for sortition is to pull out the hobbyist and other non-practicing specialists who the public process would otherwise disqualify. The citizen commenteriat fits that description.

cam

# adam commented : Well: ... the citizen commentariat are more or less self-educated experts. The thing is people have a whole set of political folk-beliefs, like the worth of protectionism, etc, but there are unintuitive results out there, which experts are aware of, that make experts reluctant to chase these solutions. All expert domains, eg medicine, have these problems, which non-specialists aren\'t aware of, because they don\'t have time.

Evidence from modern experience with sortition is that citizen juries go through a similar education process when they have time to digest the results, but without the same debts to faction or worries about getting re-elected; just a concern about being able to go back to their day to day lives having improved matters in the common weal.

Without the input of experts - not leadership, but access to the advice therof - you risk rash and damaging populist action.

# cam commented : by leadership i dont mean discipline: IIRC the albertan sortitionists went through six weekends of training and education on the issues. This would be a good area for the APH library to have a wider role.

Cam

# adam commented : That\'s the sort of thing: ... I was imagining.

# avocadia commented : My stalled efforts: Not to sound full of myself, but I can\'t help but wonder if NaCoWriMo here isn\'t some attempt to flush out my stalled attempt at writing a constitution :- )

# Kieran Bennett commented : Constitution Fun Challenge here I come: Poor man\'s trackback , I\'m going to make something of an attempt.

Look foward to seeing what others have come up with by the end of May.

# cam commented : Wha?: :)

cam

# cam commented : Interesting take: I am interested to see what you come up with by removing the states.

cam

# adam commented : City states of the Australian plain: Hmmm, it\'ll be interesting to see how much sovereignty you feed to your little ancient Hellenic enclaves.

# avocadia commented : City-States?: Surely everything will be anarcho-capitialist burbclaves :- )

# adam commented : I\'ll start saving for my aircraft carrier now $:

# cam commented : Nearly all the major parties: .... have spoken of dissolving the states, Kieren\'s attempt at constitutionalising it will be the first formalisation of that policy that I know of.

cam

# cam commented : bio-tech is where it is at: I read this book , I think it was non-fiction, but there are all these people living off the coast of Australia in a manufactured island.

cam