Below the line voting could be maintained, or abolished if this is needed to minimise confusion for ordinary voters. The corrupting system of parties dictating preferences would come to an end.

There is an average of three or four candidates for each party so voting one to six means voting for 20 or so candidates, enough to expend the full value of a vote in most cases. Those keen to utilise every last drop of electoral influence could fill in every box above the line, even if there are 50 parties to preference in order.

Reform is simple. Six senators are elected from each state. Voters would be required to number the parties from one to at least six in the order of their own choice above the line. That's it.

Any party that does not join the behind-closed-doors trade in preferences is a mug. It is left to lick its wounds and watch the best manipulators win out as the vote count unfolds after the election. This sordid process should be swept out and the control of preferences given back to the voters.

The problem with the easier option of just voting ''1'' for a party above the line is that the voter cedes control of her or his flow of preferences to the backroom operators of that party. Across Australia millions of votes cascade to other parties in an order the voters would not select themselves. The law requiring parties to lodge, pre-election, their choice of preference flow has led to the dark art of manipulation of preferences for unwarranted electoral advantage.

When a double-dissolution election is called and all 12 Senate seats are up for election in each state, voters would need to number 12 boxes in the order of their choice. The Senate vote would be no more complicated than that for the House of Representatives.

A few other reforms, short of electronic voting, which seems inevitable, should be considered. The most obvious is proportional representation in the House of Representatives, like the Hare-Clark system used to elect governments in Tasmania and the ACT. This offers the closest means available to meet the basic democratic principle of one person, one vote, one value. Proportional representation is stiffly resisted by the major parties because it would lead to a plurality of political parties in the House of Representatives, representing more exactly the plurality of thinking of the modern Australian community: quelle horreur! It will be quite a while before Australia advances to the proportional representation that is the bedrock of the more sophisticated electoral systems in New Zealand and Europe.

In the last parliament, I made an unsuccessful call for the government to set up a commission for truth in election advertising. This idea is also anathema to the old parties. But just as gratuitous fact-checkers burgeoned during this election campaign, some good and some bad, surely such a commission should be attached to the Australian Electoral Office to check pre-election advertising to make sure it is in accord with established facts.

The establishment of new parties needs more rigour. In NSW, a Senate seat may go to the Liberal Democrat Party because it was allocated the left-hand column on the ballot paper and so got the ''donkey vote''. The use of well-established party brand names should be prohibited because it can so easily deceive voters. I am currently challenging the registration of the Stop the Greens Party: all this micro-party has to do to trick green voters is to use a diminutive ''Stop'' on its material. Perhaps after Saturday's disaster in NSW, common sense will take over at the AEC, but the law should be made more specific.

The donkey vote could be killed. As the Senate ballot papers are printed, the order of parties would be rotated so that each had an equal turn on the left end of the paper.