If pollies are going to spend $185 million on this glorified opinion poll anyway, let's take the opportunity to seize democracy back for ourselves.

Sure, having a plebiscite costs taxpayers $170 million plus $15 million to allow lobby groups to run the cases for and against.

With a plebiscite on steroids we can make pollies listen. Just as exciting, we can cut out of the loop all the middle-men apparatchik hanger-on news-cycle-cowboy in-it-for-the-power, out-of-touch, gimme-a-slice-of-that-taxpayer-funded-expenses-pie suck-ups in Canberra.

So why not just ask voters clearly and directly what they want?

Of course we'd need some ground rules to stop a rich, powerful or loud majority hijacking the plebiscite process at every turn. So we ban paid advertisements by either side on each question. We reject any taxpayer support for the "yes" and "no" campaigns. The law of the land remains so that vilification and bullying is stopped at the gate. National security and final budget decisions remain the preserve of the executive government. An independent commission like the Parliamentary Budget Office prepares a "for" case and an "against" case on each question along with estimates of the financial fallout. And we ensure the elected MPs are bound to follow the plebiscite results. It's a bit like the 205-year-old citizen-initiated referenda in California but with more safeguards.

Australia needs regular, binding plebiscites because our two-party system no longer delivers credible government. Politicians claim they have a mandate for some things yet ditch other elements of their platform when it suits them, not us.

The poor voter cannot be expected to disentangle the myriad issues in an election campaign either. We might support five policies of one side but oppose five others. I like Labor's policy to ban foreign donations, for instance, but hate its protection of crooked unions. I like the Liberals' focus on small business growth but would happily pay higher taxes to get better social services.

We are forced to take a gamble on one side or the other, when most of us are far more complex than that.

And if we choose a minor party or independent, we know they will have very little chance of transforming their agenda into legislation.