It ' s important to note that the Australian system does not seem to produce better governance than either the UK or Canada . This is fairly important when having discussion about democracy , simply letting people feel good about being represented doesn ' t necessarily make a country more governable , and by extension provide policies those people want . The australians have mandatory voting and an elected upper chamber . They still vote in idiots sometimes . In canada we have have an appointed but not hereditary upper chamber , and some of the people appointed turned out to be crooks , and the new system of appointing people without a party has meant that the Senate doesn ' t know how to conduct its business because by convention everything was organized around parties , and suddenly the liberals don ' t have a party deliberately , but then the upper chamber is now more than 50 % unaffiliated and no one knows what to do . In the UK they recently largely did away with the hereditary nature of the house of lords . But overall the Lords have spent the last half century doing a job going along with the commons and serving much like the canadian senate . But some of them were , like their canadian counter parts , crooks . Including one who is A lord , A canadian , and a crook . Lord black of cross harbour . Other forms of voting have been discussed and tried numerous places . But it seems like no matter how hard you try the public are good at electing idiots and crooks .