You'll see the link to the second green paper on www.pmc.gov.au. The first electoral reform green paper, released late last year, had to do largely with political donations and campaign funding.

In my column in The Herald today I have a necessarily brief look at a few more of the issues raised by the second discussion paper. They include extending the vote to permanent residents who are not citizens and, if not, taking the vote from the Poms who were enrolled before 1984 and who've kept the vote without citizenship, increasing or reducing the current jail term of three years as disqualifying a prisoner from voting, abolishing compulsory voting, and making preferential voting for the House of Representatives optional.

Of course, there's always the option of keeping our voting arrangements exactly as they are now. I'm inclined to the view that those arrangements are open to improvement even if the system we have now does seem to work. It leads to a change of government every decade or so, although those intervals may be too long.

If you don't have time for the full paper, the conclusion, chapter 15, at the above-mentioned link lists issues for discussion. So, tell us, should we keep the vote to ourselves, should we be more inclusive, should we be forced to vote, and should we be forced to vote preferentially for people we detest? And should we punt the Poms?