Sacha Blumen notes that there have been suggestions that the NSW Labor Party dissolve the Legislative Council which is the upper house in the NSW Parliament.
The Westminster parliamentary system combines the executive and legislative in the lower house. In some parliamentary systems, such as
Queensland's and New Zealand's the parliament is unicameral - only has one house. Most however are bicameral and operate with an Assembly (lower house) and Council (upper house).
The Washington System modeled its Congress on the Westminster system minus the executive being in the legislative. However it saw the upper house as being of federal character and representing the states rather than the House which was national in character and represented the people.
At the state level in Australia there isn't so much of that form of split representation. It was originally a compromise between Australian republicans and monarchists; it was originally intended that the upper house would be titled in the same manner as the House of Lords.
Dan Deniehy's bunyip aristocracy speech comes from pillorising that constitutional plan.
However, in a Westminster system and the Australian mechanism of block voting and party discipline which Labor has perfected, it is important that there be something to counter executive power. Unlike Washington, in Westminster the executive has complete control of the legislature and money bills. Which is a heady combination for any executive seeking to expand its power and they all do at all times.
It is important that some other body act as a check on the executive. In the Australian forms of Westminster this means checks on the lower house. Currently an upper house is but one mechanism to achieve that.
Queensland suicide squadded their upper house when the Governor was overseas and a politically compliant Lieutenant Governor was instituted. I don't see how it could be done in NSW. Either way it would be bad policy and only lead to poorer governance than exists now.
Phoenix Eats Out is the restaurant review site for
Phoenix,
Scottsdale and
Old Town Scottsdale which lists the modernist and contemporary restaurants, taverns and bars in the greater Phoenix area.
This is the list of the most popular restaurants pages from phoenixeatsout.com that have been viewed the most;
My personal favourite restaurants in Phoenix are
AZ88,
Postinos,
Bomberos with
Grazie,
Humble Pie,
Orange Table,
The Vig,
Fez and others coming close behind. View the complete list with the photo-journalistic style images on
phoenixeatsout.com
Arizona is an outdoor state and has lots of hiking in the city and around the state. Phoenix is unusual for most cities in having several large mountains in the center of the city with great hiking. Anyone who comes to Phoenix has to do the
Echo Canyon trail on Camelback and the
Summit Hike on Squaw Peak or Piesta Peak. The views of the city, suburbs and surrounding mountains are wonderful from Camelback and Piesta Peak.
For more experienced hikers there is the McDowell Mountains in North Scottsdale that has several difficult and strenuous hikes in
Tom's Thumb and
Bell Pass. Alternatively, you can hike the highest mountain in Arizona. At 12,600 feet
Humphrey's Peak is a long and difficult hike.
Between 2004 and 2009 this site,
southsearepublic.org, was a constitutional blog based on scoop which focused on Australian and global constitutional issues.
One of the strongest aspects of it was the development of constitutions by those involved in the blog. These constitutions are the outcome:
The constitutions were built using principles from Montesquieu's separation of powers, the enlightnment's universal political rights and the ancient Athenian technology of sortition and choice by lot.
South Sea Republic started in 2004 as an Australian constitutional blog in 2004 based on scoop software. It was an immigrative outgrowth of Kuro5hin. The archives for each year since then;
The articles are ordered by views.
I am an Australian living in the United States as a permanent resident.
I am a software developer by trade and mostly work in Java and jump between middleware and front end.
I originally worked in the New York area of the United States in telecommunications before moving to Washington DC and
working in a mix of telecommunications, energy and ITS. I started my own software company before heading out to
Arizona and working with Shutterfly. Since then I have joined a startup in the Phoenix area and am thoroughly enjoying myself.
I do a lot of photography which I post on this website, but also on flickr. I have a photo-journalistic website which lists
the modernist and contemporary restaurants in phoenix. I have a site on the
Australian Flying Corps [AFC] which has been around since the 1990s and which I unfortunately
lost the .org URL to during a life event; however, it is under the
www.australianflyingcorps.com URL now.
The AFC website has gone through several iterations since the 90s and the two most recent are
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2004-2002) and
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2002-1999) which are good places to start.
