I have no objection to his first 10 paragraphs.

His 11th paragraph reads, referring to 1983: "The newly elected Hawke government tackled Senate voting reform and, with bipartisan support, it implemented the system we have today."

That is wrong. The Hawke government lacked a Senate majority and there were two parts to its major reform. The first part was implemented with the support of the Nationals, the second part with that of the Democrats.

The Liberal Party in 1983 turned on a spectacular display of bloody-mindedness, matched only by Labor's arrogance in 1948, when the first single transferable vote system was introduced.

These displays were couched in terms of "principle" with both parties doing U turns. An important idea denounced in 1948 became a principle in 1983 and vice versa. It was a good idea rejected in both cases. It was that electors be asked merely to number 1,2,3,4 and 5 and beyond if the voter so desired.

It was obvious to me in 1983 that this system (the present one, able to gain parliamentary majorities in 1983) would not last because it was clearly unconstitutional. From the very beginning I disliked three of its four features.

I disliked the party boxes and the ballot line, that being the correct technical term for the thick black line which runs through the ballot paper.

Above all, at the time and ever since, I have railed against the wholly unreasonable nature of the below-the-line vote option.

However, because its motive was good, I was willing to support and defend it. The motive was to reduce the Senate informal vote.

In 1984, I noticed that a certain Cyril John McKenzie, an ungrouped candidate in Queensland, challenged the new system in the High Court. Faced with the alternative of throwing out a system for which the motive was good, Chief Justice Sir Harry Gibbs agreed, very reluctantly, to constitutionalise the patently unconstitutional. The actual date of the McKenzie judgment was November 27, 1984. The election was on the following Saturday, December 1, 1984.

Now that the Senate electoral system has become politically discredited the McKenzie case should be re-litigated before the full High Court. That would enable the justices to tell the politicians how to legislate a decent reform. Obviously a Parliament in which the likes of Xenophon have so much power cannot be trusted to do the job properly.

Over the next 30-plus years (1984 onwards) I noticed the extraordinary ability of this awful system to get the will of the people right in 99.7 per cent of cases.

"Can that be pure luck?" I asked myself. "No", I decided. The reason why the system worked so well was that its one desirable feature (the group voting tickets) had outweighed its three bad features, the ballot line, the party boxes and the unreasonable below-the-line vote requirement to number every box.

On the night of the 2013 federal election I noticed Antony Green dishing out his usual propaganda (what his ABC colleagues call "editorials") which comprehensively misled viewers.

However, Green did get one detail right. It was odd that Ricky Muir should take a seat from Victorian Liberal senator Helen Kroger. To be fair to him, Green was the first to notice that such would happen.

Reverting to Xenophon's article, he writes: "This proposal [Xenophon's] is broadly based on the ACT voting system, which has proved to be robust and fair."

Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! He could get away with such a dishonest statement in South Australia but Canberrans are too smart. They know that his proposed reform is the antithesis of the Tasmanian-ACT Hare-Clark system.

Canberrans know that their system is candidate-based, which is what the Senate system should be.

Supporters of Hare-Clark know it is based on proper democratic principles. They know how to explain it in its every detail.

By contrast, Xenophon cannot explain his cynical changes of position any more than can the Labor and Liberal parties.

I can explain Xenophon. Every time he changes his position the change can be explained in terms of self-interested political calculation. I lack the space to give details here.

All this brings me back to the whole point of my earlier article "Put people before parties" (Times 2, December 28, p1). I knew enough about Xenophon to know that he is immune to reason, so I appealed to our two big parties: discover genuine principle for once.

Let all these cynical politicians recognise that there is a principle. It is section 7 of the Constitution which reads: "The Senate shall be composed of senators for each State, directly chosen by the people of the State, voting as one electorate."

Having read those words I ask you to implement that principle. In that request I am supported by the Proportional Representation Society of Australia and by respected Canberra Times columnist Crispin Hull.

I acknowledge that the implementation of that principle may at times involve minor inconvenience to the machines of our two big parties. Let them live with that so they can get some respect from the public.

If our two big parties cannot bring themselves to do that I suggest they at least give voters in the states a decent below-the-line option, say 1,2,3,4,5 and 6 and beyond that if the voter so desires. Unlike Xenophon, I can explain that number in terms of principle. There are six senators elected from a state at a half-Senate election.

As for Xenophon, I wonder whether I should have accused him of dishonesty, as I did above. Perhaps Xenophon's is more a case of invincible ignorance.

Malcolm Mackerras is a visiting fellow at the Australian Catholic University's Canberra campus.

malcolm.mackerras@acu.edu.au