There will also be 3000 extra university places in South Australia. That has been achieved by classifying Adelaide-based universities as "regional", so they are not lumped in with disadvantaged capital city universities.

How so? The government was determined to get these "reforms" implemented - so it secured the critical South Australian Centre Alliance votes it needed, especially that of Senator Stirling Griff.

Some friends of mine were shocked. I was neither shocked nor surprised, because I understood something about the present Federal Parliament not generally understood. The Senate is rigged in favour of the Liberal Party.

That being the case, the Morrison government can always rely on getting the legislation passed it really wants. Throw some red meat to the One Nation base (securing two Senate votes) and secure the vote of either Jacqui Lambie or Centre Alliance, and Bob's your uncle. Or rather, Scott's your uncle.

It is not quite true that the Coalition has a Senate majority in this 46th parliament. Two bad pieces of legislation have been blocked. One related to industrial relations and the other, especially bad, would have given the government the power to seize mobile phones from people in immigration detention.

However, when Morrison is really determined he has shown he can secure the votes of One Nation senators easily, and of either Lambie or Centre Alliance, simply by making special offers to our two least-populous states. Think of the income tax cuts and medevac repeal bills of 2019. In this latter case, Morrison restored the power of federal immigration ministers to reject the transfer of asylum seekers to Australia for medical treatment.

Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull must surely turn envious eyes at Morrison for the ease of his Senate situation. They never enjoyed anything remotely like it. For their government to succeed in passing legislation they needed to herd up to a dozen cats.

Again, how so? The way I describe it is to say that when each of Julia Gillard, Abbott and Turnbull was prime minister, the party numbers in the Senate reflected the votes of the Australian people. Today that is not the case.

This change for the worse is the consequence of the passage of the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment Act 2016, which was hailed by its supporters as a "democratic reform" of the Senate voting system. I never saw it that way. I have always thought of it as a Liberal Party rig. Indeed, I wrote that opinion in The Canberra Times.

The first test of the new system was the double dissolution election held in July 2016. On that occasion the Senate election did produce proportional representation by party strength. The reason for that was the simple fact that 12 senators were being elected in each state. In such a case the quota for election is quite low, enabling minor parties to succeed in significant numbers.

However, within that election of 12 senators for each state there was essentially a half-Senate election for six of those senators to serve long terms. Those senators are still in the Senate today, with terms expiring on June 30, 2022. The other half saw their terms expire on June 30, 2019.

The 2016 half-Senate election gave the Coalition 17 of the 36 long-term places, 47 per cent of seats for a Coalition vote of 35 per cent - overrepresentation of 12 per cent. Labor got 13 places, 36 per cent of the seats, for a vote of 30 per cent, overrepresentation of only 6 per cent.

The present Senate consists of the above 36 - plus 40 senators elected at the May 2019 half-Senate election. The Coalition won 19 places - 47.5 per cent of seats for a vote of 38 per cent. Labor won 13 places, which is 32.5 per cent of seats for a vote of 30 per cent. So, Labor's overrepresentation is only 2.5 per cent compared with 9.5 per cent for the Coalition.

Combine those numbers and it can be shown that the Coalition is far more overrepresented than Labor - or any other party. It is always likely that the two big parties will be overrepresented, because each has a guaranteed two senators from the territories.

Today the Coalition has 36 senators out of 76 - or 47.4 per cent of seats for its most recent vote of 38 per cent and its second most recent vote of 35 per cent.

When the question of reform of the Senate voting system arose in late in 2013 to early 2014, the Labor Party decided to go along with the Liberal Party's wishes. The Greens and then-senator Nick Xenophon also went along. The consequence was a unanimous recommendation from the federal Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters in a report in May 2014.

At that point I set myself upon a campaign to persuade Labor to oppose that pretence at "democratic reform" which was (and still is) just a Liberal Party rig. I succeeded - and I claim the credit for Labor's 2016 decision to oppose the legislation. I also give credit to then-Labor senators Sam Dastyari and Stephen Conroy, who were extremely helpful.

This is what I now say to those Labor politicians who question the wisdom of that decision: Three years ago, there were 26 Labor senators, and today there are still 26 Labor senators. Three years ago, there were nine Greens senators and today there are still nine Greens senators. By contrast, three years ago there were 30 Coalition senators, but today there are 36.

Surely you can see this system is rigged.

The reason for there being six more senators from the Liberal Party is that the crossbench has been cut by six - cut from 11 to five.

The six eliminated senators, from political right to left, were David Leyonhjelm, Bob Day, Brian Burston, Peter Georgiou, Derryn Hinch and Tim Storer. The first four came from minor parties of the right. Hinch was a genuine independent and Storer was very much a senator from the left.

So, the Liberal Party succeeded in getting six new senators to replace four very unreliable senators from minor parties of the right, an independent and a senator from the left.

Why on Earth would the Labor Party vote for a pretend "democratic reform" designed to do that?

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Clearly what is needed is a decent Senate electoral system. By "decent" I mean a system that would be fair to voters, fair between parties and fair between candidates. The present system is none of those things.

I am currently campaigning for such a genuine democratic reform in the hope that it might be implemented by a future Labor government.

How does one create fairness between parties? Simple. One changes from six to seven the number of senators elected at each half-Senate election.

That could easily be sold to a future Labor government - because it would increase the size of the Federal Parliament. The total Senate numbers would rise from 76 to 88, while the size of the House of Representatives would rise from 151 to 175.

How does one create fairness between candidates? Again, simple - just get rid of above-the-line voting.

Here is where the problem arises. Both the Labor and Liberal parties want to keep above-the-line voting. It is convenient for their party machines.

It needs to be understood that above-the-line voting is not there to help voters. It is there to help the machines of big parties to manipulate the way people vote. The purpose of that manipulation is to ensure big parties get their senators elected in the "correct" order.

That manipulation is achieved by having four contrivances. They are the thick black line that runs through the Senate ballot paper, the party boxes above that line, the deceitful instructions to voters for the above-the-line vote, and the deceitful instructions for the below-the-line vote.

All four contrivances should be scrapped.