I know elections to the House of Commons have been around since 1867, for the four founding provinces anyway, and maybe voters implicitly know the importance, or, depending upon their views, the unimportance of electing a member of Parliament.
My question is this. In three years' time, let's say, if we follow your suggestion, it will be a new process for voters. I'm not so much concerned about the pamphlet on the information regarding candidates, which you refer to in clause 33, but to be clearer on clause 5, I can't imagine your doing your first round of information and public education and not mentioning that this is the first such selection and putting in some phrase about how important it supposedly is. How would you grapple with the words about why it is important? Are these elections as important as House of Commons elections, or would you simply say they would vote here at these times and this is your franchise? Surely you would envisage saying something about the fact that this is the first time you have asked citizens to select--maybe, if the Prime Minister goes along with your choice--members for the Senate, a group they've never elected before.
As I said, in the white paper in the U.K., they made it very clear they favoured—this is a Labour government paper, and let's get real here, they're not exactly fans of the House of Lords—maintaining a mix of appointed and elected members to keep the balance to the more undemocratic of the two Houses to make it clear, by inference, to the public that the Commons still rules, that the Commons is still the major chamber.
I've yet to hear anyone from the government say the Commons will still be superior to the selected Senate. How would you deal with that from a public information point of view, as your duties in clause 5 of the proposed act seem to indicate to me you would have the duty to do?