Capacity to sit in parliament and be in the community simultaneously
Reduce career politicians; increase apolitical experience brought to Canberra
More women in parliament to bring us closer to 50/50 representation
Potential issues:
Legality/Constitutionality
How to settle disagreements between jobshare candidates, particularly on voting
Division of salary and benefits
Ballot display issues
Old codgers who just don’t want anything to change ever
I don’t see any genuine issues that would prevent this from becoming a reality, and I wholeheartedly think it’s a great idea.
I think another way to achieve something similar would be to make multi-electorate seats from single-representative seats (either by dividing or amalgamating) and making each district voted by proportional representative voting, much as we do for the senate whose electorates are entire states/territories. We could then let those candidates jobshare across their districts if they wanted to in order to help facilitate better work-life balance.
I love when any ideas that shake up the political status quo are brought up in this country because I think we’re overdue for re-evaluating if our democracy is functioning as well as we’d like.