These two potential candidates want to try become the first job-sharing parliamentarians. I can see the benefits of opening up possibilities for people with kids/dependents. I think a broader range of perspectives in parliament would be great. And these people would be there to do the job, rather than career politic-ing. The linked article mentions how they’d both have to be sworn in as MP’s, essentially giving their electorate 2 votes, but I don’t think that’d necessarily be the case. However, you would have the power of two people’s voices when lobbying.
But I’m also wary of how much easier it would be shirk responsibility to “the other person”. Assuming it would work as a shared office rather than a representative person, would a line be drawn between 2 people and a group of people?
Delving into the speculative fantasy, suddenly the 2 mums with kids at home who couldn’t commit to full-time parliamenting were pioneers for rotational council representatives, getting rid of politicians altogether.
Additional issue:
Argument ad absurdum: if two people can share the role, what’s stopping three, or four, or an entire suburb?
Also possibly related to “how to settle disagreements”, there’s questions around clarity for voters about what exactly they’ll get.
And related to constitutionality, what happens if one of them is found to be ineligible? Or if one gets Named or otherwise censured?
If this leads to spontaneous direct democracy I’m all for it