Prime Minister John Howard will give Australians the chance to exchange their electoral votes for non-voting, Class B shares in Telstra as part of a plan to cement a permanent hold on both houses of Parliament. Mr Howard said the scheme will provide a fully audited vote-buying alternative to the unseemly pork barrelling most recently seen in the pre-election grants to regional areas.

And it will help to remove apathetic voters from the rolls — “the kind of dole bludgers who vote Labor just because they think they won’t lose their dole under Latham”.

The voting rights will be transferred to a Liberal Party holding company that will use them as proxies in a federal election to ensure the party stays in power, Mr Howard said.

“Look, some of the vote-buying initiatives we’ve had to use to keep government out of the hands of the Labor socialists — such as the regional grants and the childcare bonus — have been downright dodgy at best and pretty distasteful to me personally because I don’t like giving people back their tax dollars, especially inbred hillbillies from the bush,” he said.

“But the program I’m announcing today is taking the world’s greatest shareholder democracy to new levels. Even Stephen Mayne won’t be able to give us any curry over this one.”

Mr Howard said it’s a more marketable alternative to his preferred solution of abolishing compulsory voting to weed out Labor voters.

“With the first half of Telstra, well, the trick there was selling the Australian public something they already owned,” he said.

“This time we’re buying something off them — their votes — USING something they already own — Telstra.

“All those Labor-voting chardonnay socialists who opposed the sale of Telstra and then raced in to grab shares when they went on the market — well I’m tipping they’ll be the first ones racing to swap their vote in the federal election for the prospect of fat Telstra dividends.”

Mr Howard conceded turning the electoral system into a financial commodity could result in the Australian democracy effectively being sold into overseas hands through the stock market.

“But frankly it gives me wood just thinking about it. Imagine if the Libs could stay in power indefinitely while just offhandedly blaming some faceless overseas corporation when the phone lines are no good in the bush or another boatload of refugees tips over or whatever,” he said.

“This has been our plan all along — to privatise public companies that people already own, using the proceeds to buy their votes, and whenever some bad shit goes down like E.Coli in the water, golden staph in the hospitals or no ring tone on the phone we can just blame a private company rather than having to wear it,” he said. “We’ll just be able to say ‘That’s all in the hands of a private company so get stuffed 7.30 Report, get stuffed Kerry O’Brien and go and talk to them about it, ha ha you’ve got no idea you stupid big wankaaah!’ ”

Labor leader Mark Latham was asked to comment on the shares-for-votes scheme.

“Howard is kicking the shite out of us right now, to tell you the truth, so good luck to him and where do I sign up for my Telstra shares,” Mr Latham said.

“But that’s all off the record and you can’t print it or I’ll knock yer block off, so let me know when you’ve got the tape rolling and I’ll let fly with the usual hysteria about calling for a Royal Commission or something.”