A looming report from a parliamentary committee has the power to suggest new rules to stop interstate blow-ins from putting their hands up for election.

Mr Swan, who ran on a platform of turning Tasmania into Australia’s marijuana capital or "mull bowl", said this would be an attack on democracy.

"If it’s about [electing] the best person then it shouldn’t matter whether they come from any part of Australia," Mr Swan said.

"It would be a very parochial attitude if the rules were changed.

"None of the Tasmanian senators at the moment can claim to have fixed that state’s economic problems."

He said the internet had changed traditional notions of statehood within Australia, but the chairman of Parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, Tony Smith, has put forward a different view.

Mr Smith said political parties in the past had had no difficulty finding members within each state to nominate, and that the issue of interstate candidates had come to greater public prominence in the past eight months.

The Liberal MP from Victoria named Mr Swan, who "narrowly missed election for the Senate", and pointed to reports 10 out of 77 candidates in the West Australian Senate election were from other states.

The Sex Party’s Fiona Patten, a Melbourne resident, failed to win a Senate spot for Western Australia after a campaign based on legalising and taxing marijuana and pouring the funds back into schools.

"Given that the Senate is a state’s house, it is not surprising that most people would find this situation bizarre," Mr Smith said.

He said the committee had more work to do on a range of related matters before it was in a position to report back to the House of Representatives.

"On this matter, as with some other features of our electoral system, status quo is not an option," he said.

Mr Swan said the Sex Party was considering running in the next election for the ACT Legislative Assembly.

It would be the first time in its history the party has tried to win a place in the assembly.