My crazy idea is to expand the league to 24 teams. Two divisions of 12, each team plays each other home and away for a total of 22 rounds. Promotion/relegation for two teams from each.
You do it by adding Tasmania, New Zealand, and third teams in WA and SA, and for the last two you could save Port Melbourne and Williamstown from the moribund VFL or add NT and, say, North Queensland.
I really don't think you could expand the AFL as a single division and keep it competitive. Tasmania and somebody else to bring it to 20 would, I suspect, dilute the talent pool so much that the bottom four or five teams would be agonisingly uncompetitive. But if you have enough teams to justify two divisions and every team playing every other twice, you can give teams to the areas that deserve them, grow the game, get rid of the compromised draw, and avoid the bottom teams becoming punching bags. Plus, you know, 12 footy games a weekend.
Anyway, there's my wine-influenced pipedream for the evening.