Description
This article is from the soc.culture.australian FAQ, by Stephen Wales
with numerous contributions by others.
8.1 Political System
Australia is an independent commonwealth of 6 states, 2 territories
and a number of island and territorial dependencies. It is a member
of the Commonwealth of Nations, United Nations, ANZUS, OECD. The form
of government is a constitutional monarchy. The Queen Elizabeth II of
Great Britain is also Queen of Australia, and Head of State. Her
representative in Australia is the Governor-General, Bill Hayden since
1989.
The Commonwealth of Australia uses the Westminster system of government.
The head of State is the Queen, represented here by the Governor-General.
The G-G is advised by the Prime Minister and the Cabinet. Normally the
convention says that the G-G "does what they tell him", but he has
considerable "reserve powers". These powers are not necessarily spelled
out by the Constitution.
The federal parliamentary system consists of two houses of Parliament.
The lower house is the House of Representatives. The party which has
the most representatives in the lower house forms a government. The
leader of that party becomes Prime Minister, and he (no women PMs as
yet) forms a Cabinet. The usual term of office is 3 years, although
the PM may call an election early. The Upper House is the Senate, the
"State House", like the US Senate. It consists of of 12 senators from
each state and 2 from each territory. They have 6 year terms and half
face re-election every 3 years. The upper house is generally a house
of review. The Senate stands for a fixed term give or take a couple
of months, but the House of Representatives can be dissolved and an
election called by the cabinet. Elections only stay in sync by the
House of Representatives running full term, or the government
engineering a double dissolution.
[Begin MJ]
It is slightly (!) more complicated than this. From a reading
of the constitution, I came up with the following summary of the
rules as to when elections can be held for the two houses.
An election for the House of Representatives must be held
within three years after the first sitting of the previous parliament.
This parliament must sit within one month of the return of the writs
for the election. (Practically, this means that the gap between
elections can be as long as three years and three months.)
Normally, only half of the senate is elected at one time,
An election for half of the senate must be held not less than five
years and not more than six years after the first of July FOLLOWING
the last election for that half of the senate.
In special circumstances (if the House of Representatives
passes a bill and the Senate rejects it, and the Representatives
passes it again and the Senate rejects it again three months later)
a double dissolution may be called, providing that term of the House of
Representatives has more than six months to run. In this case,
an election for half the senate must be called more than two
but less than three years after the first of July PRECEDING the
election following the double dissolution, and an election for the
other half of the senate must be called more than five but less than
six years after the first of July PRECEDING the election following
the double dissolution.
For practical reasons, it is standard practice to hold elections
for both houses on the same day, either by having a double dissolution or
by choosing an election day in which it is constitutionally possible to
hold both an election for the representatives and a half senate election.
Thus, if the Prime Minister wishes to hold an election, he has the
following constraints in choosing the day.
(1) In any situation, he can hold a double dissolution, provided
that he has a hostile senate (or can contrive something) provided that
his term of the Representatives has at least six months to run and provided
that he has prepared for himself to do this three months earlier.
(2) If neither of the two previous elections have been double
dissolutions, he must hold the election within three and a bit years
of the last election and between five and six years after the first
of July following the election before last
(3) If the last election was not a double dissolution, but the
election before last was a double dissolution, he must hold the election
within three and a bit years of the last election and between five and
six years after the first of July preceding the election before last.
(4) If the last election was a double dissolution, he must hold
the election between two and three years after the first of July preceding
the last election.
Interestingly enough, this means that in certain circumstances, the
term for which a government is elected is significantly shorter than the
already short three years. For instance, Labor was elected (after a double
dissolution) in March 1983, and had to go to the polls again by July
1985 (and actually went in late 1984).
The combination of these rules often leads to a government having
vary little latitude in when it can hold an election, despite the fact
that we technically don't have a fixed term of parliament.
The other advantage a government gets by holding a double dissolution
is that if the senate blocks its legislation twice at three month intervals,
and then after having a double dissolution and election the senate still
blocks its legislation, the government can then convene a joint sitting
of both houses that can pass the legislation by an absolute majority. Due
to the fact that the Representatives is much larger in size, the government
nearly always has a majority in a joint sitting. Essentially, the purpose
of a double dissolution is to allow a government to steamroll its electoral
program through a hostile senate if it can get a reasonably strong electoral
mandate to do so for a specific (and predefined) program of legislation.
The penalty paid (besides the risk of losing the election) is that the
term of office after a double dissolution is shorter than for other elections.
(considering the present state of the Senate and the recovering state of the
Australian economy, it would be prepared to wager a small sum of money
that the next federal election will take place between July and December
1995).
[end MJ]
Much of the Westminster system relies on convention and not written
rules, so often reading the Constitution is of no help if you are not
a Constitutional lawyer - its doesn't always say quite what it means
or mean quite what it says, if you are unbriefed in the vagaries of
these things. It was modelled on several other nations' constitutions
(incl. the US). There is no Bill of Rights or other "amendments" to
the constitution as Americans are familiar with the concept - it
merely defines the way the governments works.
[begin MJ]
Also Canada and Switzerland in particular. The 'conventions'
were largely inherited from the British. I disagree that reading the
constitution is of 'no help': a lot of it is quite clear. Of course
one should pay attention to legal opinion as well. However, laws
have been getting more and more complicated in recent years. Compared
with virtually any recent act of parliament, the constitution makes
very easy reading.
There are some 'rights' guaranteed in the constitution: for
instance the right to trial by jury and the right to fair compensation
if your property is taken over by the government. Unfortunately, these
apply only to the doings of the federal government. State governments
(to the extent limited by their own constitutions) can still lock
you up for no reason or turn your land into a freeway without compensating
you.
[end MJ]
For an illustration of the "convention" problem, for instance, the
Prime Minister, who is the effective Head of Government, is hardly (if
at all) mentioned in the Constitution. The Prime Minister is elected
by the House of Representatives. The PM then appoints the Cabinet.
[begin MJ]
The PM is not mentioned at all in the constitutions. The authors
of the constitution were not sure that there would even be a PM.
They certainly thought that British style 'responsible government'
was possible, but decided to allow the structure of the executive
to evolve by itself. The sections of the constitution describing the
executive government are thus deliberately vague.
[end MJ]
The power of the Commonwealth is defined in the Constitution, i.e. the
things it has control of are explicitly laid out there - everything
else is left to the states. Usually when the Commonwealth wants to
take over some function from the states it usually uses its "external
affairs" powers. This gives it considerable leeway. If the
Commonwealth has signed an "external treaty", for instance a UN
agreement to protect "world heritage wilderness" it can then force the
States to comply (that's how the Commonwealth forces states to stop
the Franklin Dam, for instance, where Land Management is left to the
states).
The main parties are the Labor Party, the Liberal Party (who are
actually conservatives) and the National Party (formerly the Country
party) who represent mainly rural electorates and are also
conservative. The Liberal and National parties usually form some sort
of coalition.
Each state has a House of Representatives (the lower house)
and all except Qld have an upper house. The leader of each State
government is called the Premier, and is the leader of the party
with a majority in the lower house.
[MJ] The lower house in a state is usually called the Legislative
Assembly (not HoR). The upper house is generally called the Legislative
Council. I think the titles may be different in South Australia (?)
[FC] The constitution, along with a lot of other info about Australia, is
available on WWW at: http://life.anu.edu.au/education/australia.html
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