As the Abbott government stalls on introducing the Senate electoral reform advocated by last year’s bipartisan finding of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, The Australian today offers an opinion piece concerning the matter from Ross Fitzgerald. After extolling the vitues of Fiona Patten, the Sex Party figurehead who won election to Victoria’s Legislative Council in November, Fitzgerald takes aim at those who advocate reforms that might have prevented it:
So how did she get elected by a margin of some 20,000 votes? If you believe the nonsense spouted recently by psephologist Antony Green and Labor powerbroker Gary Gray, she “gamed” the proportional representation voting system under which the election was held. That is, Patten won a seat with a primary vote of about 3 per cent by cajoling and carousing with other minor parties to undermine a system that ideally should return “serious” parties like Labor, Nationals, Liberals and the Greens. These arguments need to be exposed before parliaments throughout Australia start acting on them in the mistaken belief that democracy is somehow better served by fewer rather than more political parties. Green maintains that minor parties, who tightly swap preferences among themselves and exclude the major parties, are somehow rorting the system. He and Gray appear to believe that the proportional representation system of voting only works properly when it returns a relatively small crossbench and preferably one that does not hold the balance of power.
Gary Gray I can’t speak for, but since Antony Green’s opinion on these matters is much the same as my own, I consider myself well placed to point out what is wrong with this.
Fitzgerald’s column is liberally sprinked with words like “apparently”, “appears to” and “as far as I know”, followed by assertions which in many cases prove to be untrue. Perhaps it does “appear” that Antony Green believes proportional representation “only works properly when it returns a relatively small crossbench” – but only if one is operating from a position of ignorance to which Fitzgerald, under the circumstances, is not entitled.
In fact, what Antony Green advocates is the model used for the New South Wales Legislative Council, a chamber of 42 members that includes nine cross-benchers who were elected as such. Among these are two members from Shooters & Fishers and two from the Christian Democratic Party, along with five Greens. This makes the situation hardly different from the Victorian Legislative Council, a chamber of 40 which includes five Greens along with another five from various minor concerns. Indeed, Fiona Patten would probably have been elected as lead candidate of the Sex Party under the New South Wales model, given her party’s 2.6% share of the Victorian statewide vote.
Fitzgerald continues:
As far as I know, neither of them levelled similar criticisms at the independent Tasmanian senator Brian Harradine, who held federal governments to ransom for nearly 20 years off a primary vote of 7 per cent or when Family First’s Steve Fielding was elected to the Senate off a primary vote of 1.8 per cent.
If Fitzgerald feels he can use the phrase “as far as I know”, and follow it with the assertion that Antony Green was relaxed about Steve Fielding’s election since it was achieved from major party preferences, it can only be said that he doesn’t know very far. Nobody who was familiar with Green’s position would consider this likely to be the case. And sure enough, if you Google “‘Antony Green’ ‘Steve Fielding'”, the very first thing that appears is a link that gives lie to the assertion.
The election of Steve Fielding did indeed rouse controversy in the group voting ticket system, because it was achieved through a Labor preference arrangement that would have come as a surprise to most of the party’s supporters. Despite Fitzgerald’s conviction to the contrary, dissatisfaction with the system does not begin and end with micro-party preference harvesting, but arises from the fact that voters are very often oblivious to the true effect of their decisions.
As for Brian Harradine, Fitzgerald is, as they say, entitled to his own opinions but not his own facts. Saying Harradine “held federal governments to ransom” falls safely in the former category, but the purported fact that he did so from a 7% primary vote is no less Fitzgerald’s own. In fact, Harradine was first elected with 12.8% of the vote at the 1975 double dissolution, then re-elected with 21.3% in 1980, 13.2% in 1987, 10.4% in 1993 and 7.9% in 1998. In other words, preferences had no bearing on Harradine’s election on the first three occasions, as he achieved a quota in his own right.
When Liberal preferences did help Harradine to a quota at his last two elections, this was only what Liberal voters could reasonably have expected, given the alternative was them going to the Greens. It is for this reason, and not because his preferences came from a major party, that Harradine’s election was not a source of controversy. There is simply no parallel with the results that have lately exercised critics of group voting tickets, such as Ricky Muir’s election in Victoria from 0.5%.
The overarching problem with Fitzgerald’s argument is that he neglects the very important distinction between a system such as that of the New South Wales Legislative Council, in which micro-party members are fairly elected due to what political scientists call the “high magnitude” of its proportional representation, and a group voting ticket system that is everything its critics say it is: “gamed” and “rorted”.
The key distinction here is that New South Wales is not divided into smaller multi-member regions, as the Senate is with its state-based model, and Victoria’s upper house is with its eight five-member regions (which likewise applies to Western Australia’s six-by-six model). At each state election, candidates compete for half the chamber’s 42 seats on a statewide basis. This produces an extremely low quota for election of 4.5%, which becomes a good deal lower in practice because of the very reform advocated by Antony Green – namely, votes do not pass on as preferences beyond the point where the voter expresses a wish for them to do so. Consequently, a quite large share of the vote disappears from the count by the time the final seats are allocated, and these seats are accordingly won from very modest shares of the vote.
So it is that even without group ticket voting, seats for Shooters & Fishers and the Christian Democratic Party, who poll around 3%, are reliable fixtures of New South Wales upper house elections. That these parties in particular should succeed in winning the micro-party seats comes down to a factor to which Fitzgerald appears to (to coin a phrase) be blithely indifferent, namely the number of voters who actually wanted them to win. The system in Victoria proved to be unfair not to the big cartel, but to Palmer United and Shooters & Fishers, who respectively polled 2.7% and 2.3% in Western Victoria, but lost out to Vote 1 Local Jobs with 1.3%.
Having said all that, Fitzgerald does touch upon some genuine issues. Certainly it is true that simply abolishing above-the-line group ticket will raise the “barriers to entry” for new parties, to use a phrase that political science cops from economics in discussing such matters, unless the quota for election is also lowered. To the extent that Antony Green might have advocated one and not the other – and this I’m not sure about – his calls for abolition of group ticket voting can indeed be criticised on such grounds.
In the case of Victoria, the obvious way to resolve the issue would be to abolish the regions and go to a statewide model, such as is used in both New South Wales and South Australia. The same could be said with even greater force for Western Australia, where it would have the further advantage of removing the blight of rural malapportionment. But in the Senate, we run into the brick wall of the Constitution and its imposition of a state-based, low-magnitude model.
Given the scale of the problem uncovered by the 2013 election result, I’m not of a mind to consider this factor decisive. Existing barriers to entry did not stop Brian Harradine and Nick Xenophon winning election to the Senate. The example of Xenophon suggests that aspiring independent Senators could first establish themselves in the state parliament, at least in those states where the barriers to entry were sufficiently modest.
If under-representation of small parties and independents is a problem, having such members elected in the almost entirely arbitrary fashion characteristic of the current system hardly seems the right way of dealing with it. It would make a lot more sense, and be more in line with community expectations, to lower the quota by abolishing staggered terms, so that every Senate election was for 12 members per state, with a relatively modest quota for election of 7.7%.
This would of course require some fairly substantial constitutional surgery, including a return to the question of simultaneous House and Senate elections that was defeated at referenda on three separate occasions in 1974, 1977 and 1984. Things could very well be different if the proposal had bipartisan support, a hurdle it failed to clear on early attempts because an obstructionist Coalition opposed it when the Whitlam government put it forward in 1974, only to advance it themselves when in government three years later. With the Coalition and Labor lining up behind it federally on that occasion, the national yes vote was 62.2%, but the referendum was defeated because it failed to pass by narrow margins in Queensland and Western Australia (no doubt thanks to opposition from Joh Bjelke-Petersen and Charles Court), and a much larger one in Tasmania.
Tangentially, another interesting constitutional question which emerges relates to the double dissolution process, since the outward distinction between a double dissolution and a regular election would cease to exist. If Senate obstruction is to be deemed a problem, perhaps the answer to it is to routinely have the joint sitting mechanism available to re-elected governments in passing the legislation that was blocked in the preceding term.
Can comments on this thread please be relevant to the post. For general discussion, this remains the main thread:
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2015/01/23/bludgertrack-52-5-47-5-to-labor-2/
I hope Ross researches his books considerably better than he did this article.
Senate reform is tricky in that clearly there is a taste for minor party representation in the Upper House in Australia, yet equally clearly the current method for determining which party occupies those positions is largely determined by the negotiating ability of “preference whisperers” rather than the will of the electorate.
Good piece. Too much to do between now and the Queensland election to respond to an argument shot through with holes.
The comparison he makes between the Senate system and the European PR systems is just wrong. Why did Muir get elected and not the 9 parties that polled more votes and didn’t get elected? Why did Dropulich get elected and not the 15 parties who got more votes and didn’t get elected. That just wouldn’t happen under every other PR system in the world. The reason is the gaming of preferences which he says doesn’t happen!
Excellent piece. Fortunately I hadn’t read the article until now and feel I am now saved the time of debunking it.
(I am of course saying that William’s article is excellent, not the one debunked!)
The other question I have is how someone elected from an amalgam of preferenced votes can be said to represent a well-defined portion of the electorate.
What does it mean in our current Senate system which in each state gives the top two candidates on the major party tickets a clear mandate, and then leaves two spots open to represent everyone else?
The NSW system also with its much smaller quota gives the minor parties a constituency they can deal with. If the Shooters and Fishers and Christian Democrats are able to consistently get votes from this small section of the population then they should get to be representatives in the upper house.
[ If Senate obstruction is to be deemed a problem, perhaps the answer to it is to routinely have the joint sitting mechanism available to re-elected governments in passing the legislation that was blocked in the preceding term.]
There has only been 1 joint sitting post double dissolution, Whitlam in 1974. All others with the opportunity have squibbed it, for good reason: namely that control of Treasury benches far outweighs tendentious black letter law.
As for your broader points on proportional representation, they are not worth a rats arse compared with the constitutional gerrymander which gives Tas, WA and SA ten senators with a fraction of the population of NSW and Vic. There sits the equitable outrage.
Yes, agree. William has written an excellent article.
In any discussion of the composition of the Senate, the elephant in the room is the filling of casual vacancies. At least Senator Muir got some first preference votes: some of his Senate colleagues have never appeared on a Senate ballot paper (or, I suspect, on any ballot paper). We could easily have been blessed with a Senator Obeid (possibly even several) in NSW.
I’ve argued in the past for the introduction of non-binding recounts when Senate casual vacancies arise, akin to the scrutinies conducted by the AEC under s.282 of the Electoral Act. They would cost almost nothing, and would at least put the parties under a little bit of pressure to justify why a ring in should get a Senate seat, rather than someone who had at least been on the ballot.
Victoria`s system of regions is protected be referendum. That was put in place by the Bracks reforms in 2003.
I think that dividing Victoria into regions is a good thing. It requires governments, oppositions and minor parties to think about all regions. For example it increases the risks for a Coalition government is ignoring the Western and Northern Suburbs of Melbourne. It promotes having preselection controlled by a means other than entirely centrally (although this has not been fully effective in the case of the ALP). Remember Eddie Obied and Ian MacDonald were NSW MLCs.
I would prefer 7-member (rather than 5-member) regions though, that provides for at least one seat in every region to be marginal and gives substantial minor parties (such as the Greens) a chance in every region. An odd number of regions would be better as well because that would reduce the potential for tied votes. Low NSW style quotas would let in the really small parties, like the shooters and Fred Nile`s lot.
sprocket_@7
7
Of the Double Dissolutions there have been; 3 changes of government from those that have introduced the trigger bills into Parliament (1914, 1975 and 1983), one successful majority gain (1951), the aforementioned 1974 and also 1987 when there was only one bill (the Australia Card Bill) and its implementation required regulations that could be blocked by the Senate. All in all in only 2 DD elections were situations were a joint sitting would have been needed by the government to pass legislation and in the second they had seriously messed up the legislative preparation enough that there was little point.
Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia have 12 Senators each, the same as Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales and this equality is protected by the triple majority referendum requirement that sees them having a veto over loosing proportionate representation in the Senate.
I’d be interested to see what the makeup of the 2013 intake of Senators would be if the numbers per state were more representative of the proportion of the population in that state (with, say, a minimum of 2 Senators per election per state).
Presumably the smaller states would split, roughly, 50/50 Labor and Liberal with the minority parties being wiped out, but it might be a fun exercise to figure which of the Victorian and NSW minors would get seats instead (and how many would go to the big two anyway).
Removing equal Senate representation requires more than a majority of states. It would also have to pass in states whose representation is diminished. So if you cut the number of Tasmanian Senators compared to other states, Tasmania has to agree as well as getting majority of votes and a majority of states. (Constitution s128 para 6)
Antony GREEN@14
Thanks for reminding me of that. I’ll add two extra zeros to my assessment of its chances of success.
There is no way Tasmania would ever agree to having its Senate power watered down to a reasonable level – no matter how hopeless its Senators are at actually using that power and how hopeless its voters are at electing Senators who do.
9
Voluntary countback would be ineffective because it could and therefore would likely, when it really mattered, get ignored. The 1977 reforms did not fix the situation that allowed the blocking of supply in 1975 and thus the Dismissal. This was proven in 1987 when Tasmania left an ALP Senate seat vacant rather than appoint the ALP`s chosen candidate. Had the 1977 reforms been in place in 1975, I have no doubt that Joh & Co would have still not have chosen to elect the ALP official candidate (Mal Colston). The only way to stop a 1975type Senate Majority changing by state parliaments, using their casual vacancy powers, is to change Section 15 to make Countback the method of filling a Casual vacancy and have the writs for said countbacks issued by the President of the Senate.
A very quick and dirty calculation of the previous Senate election indicates that proportional distribution on the basis I stated before – 2 Senators per state minimum – would result in the same amount of Coalition members, Labor stealing a seat from the Greens and probably about as much of a crapshoot for the final 2 seats in Victoria and NSW as you’d expect.
Overall the Senate wouldn’t really change much, although the specific identities of the minors might.
Tom @ 16: The results of non-binding recounts could well be ignored. But having them done could at least encourage a bit more public discussion about the process for the filling of casual vacancies.
I would have thought it would be problematical to write recounts into the Constitution without writing in PR, or preferential voting for that matter.
18
I have no problem writing in either preferential voting or PR for the Senate into the Constitution. The idea would not be that hard to sell to the public either.
Fitzgerald builds his argument around a straw man – that opponents of the way that the Senate race played out at the last election want to preserve power for the major parties. Now some, especially on the conservative side might feel that.
But I don’t. My only problem is a very simple one. A Senator should only be elected on the votes of people who want them elected (even if others are preferred). That is the problem with this system. I am sure there are voters whose votes counted towards the election of Ricky Muir who had no idea and no wish for their vote to count towards him or his party.
The problem is the sheer complexity of the Senate voting system. My solution would be simple. Give people the option to preference parties, rather than require them to adopt the registered party preference arrangements or vote below the line. So a person could vote 1 above the line for PUP, for example, 2 for the Greens and 3 for the Coalition – regardless of how the parties want it. Not that hard. And optional preferential would not hurt either.
The option to indicate your preferences above-the-line, along with the abolition of the Group Voting Ticket would definitely be my favoured solution to the quagmire that is Senate voting in Australia.
1. Its an opinion piece in the Oz. What else do you expect?
2. The immediate annoyance I get from reading it is that he simply ignores that what is being proposed preserves preferential voting and does allow minor parties to be elected. All it does is make sure that its the voters doing the preferencing and not the parties by default.
Apart from that his rhetoric and logic is the same mix of hand waving, irrational, bullshit I expect from the Australian.
Yes, excellent work William. Forensically demolished that load of ill-informed bunk.
As you and others note, the core argument – that smaller parties should be able to be elected – is a point on which we all agree!
its just that reformers are saying they need to get those seats *in proportion to their votes*, not *as semi-randomised by-product of dubious backroom deals no voter knew about*, which Fitzgerald “appears to” defend, though the reason is not quite as apparent.
Yeah – we’re hung up on the votes thing. Crazy I know, but thats how we feel. Sorry Ross.
[Why did Dropulich get elected and not the 15 parties who got more votes and didn’t get elected. That just wouldn’t happen under every other PR system in the world. The reason is the gaming of preferences which he says doesn’t happen!]
Because when you’re 16th you try harder.
Or something.
Once Ross works out these aren’t *voter* preferences he’s talking about, but the registered preferences of unelected party hacks, maybe he will see sense.
The changes we’re all suggesting exist in NSW already – and the major parties are likewise subject to them. Come on Ross – you know it makes sense.
There are still educated people that read the Australian?
spcoket_ @7
You are mistaken in your explanation of why there has only been one post-double-dissolution joint sitting. It has nothing to do with governments squibbing it, as you suggest.
The double dissolution elections of 1914 and 1983 both resulted in changes of government. In each case, the new government after the double dissolution did not hold a joint sitting to put through the legislative proposals that had been the occasion for the double dissolution because they had no desire to get the legislation through; they were opposed to the previous government’s proposals. The story for 1975 is effectively the same, although technically the election did not result in a change of government but only confirmed one.
The double dissolution election of 1951 gave the government a majority in the Senate as well as the House of Representatives, so it didn’t need a joint sitting to get its legislative proposals through.
That only leaves 1987. After that election the government was planning to hold a joint sitting to get the Australia Card legislation through, but then it was discovered that there was a technical point (one I can explain if anybody’s interested) which would allow the Senate to prevent the legislation coming into operation even after it got through Parliament: the legislation could be adopted by a joint sitting, but there’d still never be an Australia Card, so there was no point in pushing on.
Your suggestion that governments squibbed it because they were more concerned about retaining control of the Treasury benches makes no sense anyway: holding a joint sitting in no way endangers control of the Treasury benches. Even if the government’s proposals were to be defeated at a joint sitting, it would remain the government.
Mr Bonham @15 ” I’ll add two extra zeros ” – lol!
26
A longer version of my comment at 12. Feel free to put your explanation skills to the need for regulation to implement the Australia Card because of the poor legislative preparation. It has indeed been Double Dissolutions that have been squibbed on, not joint sittings.
frednk
“”There are still educated people that read the Australian?””
I know educated people that possess NO common sense whatsoever!.
Routine joint sittings, Bowe? Really?
Over my dead body! The Senate exists for the purpose of being a check on the otherwise-untrammelled power of the elected dictator known as the Prime Minister and a house of review for dubious legislation. To argue that it should, essentially, be neutered because it’s doing its job is something I never thought I’d see someone in Perth write!
While you’re at it, why not abolish the Senate entirely – you’ll have much the same end result. For that matter, why not abolish the States? By all means, let’s sign ourselves up to be dictated to by Sydney and Melbourne!
I suggest you’re exaggerating, Matt. The elected dictator would first need to win a mandate for the disputed legislation at the election, of sufficient strength to overcome his minority in the Senate. This is not “much the same result” as abolishing the Senate. Certainly it would cause the Senate to be weaker, hence my use of the words “if Senate obstruction is to be deemed a problem”. If not, fine.
Also, can you kindly not address me by my surname. It’s extremely rude.
The main problem I have with Proportional representative schemes is you end up with everyone only able to support one party.
If joint sittings were to become a regularity, I would have to recommend enlarging the Senate to be of equal size to the House of Reps.
@ Timothy Reichle, 32
Not if your PR scheme of choice is MMP (a la Germany, New Zealand) with our existing system of instant-runoff preferential for the constituency seats.
Tom the first and best @28
I apologise. I didn’t notice your comment until after I’d posted mine.
You’re right, among other things, about the issue in 1987 of the potential for the Senate to disallow regulations, but since you’ve invited me to I’ll give a more detailed explanation.
The root of the issue is this: when does an Act of Parliament actually become part of the law? The answer is not simply ‘When both Houses of Parliament have adopted it.’ The first reason for that is that the Parliament, constitutionally speaking (and this part anybody can easily look up), doesn’t consist only of the Senate and the House of Representatives, but of the Queen, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. So an Act of Parliament can only become law when it’s received the Royal Assent as well as the assent of both Houses. The Royal Assent can be and is given by the Governor-General as the Queen’s representative. Both the Queen and the Governor-General act on ministerial advice. So once an Act of Parliament has received the assent of both Houses, the government can submit it to the Governor-General and receive the Royal Assent straight away. But there is also nothing to stop the government from delaying this procedure, and delay like that can delay the coming into effect of an Act of Parliament.
Now, if you look into the text of an actual Act of Parliament, sometimes you will find a subsection saying ‘This Act comes into force on the date of Royal Assent’ (or something extremely close to that, I haven’t checked an actual example recently). An Act like that does become part of the law at the date of Royal Assent, just as it says. But not all Acts say that. Sometimes an Act will name a specific date and say something like ‘This Act comes into force on 1 January 20XX’, or ‘1 July 20XX’, or whatever other date happens to be named. This might be because the Act deals with taxation, or an annual funding program, and it’s convenient to have it start operating at the beginning of the financial year, or the calendar year. In some other cases, perhaps it’s considered appropriate to give people some definite advance notice of a change in the law, so that they can be prepared for it, and naming a date is a way of doing this. (There still has to be a qualification about Royal Assent, because no matter what date is named, an Act necessarily can’t become law before Royal Assent, but subject to this any date can be named.)
Sometimes the government itself has to prepare for the coming into effect of a law, perhaps by staffing a new organisation to administer it or making other administrative arrangements, and sometimes for this or other reasons it isn’t possible to name an exact date for the new Act to come into effect at the time it’s actually going through Parliament. There are two traditional ways of dealing with this. An Act of Parliament can have a subsection that says ‘This Act comes into force on a date to be determined by proclamation’. Proclamations are issued by the Governor-General, who acts on ministerial advice, so the practical effect of a subsection like that one is that the Act becomes part of the law whenever the government decides it’s ready for that to happen. If the Australia Card legislation had used that technique, we’d have the Australia Card now. But the Australia Card legislation was written using an alternative technique, saying that the Act (or at any rate some essential parts of it — I haven’t checked on this detail) came into force on a date to be determined by regulation. At the time, nobody thought this made much practical difference. It’s just as easy for the government to make regulations (once an Act has given that power) as to issue proclamations. But there’s a crucial difference: a regulation (unlike a proclamation) can be disallowed by either House of Parliament.
So the Hawke government could have held a joint sitting to get the Australia Card legislation approved (but only — and this is crucial — in exactly the form it was submitted to Parliament before the double dissolution that had been called on the issue). Then it could have been submitted to the Governor-General and received Royal Assent. But it still would not have become actually operating law (or at least essential parts of it would not have) until the government made a regulation setting a date for that to happen: and as soon as the government had made that regulation, the Senate could have disallowed it — and it was made perfectly clear that the Senate would. So the government knew it was stymied and there was no practical point in going ahead with the joint sitting.
Back in those days, the technical experts who drafted legislation, as I recall commentary at the time, didn’t bother much about the distinction between effect from proclamation and effect from regulation and regarded them as two mostly interchangeable items in their toolkit. I think since that time they’ve probably viewed things differently and relied on proclamation to the exclusion of regulation (or largely so) for this particular purpose. But I don’t think it’s fair to blame the politicians of the day for failing to foresee the problem. It wasn’t, after all, a politician who spotted the way to use this technical point to stymie the Australia Card, but rather (if I remember rightly) a former public servant. I feel as if now I should go and see if I can look up his name.
[
(if I remember rightly) a former public servant. I feel as if now I should go and see if I can look up his name.
]
Stone comes to mind.
Yes it was
[
Two weeks after this, National Party senator John Stone, a former Treasury secretary, rose in parliament to point out that the legislation to establish the card had a fatal flaw in that it depended on making ministerial regulations, and as such, the Senate – where the government lacked a majority – could foil the legislation.
]
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-depth/cabinet-papers/mps-urged-to-spruik-doomed-australia-card/story-fnkuhyre-1226792641896
William @31:
I will not apologize for addressing a complete stranger by his surname (where given); however, you have indicated your preference and I will do my best to follow it.
If joint sittings are to become regular things, it will be precisely because the government need not take the disputed legislation to the electorate – otherwise, we’d be being dragged to the polls constantly. In other words, regular joint sittings would be – must be – the product of a successful Constitutional amendment to remove the limitations on how often they may happen.
In that situation, there are only two outcomes. Either:
a) The Government routinely uses its House majority to bum-rush the legislation into law at these sittings, thus effectively negating the Senate and its purpose as a chamber of review; or
b) The Government lacks a sufficient majority in the House to overcome its deficiencies in the Senate, meaning it has to bargain…as with today.
Speaking from the perspective of someone who likes having a check on the lunacy of the Government du jour (and who is aware of the general gormlessness of our courts systems when it comes to the rights of the citizenry), there is no outcome superior to the status quo; therefore, I oppose such a change.
Which brings me back to where I began: Over my dead body.
Matt, when Bilbo* says:
[to routinely have the joint sitting mechanism available to re-elected governments in passing the legislation that was blocked in the preceding term.]
I inferred he meant that it would be available once per term, within a few months of the government’s re-election, not that it would be available whenever the government wanted for whatever the government wanted.
Certainly restricting it to old business, not new business, was clear. You could even be funky and restrict to items appropriately laid on the table before the election, thus requiring that in some sense all such disputed legislation was in fact taken to the electorate.
* I can’t remember whether this is technically rude or not.
I imagine this hypothetical S57 would be something as follows below. I think it’s speculative but less so than the accompanying Senate reforms. Still, I’d rather hope for more wide-ranging reform if we could get that through.
[If the House of Representatives passes any proposed law, and the Senate rejects or fails to pass it, or passes it with amendments to which the House of Representatives will not agree, and if after an interval of three months the House of Representatives, in the same or the next session, again passes the proposed law with or without any amendments which have been made, suggested, or agreed to by the Senate, and the Senate rejects or fails to pass it, or passes it with amendments to which the House of Representatives will not agree, and a period of no less than six months passes between the second presentation of the legislation to the Senate and the dissolution or effluxion of parliament, and after such dissolution or effluxion the House of Representatives again passes the proposed law, with or without any amendments which have been made, suggested, or agreed to by the Senate, and the Senate rejects or fails to pass it, or passes it with amendments to which the House of Representatives will not agree, the Governor‑General may convene a joint sitting of the members of the Senate and of the House of Representatives.]
34
It was not just the legislation coming into force that was by regulation. The whole bill was very reliant on regulation to determine specifics and the Senate would have been able to make it unworkable and the same would have applied to the CPRS had that been passed at a joint sitting.
In order to get it operating, it would have had to have either included a set of initial regulations in the legislation (probably as a schedule) or changed the Legislative Instruments Act so that regulations made pursuant to Acts passed at joint sittings are not disallowable by the Senate but may (High Court permitting) be disallowed by a joint sitting called by the Senate. Such an amendment to the Legislative Instruments Act would likely need to be passed at a joint sitting.
[The double dissolution elections of 1914 and 1983 both resulted in changes of government. In each case, the new government after the double dissolution did not hold a joint sitting to put through the legislative proposals that had been the occasion for the double dissolution because they had no desire to get the legislation through]
Germane is that both 1914 and 1983 were engineered by the government; in neither case did they have significant interest in the triggers as legislation. Since 1975 was engineered as well that means that in only a half of the DDs has the constitutional machinery for breaking deadlock on specific bills really been engaged, and in only a third of them has that deadlock been broken.
The DD is the Australian Constitution’s answer in search of a problem.
40
The 1914 election was to try and remove the ALP majority in the Senate. Instead it was joined by an ALP majority in the HoR. The 1951 election was he same except that the desired conservative Senate majority happened. 1983 was about not having Hawke.
[I will not apologize for addressing a complete stranger by his surname]
Then I’m guessing you get punched in the nose quite a lot.
William @41:
Now who’s rude? I consider it over-familiar (at best, creepy at worst) to address a complete stranger by their first name. There’s a reason that the saying for a positive acquaintanceship is being on a “first name basis”. We are strangers, therefore not on a first name basis – however, you have indicated that you prefer being addressed by your given name, so I will do so.
Make of that what you will.
Sorry, that should have been William @42.
Matt@43
Surname without a ‘Mr’ in front of it is the ultimate in rudeness.
Bemused @45:
I hadn’t considered that. In which case, I do apologize after all.
[The 1914 election was to try and remove the ALP majority in the Senate. Instead it was joined by an ALP majority in the HoR. The 1951 election was he same except that the desired conservative Senate majority happened. 1983 was about not having Hawke.]
Yes, there were political reasons for wanting an election at those times. My point was that the DD provisions were used for those ends rather than about breaking deadlocks on specific bills. It was stated that there were no joint sittings because the government changed in 1914 and 1983 and tge new government was not interested in pursuing the legislation but the fact is that the old governments were not that interested in the legislation and probably would not have pursued it if reelected.
Top piece, William. Outstanding.
One collateral effect of above the line upper house voting may be the confusion it creates in optional preferential state elections. It seems unlikely, but I’ve spoken to apparently intelligent people who’d assumed that if they “just vote one” in Queensland, their preferences will be distributed according to the ticket.
Their ignorance and their fault of course, but also perhaps the fault of deliberate obfuscation — initially by Labor and this time by the LNP. And gross negligence by the electoral commission, which has failed utterly in voter education.
William – he probably doesn’t get punched in the nose at all, because the overwhelmingly vast majority of people are too polite to punch egregiously rude people in the face, even when insulted.
[“Surname without a ‘Mr’ in front of it is the ultimate in rudeness.”
I hadn’t considered that.]
At best it sounds like you are affecting an English public school prefect’s mannerisms. At worst it sounds like you’re addressing the servants.