Home About Parliament Senate Practice and Procedure Papers on Parliament POP Parliament and the Public Interest. Lectures in the Senate Occasional Lecture Series, , June David Solomon "A Single-Chamber Australian Parliament?*" Legislative branch Parliament is made up of a single-chamber National Assembly, which has 90 members, elected on a party basis for a four-year term. The National Assembly is the highest legislative body in Slovenia. The Italian and Hungarian single parliamentary chamber each have one seat single parliament chamber house. The Commons alone is responsible for making decisions on financial Bills, such as proposed new taxes Third, the parliament would be reduced to a single chamber, with an electoral system a mix of the two systems used for the present two houses
David Solomon "A Single-Chamber Australian Parliament?*" – Parliament of Australia
Papers on Parliament No, single parliamentary chamber. This lecture was originally due to be given five months ago but it had to be postponed because I was unable to travel down from Brisbane. In the meantime we have experienced the referendum on the republic. The results of that referendum, single parliamentary chamber, together with the associated public opinion polls which help to explain what influenced the Australian people to reject the proposal, single parliamentary chamber, persuade me that I should continue to place in the public arena the proposals for an elected executive presidency that I put forward two years ago in my book, Coming of Age[1] and to argue that they be given serious consideration when the time comes for different and better models for an Australian republic to be developed and debated by the people, single parliamentary chamber.
That will not happen in the immediate future. The next debate about the republic will be the one we should have had last year—about whether we want to have a republic of any kind at all rather than maintain the present monarchical form of statehood. Once that single parliamentary chamber resolved—and that could happen relatively quickly if the polls are any guide—then we could get down to the detail of what kind of republic the Australian people want. It will be important next time that choices are available and that the voters are not alienated from the process as many of them thought they were last year.
In Coming of AgeI described the faults in the present system and then proposed my various solutions. It was not written as the manifesto for a political movement. Rather it presents the views I have developed about the way I believe our political system should change, some of which I first wrote about inin Elect the Governor-General!
In practice these are mostly exercised by the government of the day, but a literal reading of the Constitution would allow the Governor-General to govern the country in much the same way and with the same kind of powers as an American president. The conventions of responsible government, however, mean that governmental power is exercised by the party controlling the House of Representatives. I suggested in that book published in that, if the Governor-General were electedthe conventions could be scrapped and we could have a government headed by a Governor-General elected by the whole nation, instead of a prime minister chosen by the majority party in the House of Representatives.
All this could be done without changing a word of the Constitution, single parliamentary chamber. We could change our system of government, but not of course change from monarchy to a republic. That was not my primary concern, single parliamentary chamber. The aim of writing Coming of Age was to open a debate about single parliamentary chamber way we are governed and explore some of the ways in which we might improve the system.
It examined a large number of issues—whether we should have presidential or prime ministerial government, the role of parliament, the power of the federal government vis-a-vis the states, whether we should have a Bill of Rights to guarantee personal, political and other freedoms and to limit the powers of governments and parliaments, single parliamentary chamber, the single parliamentary chamber of the judges in the system, the electoral systems we use, people power and how we might get better politicians, single parliamentary chamber.
It presented no single agenda, but many possibilities. It also dealt with the issue of the republic, which in my view is a desirable but not necessary precondition for improving the real part of the governance system.
In practical terms, changes will occur either simultaneously with a change to the republic, or subsequent to it. Let me outline the bare bones of a system of government I believe would serve Australia better than our present system, single parliamentary chamber then present the arguments relevant to one of the more controversial aspects of it—namely, a single-chamber Australian federal parliament, single parliamentary chamber.
This then is the context of the proposal for a single-chamber Australian parliament. This is not the system of responsible government of the kind to which we are accustomed in Australia, single parliamentary chamber, but a system where there is an executive president in charge of the government, and a parliament whose primary responsibility is to consider legislation.
But why the need for change? Does the system we have at present really need to be fixed? I will raise some issues that were not dealt with in the book about single parliamentary chamber relationship between governments and parliament under the present system and under the system I would prefer. Australian parliaments are not working adequately.
The problem is not necessarily caused single parliamentary chamber their members, single parliamentary chamber, though the failings of some of those elected to parliament does contribute to the poor performance of the parliament. The real problem is structural. Parliaments are largely incapable of doing what they are supposed to do. They are not able to work in the way that single parliamentary chamber democratic parliaments are intended to operate.
The way they function is quite different from the way they did a century ago, single parliamentary chamber. They remain essentially nineteenth century institutions which did not change sufficiently to meet the quite different political circumstances of the single parliamentary chamber century, single parliamentary chamber, and have little prospect of meeting the demands of the twenty-first century. Fundamental changes need to be made to allow Australian parliaments to do what they are supposed to do.
Forty years of tinkering with minor reforms have failed to give the parliaments a relevant role. The real problem is that executive governments have come to completely dominate the lower houses of parliament.
That problem cannot be overcome unless the executive is moved out of parliament almost altogether. What is needed is a system which restores the classical idea of the separation of powers—with the roles of government and of parliament performed by different institutions. If that is done, major surgery can be performed on the federal parliament also, amalgamating the existing two houses into a more effective body concerned primarily with making law—operating more like the Senate than the House single parliamentary chamber Representatives.
The present parliamentary institutions in Australia are proving more and more inadequate to meet the heavy demands which our system of parliamentary democracy puts on them. In theory, the functions required to be performed by parliament include legislating, scrutinising the government and holding ministers and the administration responsible for their actions, determining who should be in the government, providing a political stage and allowing the people to keep in touch with parliament, and keeping parliament in touch with the people, single parliamentary chamber.
Defenders of parliaments have been forced to redefine what parliaments are expected to do and to lower expectations about what they can achieve. The pressures on modern parliaments are enormous, particularly the pressures imposed by the volume of legislation which they have to consider.
Inthe year the Commonwealth came into being, parliament passed only seventeen laws. In its first ten years, it averaged about 23 laws a year. During that same period the House of Representatives normally sat for more than 90 days each single parliamentary chamber. Parliament first passed more than acts in a single year in By then it was sitting less frequently—74 days in that year.
By the single parliamentary chamber, legislative pressures had further intensified, but parliament—or more precisely, the House of Representatives—had barely responded to that pressure. Inparliament passed a law every sixteen or seventeen days it sat. By it was passing a law for each day it sat. Now the House of Representatives spends two to three hours on average for each bill it considers.
No one pretends that the House of Representatives is fulfilling any serious role as a legislator with this approach. It is true that the averages quoted above are slightly deceptive. Because of constitutional requirements to separate various kinds of money bills, legislation to accomplish a single policy end sometimes has to be considered by way of four or five separate bills, which will be debated together.
The same considerations, however, applied to the way legislation was considered by the parliament in the past. The Single parliamentary chamber in the mids made two responses in acknowledgment of the fact single parliamentary chamber it rarely pays any significant attention to the legislation it passes.
First, it decided to refer some legislation to its specialist committees. Second, it created a new committee of the whole House the Main Committeesitting in a single parliamentary chamber room, to consider designated bills, from first reading to report stage, before formal adoption by the House. The main reason for adopting this procedure was to reduce the number of bills on which discussion was limited by use of the guillotine, single parliamentary chamber.
In effect, single parliamentary chamber, the House of Representatives was able to increase the time it spent on legislation by creating a second chamber, which meets at the same time that the House is sitting and which normally deals only with non-contentious but very detailed legislation. The only way in which it can seriously be argued that parliament as a whole is effective as a legislator is to accept that the responsibility for legislation has been transferred almost entirely to the Senate.
These days the Senate sits longer and devotes more time to legislation than the House, and because the government does not control proceedings, single parliamentary chamber, the Senate considers more amendments from senators representing the Opposition and minor parties, and indeed passes some of those amendments. That is a result of the fact that the Senate is elected by a different system from that used for the House of Representatives, and that many voters choose to vote for different parties in the Senate from those which they vote for in the House.
The only exception was during the time when Malcolm Fraser was Prime Minister in the second half of the s. Since the s, senators have professed an interest in their responsibilities as legislators which is markedly different from that adopted by their predecessors, single parliamentary chamber. Previously, their scrutiny of legislation was political, in the sense that it was aimed at quite specific matters of policy. However, from the s, the Senate has asserted that it is in control of the whole legislative process.
It has made it clear that it is prepared single parliamentary chamber amend any piece of legislation which does not suit the philosophical bent of its majority.
Perhaps its most significant action was to pass a resolution which laid down a timetable for its consideration of proposed laws—it told the House of Representatives that unless it received bills by particular dates, it would not even consider those bills in the current sittings of the Senate. That was the moment when the House of Representatives—that is, the government—finally lost control of the legislative process in the federal parliament.
In —70, the Senate agreed to an amalgam of proposals by its Clerk, Jim Odgers, the Opposition Leader, Lionel Murphy QC, the Leader of the Government in the Senate, Ken Anderson, and the DLP Leader, Vince Gair, single parliamentary chamber, for the establishment of a series of policy and estimates committees.
The budget debate in the House of Representatives was merely an excuse for a wide-ranging political debate in which MPs could ride various hobbyhorses—unnoticed by the public at large.
It single parliamentary chamber not unreasonable to describe the House as a rubber stamp for the financial and all other legislation proposed by the government, and the Senate as the only part of the parliament which acts as an independent check on the government.
Although the House of Representatives belatedly followed the lead of the Senate in creating a series of parliamentary committees, single parliamentary chamber, those House committees are restricted to the subject matters dictated by ministers and, with some exceptions, the reports of the committees which are controlled by government backbenchers cause little concern for the government.
They are not controlled by the government, and the matters they investigate tend to be chosen by the Opposition and minor parties, rather than by the government. The matters they investigate are often politically sensitive and potentially embarrassing, single parliamentary chamber, both in their hearing phase and when they are reported upon, single parliamentary chamber.
Another function of the parliament where its recent performance has been inadequate is that of communicating information to the public. Australia was one of the world pioneers in allowing the radio broadcasting of federal parliament, and in taking that step the politicians were very conscious of the need to make their work available to the public, single parliamentary chamber. The parliament was much slower in agreeing to allow televising of some of its proceedings, because the politicians were concerned at the way they might be portrayed.
Strangely enough, despite the availability of these communication tools, including the presence of the press gallery—about journalists and media representatives permanently based in Parliament House—politicians have made less and less use of parliament as a forum for providing information. Ministerial statements were once a significant method adopted by governments to announce government policies and to debate them. In the early s, for example, the House heard an average 75 such statements each year, and devoted over two per cent of its total time to them, single parliamentary chamber.
In effect, ministerial statements had become irrelevant. Probably the main reason for this is that governments see no political value in making announcements in single parliamentary chamber parliament, single parliamentary chamber, or in having them debated there, single parliamentary chamber.
Parliament is rarely considered to be an appropriate place for such announcements, because what happens there other than in question time is mainly ignored by the media. While there are good reasons for parliament ceasing to have any significant role in the communication of government policy to the people, the fact that it no longer has this function further diminishes its significance.
Question time, which is the activity by which the success of the House of Representatives must be judged, rarely lives up to its dramatic potential. If it represents the essence of parliamentary democracy, then the institution is seriously flawed. The fact that it simply does not match the expectations which surround it has been recognised in the continuing attempts by parliamentarians to reform it. Single parliamentary chamber parliamentary game which is played in Australia—at least in lower houses—is not directed towards legislative outcomes.
It is not about producing the best possible laws. It is about holding onto or winning government. It may sometimes use parliament to try to promote its own policies, single parliamentary chamber, but it will normally prefer to do that outside the parliament just as governments now do because it will not want to provide an easy opportunity for the government to reply to its policies.
Whether there ever was a period when parliament did fulfil the functions which political scientists say that parliaments are supposed to perform does not matter. It is certainly true that there has been deterioration in parliamentary conduct in recent decades. Parliament has been passing more and more legislation and spending less and less time considering it.
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