Solomon, David --- "Modern Parliament & Representation - Issues of Reform" [2001] ALRCRefJl 6; (2001) 78 Australian Law Reform Commission Reform Journal 24

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Reform Issue 78 Autumn 2001

This article appeared on pages 24– 25 of the original journal.

Modern parliament & representation - issues of reform

By Dr David Solomon*

Australian politics is facing a growing crisis, one that the political establishment will not be able to avoid for much longer. For a generation, an increasing number of Australians have been turning their backs on the major political parties and opting to vote for minor parties and for independents. The effect of this trend has been seen in places like the Senate, where proportional representation is used in elections, and a candidate can win with as few as 12 per cent of the vote (sometimes, as in the NSW Legislative Council, with around one per cent). But increasingly minor parties and independents are achieving successes in lower Houses of Parliament, winning a majority of votes, either directly or with the assistance of preferences, in single member constituencies.

In the past two decades, the number of people who have stopped voting (in one or more elections) for the Liberal, National and Labor parties has increased by a factor of three or four. In the early 1980s about one in 10 Australians gave their first preference vote to one of the minor parties or to an independent. In the House of Representatives election in 1998 two in 10 did so. In the Queensland state election the same year, three in 10 did so. In the Western Australian elections this year, almost three in 10 voted for other than the major parties. The Coalition government vote in that election fell to about 34 per cent and Labor won government with about 38 per cent of the primary vote.

Why is this happening?

This is not the place to look at policy issues that have caused disenchantment by some voters. What emerges, however, from public opinion polling is that an increasing number of voters disapprove of the way politics is conducted, and are losing faith in the political system. In 1995 a public opinion poll recorded that more people decided how they would vote because of their disapproval of a particular party rather than because they favoured a particular policy or party. Other polls show that Members of Parliament are regarded by only one in 10 of the population as being honest and ethical (half the percentage of 15 years earlier). More than nine in every 10 believe politicians tell lies. More than half the respondents to one poll said that they had lost faith in the political system.

Now it may be that these surveys not only indicate the state of public opinion, but also reflect disturbing truths about our political system. There may be very good reasons why people have turned away from the major political parties – not least because both parties seek to control the middle ground and have tended to adopt policies that antagonise significant portions of their traditional supporters. But what cannot be ignored is the fact that changes in public opinion of the kind canvassed here have not generally been reflected in what happens in parliaments throughout Australia, that is, in the representation of the discontented voters in the parliaments. There is an important exception: in those parliaments where one or more Houses are elected by proportional representation it has often been the case that the so-called balance of power between the two major political forces (the ALP on one side, the Coalition on the other) has been held by one or more minor parties or independents.

The issue I raise here is whether that sufficiently represents the outcome desired by Australian voters, and whether some other system would deliver a result that was more acceptable – less likely to alienate the majority of voters from the system of government.

Merely changing the voting system is not the answer. In Tasmania and in the Australian Capital Territory proportional representation (the system advocated by those who support many of the minority parties) has not produced results that answer the complaints. It has produced minority government (occasionally in Tasmania, invariably in the ACT) but that has not done anything to satiate popular unrest about the political system.

What, in my view, is needed is a change in our system of responsible government. That system may have been appropriate at a time when there were two principal political parties and almost everyone voted for one or the other. It is less satisfactory now because such a significant proportion of the voting population feels that it has no ownership – actual or potential – of government. The people they vote for have no say in who will be the Prime Minister (or Premier) and in the composition of the Cabinet. At best they vote for the foot-soldiers of a major political party who select (or confirm) their leader, who then decides the composition of his (or her) government, without consulting anyone who elected him (or her).

More representative of the people

There is a lesson to be learned from the decision of the Australian people to reject a republic. One reason for the present system being maintained was that many people who supported the idea of a republic voted ‘no’: the model of the republic they were asked to support did not allow them, the people, to choose the president.

No-one has ever asked the Australian people about the form of government they want. The system was inherited by the Australian colonies from Britain, and copied its form of Cabinet government.

There are many other democratic models available. One that is well known to Australians is the American system, a republic with a president who is elected (indirectly in that case) and who forms the government around him. The Congress, elected separately, is a true legislature. Power is shared and balanced between the government and the parliament. Another model is provided by Israel, where the President is a figurehead but the real head of government, the Prime Minister, is directly elected by the people. The other members of parliament are separately elected. Again, power is shared between government and parliament, though in this case the parliament can force the resignation of the head of the government under various circumstances.

Moves to make Australian parliaments more representative of the people – and to make government more directly responsible to the people – will not occur in the ordinary course of political life. The politicians control the system and are comfortable with it. Reform will only come if the next debate about the republic is concerned not just with whether we should cease to have the British monarch as our constitutional head, but also with the way we should govern ourselves.

*Dr David Solomon is Contributing Editor with The Courier Mail, Brisbane, and a lawyer and author. One of his recent books is Coming of Age: Charter for a new Australia.