Posted on 05/07/2016 9:29:20 PM PDT by naturalman1975
So contrary to what naturalman said, it is an elected dictatorship.
This (along with the constitutional “crisis” of 1975) has lead me to believe that the Australian Constitution was written to empower crybabies who don’t get their way.
The primary issue that triggered the crisis of 1975 is not always clearly understood. It began in December 1974 when Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in concert with the Deputy Prime Minister/Treasurer Jim Cairns, the Attorney General Senator Lionel Murphy and the Minister for Minerals and Energy Rex Connor, decided to seek a $4 billion loan from overseas to fund large scale infrastructure projects. Normally Australia would have sourced such a loan from either the United Kingdom or the United States but Whitlam's fairly extreme socialism made him ambivalent towards those two traditional options. Instead they decided to seek the loan in the Middle East. By itself that decision was controversial because it could have left Australia vulnerable to some rather volatile powers but if they'd gone about it sensibly, it would not have been a major problem. Instead they engaged the services of a shady Pakistani 'businessman' named Tirath Khemlani, bypassing the Australian Treasury to seek the loan directly - note that, a group of four men including the three most important members of the government and another Cabinet Minister, including the Treasurer bypassed the Treasury to seek what was, at the time, a simply massive loan ($4 billion was a lot more back then than it is now) and engaged a man of very questionable character and reputation to do it.
But if it had all worked out, then the crisis of 1975 would not have occurred. The thing is, it didn't work out. As it became clear the Khemlani was not having success in garnering the loan, rumours about the unorthodox nature of what was going on began to trickle out. At this point, discussion started to appear in the press as to whether or not Opposition Leader Malcolm Fraser would use his numbers in the Senate to 'block supply' - 'block the budget' and force an election. Fraser made it clear in an interview that he would only do this in 'extraordinary and reprehensible' circumstances relating to the Budget - only if the Whitlam government acted outside of accepted practice and convention.
Two things happened that served to create those 'extraordinary and reprehensible circumstances'. The first is that in March 1975, the Treasurer and Deputy Prime Minister Jim Cairns signed a document authorising a 2.5% commission for an Australian businessman named George Harrison if he arranged a loan for the Australian government. In June 1975, Cairns made a statement to Parliament that he had not offered any such commissions - he mislead Parliament. Under Westminster conventions, misleading Parliament is extremely serious. Cairns had to resign from office (a sex scandal at the same time didn't help his case). But even more significantly, as the Loans Affair scandal grew, Whitlam ordered Rex Connor to stop seeking a loan through Khemlani - and Rex Connor disobeyed that order. He continued to seek such a loan, and when he was asked about it in Parliament, he mislead Parliament as well. While Cairns violation was fairly minor, Connors was huge. And Whitlam stood up in Parliament himself and said that the government was no longer seeking loans through Khemlani - and Whitlam mislead Parliament as well. Whitlam honestly believed what he was saying - he was relying on Rex Connor having told him the truth and Connor had lied to him - but nonetheless you now had a situation where three senior Ministers, including the Deputy Prime Minister/Treasurer and the Prime Minister had all mislead Parliament over major budget issues. This more than created the extraordinary and reprehensible circumstances which jusified Fraser blocking the Budget. He would not have done so, if those circumstances didn't exist, and more significantly, his Senators would not have supported him doing so.
Without Supply, Whitlam had one clear option that he was supposed to take under Constitutional convention - he should have gone to the Governor General and asked for an election. He wouldn't do that because he knew he would lose. Instead, he decided to threaten to ask the Governor General for a half-Senate election - constitutionally he had the right to ask this as it was now less than a year until the expiry of half the Senate's terms, but it is likely the Governor General would have refused the request in that situation (without supply - a budget - a half-Senate election would not guarantee a resolution to the Budget crisis). Whitlam's only other proposal to continue governing without a budget would have involved the government ordering the Commonwealth Bank to use its assets to give public servants loans - that wasn't clearly legal and was only a stop gap at most. The Governor General attempted to broker a compromise solution but Whitlam refused to accept the compromise (it's unclear whether Fraser would have, but Whitlam's refusal rendered that moot). Finally, Whitlam decided to try for his half-Senate election solution and at that point, the Governor General - himself a former Chief Justice of the New South Wales Supreme Court - having consulted with the Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia to ensure his interpretation of his constitutional duties in this extraordinary situation, determined to dismiss the Whitlam government. He called in Malcolm Fraser and asked him what he would do if commissioned as Prime Minister, and Fraser gave the correct answers - he would tell the Senate to pass supply, and then immediately would advise the Governor General to dissolve Parliament for a new election. And that was what happened.
If the Constitution had been written to 'empower crybabies' in the way you describe, things like 1975 would have happened more than once. But it wasn't. Elaborate safeguards are in place under the constitution and constitutional convention to ensure such things happen only in extraordinary circumstances. It's only happened once because only one government - the most left wing in our history - acted so irresponsibly as to create a situation where these provisions became active.
I really think you just don't have a good understanding of how the system works.
Yes, Whitlam went around whining in 1975 - he was the worst Prime Minister in Australia's history and he was a whiner. He wasn't typical. He was the abnormal one. And he wasn't empowered by being a crybaby - he was emasculated by it.
Most Australian governments run close to full term. We've had 44 Parliaments in 115 years. Of those 35 have run to near term (only one has reached the absolute theoretical maximum).
Of the other nine, the following are the reasons they did not run to term.
The 5th Parliament (PM Joseph Cook, Commonwealth Liberal, 1913-1914) only ran 15 months because of a hostile Labor Senate that would not pass most bills. Cook chose to a double dissolution election, which he probably would have won except that between the time the election was called and the time it was held, the First World War broke out and completely changed the political situation.
The next short Parliament was the 11th (PM Stanley Bruce, Nationalist/Country Coalition, 1928-1929) which lasted less than a year. That one was caused by the Prime Minister choosing to introduce policies that large sections of his own party didn't like - they crossed the floor to vote with the opposition to defeat the government.)
Then we had the 19th Parliament (PM Robert Menzies, Liberal/Country Coalition, 1949-1950). That ran fifteen months and a new election was called at that point to increase the stability of the government - Menzies remained Prime Minister until 1966.
Same with the 21st Parliament (Robert Menzies, Liberal/Country Coalition, 1954-1955). The Labor Party (in opposition) had split and Menzies knew he could get a more stable government with an election.
The 24th Parliament (Sir Robert Menzies, Liberal/Country Coalition, 1962-1963) was shortened for two main reasons. The first was that the government had passed laws giving all indigenous Australians (Aboriginals) the right to vote and the government wanted to allow them to exercise this right as soon as possible. The second was that the previous election had resulted in a Parliament where a working majority was difficult and Menzies knew, again, an election would stablise that situation.
The next short Parliaments were the Whitlam ones (28th and 29th, Gough Whitlam, Labor, 1972-1974, 1974-1975) and I'll accept the criticism against him, but he was an anomaly and was ultimately removed from office.
The 30th Parliament was also short (PM Malcolm Fraser, Country/Liberal Coalition, 1975-1977) though only just (3 days) and was called when it was to bring House of Representative and Senate elections back into line after the crisis of 1975, reducing the chance of having to have separate House and half-Senate elections at greater cost to the taxpayer.
And the last short Parliament was the 33rd (PM Bob Hawke, Labor, 1983-1984) and that was shorter because the size of the Parliament had been expanded by legislation and Hawke wanted the new larger Parliament installed as soon as possible.
The point is, with the arguable exception of Whitlam (and I'd personally give him a pass on the first of his two short Parliaments) and Bruce, the minority of cases where we have had short Parliaments have occurred for good reasons that increased stability of government. They haven't occurred because somebody was a crybaby. And the last time it happened at all was now 40 years ago.
If your system empowered voters, then the comment in 18 would be false. But apparently it is true.
Except it isn't really. That's one person's criticism and I do get where they are coming from, but I don't think it's particularly accurate because it leaves out a couple of important details.
The first is that the party line is decided by the party room. That's where MPs have the right to be heard and to make their views known.
Secondly, until reasonably recently, Liberal and National MPs were reasonably free to vote as they wished - it was never encouraged but it was accepted against party lines. That has changed recently to some extent, but that's an aberration caused by Labor's solidarity stance.
Thirdly, backbench Liberal and National MPs do still retain the right to vote against the party line (although frontbenchers are not meant to do so), and do so more often than Fluoresence suggests, although not as often as I'd like.
Fourthly, on some issues - issues of conscience - a free vote is entirely possible.
Frankly, I regard Australia's system of government as more democratic in some ways than that of the US - because we can easily replace a Prime Minister whereas you would find it very hard to replace a President. At the moment, I think we're actually doing it too often - if Turnbull loses this election, we'll have our fifth Prime Minister since 2013 - but it's the other way around. Our system allows for situations (such as 1998) when the Prime Minister can seek a specific mandate for a change of policy from that they ran at the previous election.
There are aspects of the Australian system I'd change - but going to fixed terms certainly isn't one of them. They've done that in my state and all its lead to is lame duck governments going on for years after the people have decided they don't want them.
Not at all. I generally have no problem finding a candidate who represents me. At the last few Federal elections, that has been the man elected as my local MP (Bruce Bilson, the Liberal Member for Dunkley). Unfortunately he is not running again, so I will have to see who is put up as candidates by the various parties. I hope the Liberal candidate will be one I agree with. If not, I'll vote a different way, secure in the knowledge that our preferential voting system means I can freely vote for a minor party candidate if needed without wasting my vote and making it more likely a socialist gets in.
Also putting governments into lame duck status can be a good thing. If they win an election, they can claim a mandate and continue as usual. Whereas lameducks allow the government to be shut down and force debates on whether the country is spending too much.
A fundamental disagreement there - I don't believe there is any value in having a government that is unable to govern. I want it replaced with one that can govern as quickly as possible. Government shutdowns like those sometimes experienced in the US are the ultimate waste of taxpayer money because the government is still being paid for and isn't functioning.
I think this says the problem is getting worse.
Yes, in the short term. But it will correct itself. Part of the reason we have such a chaotic Senate at the moment is because people are sick of this party line issue, and so have installed more independent and minor party candidates than ever before. The major parties will respond to that. Our system allows that to happen - unlike the US system where the Republicans and Democrats are basically a duopoly.
Systems do not change until they are crushed in embarrassing losses. By making it hard to vote against the government on the floor, it avoids the government having to deal with embarrassing defeats.
No - because they face them in the Senate where the government can be defeated by minor parties with the balance of power - up to a point. That's pretty much what has happened to the current government - it's been unable to get its bills through the Senate. Unless it shows the Australian people it has changed, it will lose office.
The problem with that is that it you’re essentially electing someone to a party room, where discussions are private, and then hoping that they’ll be on the government side and have enough power there to represent your electorate properly and sway the majority opinion of the party.
But the situation in the House of Representatives is obviously not very representative at all and it doesn’t really even function independently of the executive. The overall legislative agenda is set by the executive and the outcome of all votes has already been decided before a bill enters parliament, potentially by as little as a simple majority of the governing party, which could mean barely more than a quarter of parliament (or a dictate from the executive). Even the decision to have a conscience vote is up to the party, again, possibly just the executive.
Finally, there is no effectively no ability for parliament to circumvent the executive and pass its own laws (as can happen in the US) to force better policies, because private members’ bills require the support of the majority party to pass, which fundamentally requires approval by the executive, and if they had such support they would already be government bills.
Yet the system “has” to function that way because the executive is the parliamentary leadership of the majority party, and legislative chaos would reduce their prestige and create instability in the executive.
Anti-Australian political philosophy is so widespread that there is probably nobody with any substantial stature who thinks differently, and there is certainly nobody with the stature of Trump who would be able to overcome Australia’s one-sided media, no room for a Trump in any political party, no grassroots political infrastructure, and it’s fundamentally impossible for such a person to run as an independent/third party and lead the country, or even be a possible election spoiler.And yet one did, just last election. Well didn't end up leading, because our system doen't offer an easy bandwaggon for clowns to take the whole show in one fell swoop
That can't be right. It was Good Gough Whitlam who gave abos the right to vote. My ABC tells me so!
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