The parameters within which it would operate for the next 100 years were codified in the document written at the time: the Australian Constitution. The authors of our constitution (I dont like saying "founding fathers". Benjamin Franklin was a founding father and he didn't, so far as I know, have anything to do with the Australian constitution) invested much importance in the senate they constituted. In fact if we are to presume that the different chapters of the constitition were arranged in order of their importance to the Australian Democracy, then even greater importance was invested in the Senate then was in the House of Representatives. Possibly something to mull over when considering the Senate and it's importance to our Australian style of democracy.
The intention at the time was that it would be a house of "States Rights". It was to be a formal mechanism for the protection of strong federalism. It was intended to be a strong, tangible, expression, of the strong will among all Australian colonies at the time, for independance from one another. Yes, you may have observed that this if an oddity given that all constitutional delegates were simultaneously trying to nut out an agreement for binding nationhood. The national psyche in 1901 was more then a little bit schitzo.
The Senate is made up of 76 Senators. 12 from each of the six original states. 2 from the ACT. 2 from the NT. Senators vote on all legislation passed by the House of Representatives. Legislation that senators reject goes back to the House of Representatives, usually with amendments (changes that senators would like made to the legislation). The House of Reps either then rejects the amendments and the legislation dies or they accept the new ammendments and the legislation becomes law. The senate can even initiate new legislation through what is called a "Private Members Bill". In a legislative sense, there is no power held in the House of Reps that is not also held in the Senate.
The difference between the 2 houses of parliament has to do with executive power and electoral processes.
Senators do not determine who will be included in the cabinet of ministers. MP's however, do. At the beginning of each new term of parliament, the House of Representatives will vote on who will take up positions in the Cabinet (including the Prime Minister). In other words, the executive branch of government is chosen by and accountable to the House of Representatives. To this end, the House of Reps IS the executive branch of Government.
As was said, there is also an electoral difference between the HOR and the Senate. Senators are elected on a state by state basis (12 senators from each state). In some sense Senators are elected from huge multi-member electorates while MP's are elected from relatively small single member electorates. The result of this is that senators tend to represent a much greater diversity of positions and points of view within society then do their lower house counterparts.
So what are we to make of this suggestion for reform in the Senate? Despite how satisfying we find it when John Howard has his draconian ASIO legislation, his neo-liberalist privatisation adgenda and a whole raft of similarly disasterous pieces of legislation rejected, when all is said and done.... the senate probably DOES need reform.
So lets first list the clear problems we can identify with the way the Senate operates-
- Double Dissoloution elections are expensive.
If the Government of the day reverts to one of these each time they have a disagreement with the senate then that is expensive, annoying, and not prone to solving any of the problems that might be inherrant in the legislation.
- It can be reasonably argued that the senate is often out of touch with the attitudes of mainstream Australia. Each Senator has a term of 6 years. How can they be kept reliably accountable to the Australian public when their terms are so long?
- When the balance of power is held entirely in the hands of a single minor party or independant then that power has the potential to be abused. Why should it be left to an uber-conservative independant Senator from Tasmania to determine whether or not Telstra will be sold?
- The senate is not sufficiently representative of the wide range of views held by Australians. 4 in every 5 senators belong to the ALP or the Liberal/National Coalition. Do 80% of Australians really believe that refugees to this country should be locked up in prisons before being sent back to the atrocious regimes from which they fled?
The biggest part of achieving both these ends, is to increase the size of the Senate. With only 76 members, the senate is almost half the size of the House Of Representatives. At the Joint sitting of parliament following a double dissoloution election, MP's outnumber Senators by almost 2 to 1. A government merely has to win a Double Disoloution election, which is no big ask given that they can call such an election at a time entirely of their choosing, to push through as many pieces of contentious legislation as they please. If the senate were bigger (and therefore more relevant during a joint sitting or Parliament), the Goverment of the day might think twice about calling expensive double disoloution elections. They would have to consider the fact that a big margin win in the Lower House would be necessary in order for that majority to overcome the majority of opposition in the Senate. In short... they would probably have to forgo a Double Disouloution in favour of negotiation and compromise. Increasing the number of senators would also decrease the quota required for each candidate for pick up a senate seat. This in turn would produce a favourable climate for minor parties. More about minor parties and the part they play in an obstructionist senate a little later on.
The next big problem with the Senate is that a single senator from Sydney represents 12 times as many people as a Senator from Tasmania. The population of New South Wales is aproximately 12 times as much as the population of Tasmania, yet both NSW and Tasmania are represented by the same number of senators. So the second biggest reform that needs to made to the Senate is that the Nation should, rather then vote for senators along state lines, vote for senators from special Senate Electorates, each containing a more or less equal population. Each vote deserves to have one value.
Of course a problem here is that it may potentially cause problems if these so called special senate electorates were to cross state boundaries. These special senate electorates might concievably hold between 1 and 2 million people each. What of the electorate from which tasmanians vote? Tasmania has a population of much less then 1 million people. Would Tasmanians be happy to vote in a Senate electorate that incorporates part of victoria into its boundaries? More to the point.... would Victorians object to it? The answer is likely to be yes. The compromise that must be made is to acknowledge that the ideal of one vote/one value will always be an elusive one. Tasmanians will always weild more power with their vote then will Sydney-siders. But we can change the system to ensure that tasmanians dont weild 12 times as much power as voters from New South Wales. So, these proposed senate electorates would have to be formulated so as to not straddle state borders. For instance, NSW and Victoria might both be broken up into 3 senate elctorates each. Queensland and WA might be broken up into 2 senate electorates each. Tasmania would remain as it is now.... responsible for electing senators as a complete state. The Northern Territory would be included into one of the WA electorates. The ACT would be included into one of the 3 NSW electorates.
2 purposes are served here. We move closer to the democratic ideal of one vote - one value, and we create scope for increasing the number of Senators in the Senate. Presuming that each of these new Senate Electorates were to have 12 senators, the senate would expand from its current 76 Senators to 144 senators. Much closer to the number of MP's in the House of Reps (150).
Finally.... it could be argued by some, that one of the problems inherrant in the Senate is that at each general election only half of all Senators come up for reelection. MP's only get 3 year terms but senators get 6 year terms. I see no good reason for this, and plenty of problems with it. It makes the Senate much slower to react to changes in attitudes amongst Australians. Arguably... much slower then MP's who have to be fully accountable to the people every 3 years. Furthermore, it artifically elevates the quota of vote that each senate candidate must recieve before getting a seat in the senate. I will talk about Senate quotas later. Also, and this returns to my earlier point about discouraging governments from calling double dissolution elections, if the entire senate went up for reelection at each general election, as is currently done only at double disolution elections, then that would eliminate the biggest reason that governments call for double disolution elections (to refresh the term of ALL senators).
Now for a lesson in electoral maths. Currently, at each federal election 6 senate seats come up for re-election in each state. Consequently candidates from each state must get 16.6% of the vote across the entire state, in order to pick up a seat in the senate. 1/6th of the votes. Needless to say this requires a preferentially system of vote distribution so that individual candidates can reach their quota of votes, but never more then their quota as once they exceed their quota votes for that senator get distributed to the next senator on the ballot. This creates an electoral phenomenon that is not widely acknowledged. While everyone knows about how this creates a senate with a make-up more proportional to the beliefs of Australians, few realise that a Political Party must have atleast 16% popular support in order to pick up a senate seat and therefore enjoy any sort of meaniful presence in federal politcs. What i'm saying is this: while parties like The Green, One Nation and the Democrats might enjoy representation that is broadly in-line with the proportion of Australians that support these parties, points of views held by small sections of the community, get looked over if they can't reach the critical mass of 16% of the vote. Even worse, is that in the larget states of NSW and Victoria 16% of the vote can mean in excess of 500,000 votes. Earlier I mentioned the idea that it would be better if the entire senate were required to campaign for their seats at each general election. 3 year senate terms rather then the current 6. 12 senate seats would be challeneged at each general election. The quota required to pick up a seat would drop down to 1/12. Candidates would suddenly need a mere 8% of the quota in order to get a senate seat. Furthermore, I talked above about splitting the more populous states down into 2 to 3 "senate electorates" in the name of the one vote-one value ideal. This would make it so that, at the very most, candidates would need 100,000 votes to pick up a senate seat. In small states such as Tasmania candidates would need a mere 50,000 distributed votes to pick up a senate seat.
Australians are already tragically disillusioned with contemporary Australian politics. We see it when aberant political types like Pauline Hanson appear on the scene and pick up incredible support amongst battlers in the suburbs and the bush alike. Mainstream Australia lacks the voice to explain just how pissesd off they are with mainstream politics. We seem to forget all the time, when we hear polling data on how many people support this party or that party, that a huge proportion of people vote the way they do for want of an alternative that suits them better. People answer polling questions and fill in ballots on the basis of which politician offends them the least. Which politician is the least thhreatening to the idividuals life-style.
But what if the system were different? What if it were possible to pick up seats in federal parliament without having to lay claim to a few hundred thousand supporters. How many independants might decide to declare their candidacy in federal elections, how many new minor parties might spring up if our political system began listening to the truly fringe points of view around Australia? If the quota of votes required to pick up a senate seat was more then halved across the nation our senate would see a burgeoning of independants and new political parties. It's not that getting a seat in the senate would become easier it's just that the senate would become a more proportionally representative body of governance.
Ironically this wouldnt be anywhere near as bad for the government of the day as one might presume. At the moment 17% of all senate seats are held by neither the Coalition or the ALP. That 17% makes up the balance of power. It can side with the governments 46% to pass legislation, or it can side with the oppositions 37% to reject legislation. Needless to say that 17% does not move in one uniform direction. If contains atleast 4 registered political parties and numerous independants. The government need only convince 4% of that 17% to pass their legislation through Parliament. Essentially they need only convince the Australian Democrats in order to pass their legislation. A mere 7 senators. It was worse during most of the 90's when legislation was frequently made or broke by a single conservative senator from Tasmania, Brian Harridine.
Imagine now then, the senate that I propose:
| Projected Senate Makeup Under a Reformed Senate | |
| Coal. | 58 senators (40%) |
| ALP | 45 senators (31%) |
| Australian Democrats ???? | 13 senators (9%) |
| Greens | 10 senators (7%) |
| One Nation | 4 senators (3%) |
| Independants | 14 senators (10%) |
The above table is my best guess at how the make up of the Australian Senate would change under the changes I have proposed. The Coalition and the ALP would probably lose influence in real terms. The Democrats would probably remain where they are in real terms. The Greens and One Nation would probably pick up more influence and a whole new batch of independant senators would materialise (for the sake of simplicity any senator belonging to a party with only 2 or 1 senators is considered to be an Independant). Clearly here there is no balance of power to speak of. Even is the Democrats pool their 13 senators in with the governments 58 senators, they still can't reach the 73 seats required to pass a motion. Nor can the Democrats pool with votes in with the ALP to ensure that a motion gets blocked. Suddenly we have a senate that needs some give and take for it to work. Some compromise. Firstly because parties such as the Democrats would no longer be in a position to say "accept our amendments or there is NO WAY IN HELL this legislation is going through." All they can possibly say is "accept our amendments or this legislation won't make it through with any help from Democrat senators" since the Government would be able to look for the necessary votes from other parties and independants within the senate. Suddenly the government has options when trying to pass their legislation. They can get it up with support from the democrats and 1 or 2 of the independants. They can pass their legislation with the support of the ALP. They can pass their legislation with the support of One Nation and most of the independants. They can pass their legislation with the support of the greens and a handfull of independants. Or the greens and the democrats. Without any one party or Senator holding a concrete balance of power, debate and compromise within the Senate would be a much more fluid process and rather then the Senate becoming a more obstuctionist instrument it would probably in many cases become LESS obstructionist. On one hand the government would be able to make compromises with the group of senators that demand the least from the governments adgenda, on the other hand the government would need to make an effort to satisfy a greater number of senators to get their policy through. It would create a senate where legislation would be blocked because it were truly offensive to senators, and not just because the priciples of politics demand that politicians make some pretense of being tough with their opponents.
I dont think I have anything else to add to this.
Please give me your comments.