Australia has both federal and Westminster institutions of government. In this amalgam of federalism and responsible government the emphasis of the former is on diversity and difference, whilst the emphasis of the latter is on unity and efficiency.
The Westminster system of parliamentary democracy is one a majoritarian democracy in which cabinet as the executive controls the lower house through strong party discipline. It controls the numbers in the lower house and it is responsible and accountable to the legislature for the actions and activities of the government. This effectively makes the bureaucracy subservient to the legislature and to the executive.
Those calling for a further round of market reforms highlight the Westminister side of government in Australia. They see federalism as a block to efficient government, which the reformers model on a business or corporate model of the executive. Federalism, for them, primarily means a powerful Senate that constrains the power of the executive to implement its legislative program. This power was deliberately conferred on the Senate by the constitutional framers, but the Senate has evolved within this constitutional framework to redefine its role and place in Australian politics.
Hence the calls for reforming the Senate to make it subservient to the executive. The criticism is that the Senate is a relic of the pre-1911 parliamentary order when undemocratic upper houses held co-ordinate power with lower houses. This is misleading since the Senate in Australia is elected through proportional representation(established in 1948). The senate increasingly represents minority interests ignored by the two party system as the votes for the two major parties continues to drop.
Though it often fails to represent its state territory's due to the two party system, the Senate has widespread democratic legitimacy. The Senate's relative independence from the executive means that it is able to introduce through its powerful committee system a degree of delay, questioning and revision of government legislation. Thus the Senate is able to hold partisan governments to account, and it has a genuine opportunity to influence public policy. Consequently, the Australian Senate is one of the most powerful upper houses in Westminister-derived parliamentary systems.
It is no suprise that it is the executive that is the least satisfied with the activity of a powerful Senate, whilst public opinion has acted as its protector. Public opinion fears the despotism of the unchecked power of the executive that is based on the rule and whip of party members in the lower houses. The Senate has institutional credibility and public trust judging by the public submissions to its Senate committees and participation by citizens in public hearings.
Doing something about the Senate nearly always means reducing the Senate's independence from executive control and this is always framed in terms of the Senate delaying and frustrating their legislative programes due to the presence and disruptive potential of the minor parties. The justification for the reform of the Senate is the government's popular mandate to govern (ie., pass its legislation) even though voter support for minor parties and independents is steadily growing.
Australian citizens express their distrust of the increasing power of centralized government in two ways. First, by the tactical use of the Senate to check the power of the political executive and, secondly, by consistently voting down proposals for the constitutional reform of the Senate (only 8 of the 44 proposals have been successful).
The power of the Australian Senate is too substantial for it to seen as a second chamber, an upper House (eg., the House of Lords) or a House of Review. It's power makes it a co-ordinate authority that shares legislative power with the House of Representatives. If the history of the House of Representatives can be interpreted as one of decline of its power vi-a-vis the executive, then that of the Senate if one of increasing power that is open to the ethos of political equality.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at November 22, 2003 02:45 PM | TrackBack