Information about Politics Of Australia

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This article is part of the series: Politics of Australia
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The Politics of Australia take place within the framework of parliamentary democracy. Australia is a federation and a constitutional monarchy, and Australians elect state and territory legislatures as well as a bicameral Parliament of Australia based on the Westminster System.

The legislative branch

At the national level, elections are held at least once every three years.The Prime Minister can advise the Governor-General to call an election for the House of Representatives at any time, but Senate elections can only be held within certain periods prescribed in the Constitution. The last general election was in October 2004. The Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia consists of two chambers:

• The House of Representatives has 150 members, elected for a three year term in single-seat constituencies with a system of alternative vote known as full preferential voting.
• The Senate has 76 members, elected through a preferential system in 12-seat state constituencies and two-seat territorial constituencies with a system of single transferable vote. Electors choose territorial senators for a three-year term. The state senators serve for a six-year term, with half of the seats renewed every three years.

The voting system for the Senate underwent a significant change in 1948. Prior to that date Senate elections were conducted using a 'first past the post' voting arrangement. This could result in landslide victories to one political party under relatively small changes in the popular vote, as well as periodically resulting in a Senate with a large majority of opposition Senators. The change to a preferential system of voting has resulted in the numbers of Senators from each party more closely reflecting the numbers of votes the party list received, and a more balanced composition of the chamber. For most of the last quarter of a century, a balance of power situation has existed, whereby neither government nor opposition has controlled the Senate, with governments needing to seek the support of minor parties or independents to secure their legislative agenda.

The relative ease with which minor parties can secure representation in the Senate compared to the House of Representatives has meant that such parties have focussed their efforts on securing upper house representation, both at the national and state level (the two territories are unicameral). They have usually been unable to win seats in the House of Representatives (the Greens won a House seat at the 2002 Cunningham by-election, but lost it in the 2004 general election). Minor parties do however affect lower house politics through their recommendations to voters regarding which party should receive voters' preferences, a strategy regarded as decisive in the outcome of the 1990 federal election.^[1] A focus on the upper house has moulded the platforms and politics of minor parties, for which an upper house brokering role is the best opportunity to affect legislative outcomes. The demands placed on parties by this role can cause internal tensions within, and external pressure on, these parties, demonstrated by the splits within, and political decline of, the Australian Democrats.

Because legislation must pass both houses in order to become law, it is possible for there to be disagreements between the houses that can stymie government bills. Such deadlocks are resolved under section 57 of the Constitution, under a procedure called a double dissolution election. Such elections are rare, not because the conditions for holding them are seldom met, but because they can pose a significant political risk to the government that calls them. Of the six double dissolution elections held since federation, half have resulted in the fall of the government that called them. Only once (in 1974) has the full procedure for resolving a deadlock been followed, with a joint sitting of the two houses being held after the election to deliberate upon the bills that originally led to the deadlock.

The executive branch

Main articles: Government of Australia and Cabinet of Australia

Reflecting the influence of the Westminster tradition of British government, Australian government ministers are drawn from amongst the elected members of parliament.^[2] The government is formed by the party or parties that have the confidence of the majority of members of the House of Representatives. In practice, this has equated to the party or coalition of parties that holds a majority of seats in that chamber.

By convention, the Prime Minister is always a member of the House of Representatives. On the only occasion that a Senator was made Prime Minister (John Gorton in 1968), Gorton immediately resigned and contested a seat in the House of Representatives.

The same high degree of discipline that characterises Australian party politics extends to the executive, where all ministers individually defend collective government decisions, and individual ministers who cannot undertake the public defence of government actions are generally expected to resign from the ministry. Such resignations are even less common than breaches of cabinet solidarity. The rarity of public disclosure of splits within cabinet reflects the seriousness with which internal party division is regarded in Australian politics.

Political parties and Australian politics

The role of parties in Australian politics

Organised, national political parties have dominated Australia's political environment and parliament since federation. Politics since 1900 can be characterised by the rapid and early rise of a party representing organised, non-revolutionary workers - the Australian Labor Party - and the coalescing of non-Labor political interests into two parties: a centre-right party that has been predominantly socially conservative and with a base in business and the middle class (now the Liberal Party of Australia); and a rural or agrarian conservative party (now the National Party of Australia) (see following sections for more detail). While there is a small number of other political parties that have achieved parliamentary representation, these three parties dominate organised politics in all Australian jurisdictions, and only on rare (and generally short-lived) occasions have any other parties or independents played a role in the formation or maintenance of governments.

Whether Australia's political system should be characterised as a 'two-party system' is a matter of debate, and can be said to vary to some degree from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Of Australia's three main parties, two (Liberal and National) are in longstanding coalition at the national level - however they are not always in coalition at the state level, and the Liberal Party is not always the senior partner (the National Party predominates in the state of Queensland). However, as the National Party only ever considers a coalition or similar arrangement with one of the other two parties (ie. Liberal),^[3] the system might be regarded as a two-party one in terms of choices of government, even though voters in some electorates may have a choice between three candidates with realistic chances of being elected to office.

Despite the entrenched role of formal parties in Australian politics, they are 'almost totally extra-legal and extra-constitutional'.^[4] In contrast to some other countries, such as the United States, Australian political parties and their internal operations are relatively unregulated. There is however a system of party registration through the Australian Electoral Commission and its state and territory equivalents, including reporting of some aspects of party activities, principally the receipt of major donations.

Political parties in Australia today

For other political parties see List of political parties in Australia. An overview on elections and election results is included in Elections in Australia.

Three political parties dominate Australian politics. Of these, two govern together in a Coalition:

• The Liberal Party is a party of the centre-right which broadly represents business, the suburban middle classes and many rural people.
• Its junior coalition partner is the National Party of Australia, formerly the Country Party and now known for electoral purposes as "The Nationals", a conservative party which represents rural interests.
• The Australian Labor Party (ALP) is a social democratic party founded by the Australian labour movement and broadly represents the urban working class, although it increasingly has a base of middle class support.

Minor parties include:

• The Australian Democrats, a centrist, socially liberal and environmentalist party
• The Australian Greens, a left-wing and environmentalist party
• The Country Liberal Party, a party which only runs for office in the Northern Territory. It is part of the Liberal/National Coalition
• The Family First Party, a party centred on socially conservative Christians.

The list of political parties in Australia comprises the names and federal leaders of significant political parties as well as the names of other parties, including formerly significant parties.

The History of Australia's political parties

Australian politics operates as a de facto two-party system. Unlike in the United States, however, internal party discipline is extremely tight. Australia's system was not always a two-party system, however, nor was it always as internally stable as in recent decades.

Contemporary Australian national politics

The Liberal/National coalition came to power in the March 1996 election, ending 13 years of Labor government and making John Howard Prime Minister. He was subsequently re-elected in October 1998, November 2001 and October 2004. The coalition now holds a comfortable majority in the House of Representatives. Until 2004, lacking a majority in the Senate, the Liberal/National coalition relied on negotiations with the smaller parties and independents to secure the passage of legislation. However, this changed as a result of the 2004 election, which resulted in the coalition securing a working majority in the Senate from July 2005:

More info: Australian federal election, 2004

Since its election, Howard's conservative coalition has moved to reduce the government's fiscal deficit and the influence of organised labour, placing more emphasis on workplace-based collective bargaining and individual agreements for wages and conditions of work. The Howard government also accelerated the pace of privatisation of government-owned enterprises that began with the Hawke Labor government. During its first two terms, the government's most sweeping change was the introduction of a goods and services tax (despite a pledge by Howard as opposition leader that there would never ever be a GST under a Howard Liberal government) which also saw reductions in personal income tax and company tax. With the re-election of the Howard government in 2004, several significant and controversial bills have been passed, due to the government's newly-acquired Senate majority that became effective on July 1, 2005. These major changes have included a radical revamp of industrial relations laws, an introduction of voluntary student unionism, and the full privatisation of telecommunications company Telstra. Recently, the Government has also announced plans to privatise Medibank Private, a private health insurance provider. These changes have sparked significant debate within Australia.

The Howard government has departed from the foreign policy of its predecessor, placing renewed emphasis on relations with Australia's traditional allies, the United States and the United Kingdom and downgrading support for the United Nations in favour of bilateralism. Both major parties support maintaining good relations with regional powers such as the People's Republic of China, Japan, and Indonesia, although issues such as the independence of East Timor have sometimes made this difficult. Australia has become increasingly involved in the internal difficulties of its smaller neighbours, such as Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Fiji and Nauru.

Administrative divisions

In the states and territories, elections are held at least once every four years (except in Queensland, which has three-year terms). In New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and the Australian Capital Territory, election dates are fixed by legislation. However, the other state premiers and territory Chief Ministers have the same discretion in calling elections as the Prime Minister at the national level. (See Main articles: Australian electoral system, Electoral systems of the Australian states and territories).

Regional or local government within each state is handled by Local Government Areas and unlike other equivalent forms of local government, they have relatively little power compared to the state governments (See Main article: Local government in Australia).

See also

• List of Australian ministers
• Politics of Australia and Canada compared
• Politics of Australia and New Zealand compared
• Canberra Press Gallery
• Political donations in Australia
• Political families of Australia

References

Reading

• Department of the Senate, 'Electing Australia’s Senators', Senate Briefs No. 1, 2006, retrieved July 2007
• Rodney Smith, Australian Political Culture, Longman, Frenchs Forest NSW, 2001.

Australian politics blogs, opinion pages and news sites

• Australianpolitics.com News, reference articles, and many other resources, maintained by teacher Malcolm Farnsworth
• ozpolitics Australian politics information, blog and feed site, unknown originator
• Australian Government and Politics Database maintained by Campbell Sharman of University of Western Australia
• Ostpolitik Blog reference site
• TooRight.Info A user moderated news source on Australian politics, unknown originator
• Australian National University Politics site Australian politics links, maintained by Rick Kuhn, ANU

•  • [ e] Politics of Australia
Commonwealth	Parliament House of Representatives Senate High Court Federal Court Queen Governor-General Prime Minister Cabinet Executive Council
Federal elections	1969 1972 1974 1975 1977 1980 1983 1984 1987 1990 1993 1996 1998 2001 2004 2007
State/territory elections	ACT (2004 election) NSW (2007 election) NT (2005 election) QLD (2006 election) SA (2006 election) TAS (2006 election) VIC (2006 election) WA (2005 election)
Political parties	Australian Democrats Australian Greens Australian Labor Party Family First Party Liberal Party of Australia National Party of Australia

•  • [ e] Politics of Oceania
Australasia	Australia Norfolk Island Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands New Zealand
Melanesia	East Timor Fiji Indonesia1 New Caledonia Papua New Guinea Solomon Islands Vanuatu
Micronesia	Guam Kiribati Marshall Islands Northern Mariana Islands Federated States of Micronesia Nauru Palau
Polynesia	American Samoa Cook Islands French Polynesia Niue Pitcairn Samoa Tokelau Tonga Tuvalu Wallis and Futuna
1 Transcontinental country