The separation of powers and checks and balances are all very well, but political systems need a workable circuit breaker – as the GST fiasco is revealing.
Circuit breakers, you will recall live in the power box. When something ghastly happens in the electrical circuitry, like a big surge of power or some idiot jamming a screwdriver into the toaster, the circuit breaker trips. The circuit breaks so no-one gets electrified and so significant part of the circuit or appliance gets wrecked. When the ghastly happening stops it is a simple matter to retriever the circuit breaker. You don’t have to grovel under the house or into the walls to find out which bit of the cabling melted, or replace the very expensive thingummyjig in the refrigerator.
No we have a political circuit breaker in Australia for the sorts of occasions when Brian Harradine jambs a screwdriver into the toaster. It is called a double dissolution. But it is a very expensive and cumbersome circuit-breaker and it does not always work.
The Government has just won an election (albeit very narrowly). Surely, it should not have to go back to another one so soon to get through key elements of its platform? These are elements it stated to the people. John Howard is in a similar position as Gough Whitlam in 1974. The Senate is knocking back critical legislation that was taken to the people a few months previously. Sure Howard has had only a few pieces of legislation knocked back or significantly redrawn compared to 21 pieces with Whitlam, but they have been centrepieces of his platform.
Australia should not have to have a double dissolution to resolve this.
The places where Australia has taken much of its constitutional framework – Britain and the US – do not have this problem. Britain solved it with a crisis 11 years after the Australian Constitution was enacted. America solved its at the time the Constitution was framed.
In Britain the House of Lords threatened to block a Budget and turf out the Prime Minister by forcing an election. But the Prime Minister threatened to create enough new lords to swamp the place. John Howard cannot do that. Later the Lords’ power was cut further. It can now only delay legislation.
The cost has been that Executive and legislative power has fused. The Prime Minister and Government with a majority in the legislature can by and large do what they like.
Prime Minister Tony Blair is now reforming the Lords. Hereditary lords will no longer be able to vote. He may regret it. A revitalised Lords might exercise its new-found legitimacy in unpredictable ways.
In the US, the system of checks and balances in the Constitution is carefully worked out. The President can be turfed out, but there is a carefully worked process and of utmost importance a set procedure for succession of the new President.
In Australia we do not have a formal method of electing a Prime Minister. Nor do we have a formal way for deal with a crisis like that of 1975. And as pointed out, the method of resolving a conflict between the Houses like the GST is far too cumbersome.
The main response to Harradine’s GST position has been either “”Good it’s gone” or “”We need tax reform.” The real issue, though, is that we need reform of the Senate. One or two people should not hold the fate of the Government in their hands.
But in reforming the Senate we should not go the way of Britain and New Zealand which was to emasculate their upper houses, passing to much unfettered power to the lower house.
Rather we need a workable circuit breaker, and some trade-offs in power.
We should abandon the double dissolution. The Senate should not have power to block the ordinary financing of Government (say, the equivalent of last year’s appropriation indexed.) The Senate should have the power to amend legislation and block legislation. The Government should then have a choice of accepting the amendments or taking the legislation to the people at the next election. If the Government gets re-elected it should then be able to pass its legislation without Senate approval. After all the people would have seen the legislation in all its detail beforehand. It would not be a general, woolly mandate.
But the Government should not be able to go to an election whenever it wants. Rather, elections should be fixed. We should have a fixed three-year term. Remember, there are no double dissolutions and the Senate cannot block supply. When the House of Representatives gets elected it gets a guaranteed three-year term. (Just as the US Congress gets a set term.)
The only way a Prime Minister could get toppled would be by a vote of no-confidence on the floor of the House. And just to ensure stability in the system, no-confidence motions should only be valid if they name the new Prime Minister. That way we would not get the horrible instability that we have seen in India and Israel when the Prime Minister is toppled and orderly succession is not guaranteed because the no-confidence motion did not or could not name a successor.
The named successor and fixed terms, incidentally, would take a lot of the heat out of the debate over the power of the head of state.
Now, a Prime Minister should not be able to introduce and stack up legislation in the three months before an election is due. The people and the Parliament (including the Senate) should get a fair chance to mull it over before an election.
Double dissolutions and early elections have been costly, unnecessary and disruptive in Australia. In the past 25 years we have had 11 elections. All but three have been double dissolutions or early elections by three months or more. And we are now chattering about another double dissolution.
Journalists and political scientists have a vested interest in early elections and double dissolutions. They get extra importance and work. But they do not help the rest of Australia. Politicians argue for longer terms as the solution, but that is self-interested, too.
No Prime Minister would easily give up the power of calling an election when he likes. But it might be a fair trade-off against a too-powerful Senate.
The old circuit breaker is broke and it should be fixed.