THE constitutional timing, the numbers and the politics, among other things, are all wrong for a double dissolution. Small wonder Prime Minister Kevin Rudd could say at the weekend he had no intention of calling one.
The political commentators, of course, suggest that he is just saying that. Never stand in the way of a political journalist and speculation of an early election or a leadership challenge.
The theory is that with the emission-trading-scheme legislation blocked once by the Senate, Rudd can put it up again in the three months and get it rejected a second time, providing the constitutional conditions for a double dissolution and an election of both Houses.
The trouble is that the timing could hardly be worse.
The constitutional niceties make the fall out in 2012 a price so heavy for Labor that you can virtually rule out a double dissolution.
It works like this. It will take until mid-November for the double dissolution trigger to be in place. That will make it impossible to have an election this year because of the constitutional and Electoral Act requirements for notice and for writs and time for a campaign.
Elections in mid-summer are out because you have to open schools for polling places. Realistically, early March is the earliest for a double dissolution.
Now, the Constitution requires that senators have a fixed term starting on July 1. In ordinary elections senators take their seats on July 1 AFTER the election. So senators elected in November 2007 took their seats on July 1, 2008.
But that does not work with a double dissolution because the new senators have to take their seats immediately so they can vote in any joint sitting to pass the blocked legislation that caused the double dissolution in the first place.
So the Constitution deems them to have been elected as at 1 July BEFORE the election. So senators elected in a March 2010 double dissolution would be deemed to have been elected on 1 July, 2009. Half of them will have a three-term ending on 30 June 2012 and the other half would get a six-year term.
The Constitution also requires that senators must be elected some time in the 12 months before their term is up.
So there must be an election for the three-year senators elected in March 2009 in the year before 30 June 2012. For practical purposes that means a House of Representatives election at the same time. Winter elections are usually not on, so it would have to be March or April 2012 for a House election that would not be technically due until March 2013.
In short, a double dissolution over the emissions-trading-scheme legislation would cut a whole year off Labor’s second term. Simply not worth it.
Sure, you can have a half-Senate election on its own, as Robert Menzies did in 1953 after the 1951 double dissolution and then you have a House election on its own later. But you can’t keep doing that. You have to bring the Senate and House elections back in sync eventually and it means losing some of the next Reps term. Menzies had an election for the Reps and half the Senate in 1954 after a 17-month Reps term.
And he never fell for the double dissolution trap again.
Whitlam fell for it in 1974 but was out of office before paying the price of the shortened subsequent term.
Malcolm Fraser called a double dissolution in March 1983 and lost, so the new Hawke Government paid the price of a short subsequent term. It had to go earlier than its three-year entitlement, unless it wanted to face the risk of a half-Senate election on its own.
The last double dissolution was on 11 July 1987. That was not so bad because those senators were deemed to have been elected on 1 July 1987, so you only lost 11 days of the subsequent term. Even so, if the government had wanted close to its three years it would have been condemned to another unpopular winter election.
In short, double dissolutions cause you to lose up to a year of the subsequent term. And the shorter the period you lose the more likely it is you get condemned to a winter election.
That’s the constitutional reasons for no double dissolution.
What about the numbers. In a double dissolution all 12 senators in each state are elected. It is virtually impossible for both the major parties to get six each in any state and difficult even for just one of them to get six senators in a state.
With 12 senators up, the quota is a relatively easy 7.7 per cent, as against 14.3 per cent in a half-senate election. So a double dissolution offers a better chance for minor parties and independents. It just adds to the problem of a hostile Senate with a large cross-bench for Labor. All it gets is a majority in a joint sitting for just one piece of legislation.
In the ordinary half Senate election in late 2010, on the other hand, Labor looks good. The Coalition will be defending its 2004 Senate result. Remember, when it got four senators out of six in Queensland and three in every other state. The Coalition will most likely get only two senators in each state, maybe three in the West.
In a half Senate election Labor stands to gain three or four seats and see the back of Family First’s Steve Fielding. It is a more pleasing long-term prospect. Labor would only need some Greens to get legislation through. Indeed, that thought might prompt the Opposition to pass the emissions law as is rather than face the prospect of an even greener version.
Also the electorate does not like early elections and double dissolutions in particular. Governments that call them have more often than not lost ground, or indeed lost the election.
Moreover, the legislation that triggered them rarely amounted to much in the election campaign and most of it was abandoned or modified thereafter – with the exception of Medicare, territory representation and the end of the gerrymander in 1974.
These days, legislation is rarely workable first up so the whole process is highly risky, electorally costly and for very little gain. The emission scheme, for example, will need patching anyway if the renewable-energy legislation is severed from it as the Government intends this week.
Sounds boring, but my guess is that the next election for the House and half the Senate will be towards the end of 2010.
CRISPIN HULL