Still top of the Senate Republican heap, eh. One difference between Australia and the U.S.A.
The Representation of Small Parties and Independents
Campbell Sharman*
The Senate has become the active parliamentary chamber it is today largely as a consequence of the representation of minor parties. While the two large parties have supported major changes to Senate procedures and are the major players in the day-to-day operation of the Senate, it has been the existence of minor party and independent senators that has given the Senate its distinctive role. It is not just that the party or parties in government do not control a partisan majority on the floor of the Senate, but that, for most of the period since 1955, governments have had to gain the support of one or more independent or minor party senators to pass measures through the Senate. [1] From this lack of government control has sprung the independent role of the Senate in scrutinising legislation and in holding governments publicly accountable through the use of an extensive committee system. To the extent that this situation has been created by the system of proportional representation (PR) for the election of senators since 1949, PR has been the agency through which the Senate has been transformed. Quite how PR and minor party representation achieved this feat is the topic of this paper.
If the Opposition party in the lower house, the House of Representatives, had majority representation in the Senate, the government would be denied control of the Senate, but the dynamics of the legislative process would be very different from the situation in which minor parties hold the balance of power. An Opposition-controlled Senate would be heavily influenced by the party strategy of the Opposition in the House of Representatives. The Senate would be in danger of becoming a pawn in the adversarial and obstructionist politics that characterise the lower house. There would, in other words, be little pressure to support the Senate as an institution with a continuing role in scrutinising government separate from the short-term interests of the Opposition. The periods when the Senate has been controlled by the Opposition—during, for example, the Scullin government from 1929–31, [2] the first post-war Menzies government from 1949–51, [3] and the dying days of the Whitlam government in 1975 [4]—strongly support this conclusion.
Minor party and independent senators who hold the balance of power are not more virtuous or more public spirited than other senators, it is just that they have an interest in establishing procedures to enhance the long-term effectiveness—and hence political visibility—of the Senate. In this respect, the interests of minor parties and independents correspond with a broader public interest. The maintenance of a legislative body that has a role to play that is distinct from the partisan struggle to hold or gain government means that a wider range of interests can be involved in the legislative process than those identified with the government or the opposition.Much of the lobbying to influence government legislation is undertaken in private with ministers, advisers, and the Public Service. An active and independent legislative body like the Senate can ensure not only that this advice is made public, but that the views of a much wider range of interests are aired than those within the charmed circle of easy access to government. It also means that, for key areas of legislative policy, there can be informed public debate that can have an effect on the shape of legislation rather than a series of one-sided exchanges with a government that sees no reason to compromise.
The repertoire of Senate procedures together with the experience of using these procedures, has taken a long time to reach the present stage. The Senate debate in 1999 over the goods-and-services tax (GST), for example, represents a good example of detailed legislative scrutiny and creative compromise on legislative policy engendered by the representation of minor party and independent senators, but it also reflects the accumulation of many years of experience in devising procedures, both formal and informal, to cope with the negotiations required. The excellent case study by Liz Young of the passage of the 1993 Budget [5] provides another example of the role of minor parties in the legislative process, together with an examination of the development of the range of strategies open to such parties and independents in the Senate.
Minor parties in the Senate have fundamentally altered the dynamics of the legislative process in the Commonwealth parliament.
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