The composition of the Senate should bear no relevance to whether independents support one government or another. After all, if the Coalition or Labor had 76 seats or more in the House of Representatives no one would dispute their right to form government. It is a fundamental principle of the Westminster system that the Government is formed by confidence in the House, not the Senate.
However there are a number of reforms that should be pursued to improve the functioning of the legislature.
First, the Speaker of the House should be more independent. He or she should resign from his or her party and act totally impartially. Whether this means that we should go as far as in the United Kingdom and for the incumbent Speaker not to be challenged in his or her seat is debatable.
Second, question time in the House should be a genuine forum for holding the Executive to account. This should allow for follow up questions, limits to the time for an answer (and question) and the elimination of dorothy-dix questions.
Third, a well-resourced Parliamentary Budget Office should be established which would provide independent advice to the Legislature on budgetary matters and provide its own estimates of economic growth and the fiscal position. The Office would also undertake costings – both revenue and expenditure – for Senators and MPs.
Fourth, as a savings measure, the number of electorate officers in each MPs’ and Senators’ office should be reduced by one each. For most of Australia’s history Senators and MPs managed with three or fewer full-time electorate officers – they don’t need four. That would save 226 FTE.
Finally we need to make the Senate a genuine house of review. There are currently 76 members of the Australian Senate – 12 from each State and two from the ACT and NT. The Senate currently has 5 Greens Senators, 32 ALP Senators, 37 Coalition Senators and 2 independent Senators.
In the last Parliament, the ALP had 10 Senators in the Executive (Ministers or Parliamentary Secretaries) and the Coalition had 15 Senators in its Executive. So there were 25 Senators out of 76 in the Executive.
One of the core principles is the separation of power: executive, judiciary and legislature. Also, the Senate prides itself as a house of review.
Yet there is a fundamental conflict in having Senators variously being in the Executive and then holding the Executive to account as a house of review. For example, how many Senators are seeking to join the Executive? 69 out of the 76 Senators (91 per cent) could join the Executive as members of the Government and Opposition parties. So we have 25/69 (36 per cent) of the major party Senators who are in the Executive (and this will increase as the proportion of Greens in the Senate rises after 1 July next year).
We need to reform this if the Senate is to act as a proper house of review and fulfil its functions properly.
I propose that Senators be ineligible to join the Executive (Government/Opposition).
All Minister/Parliamentary Secretaries and Opposition Executive members would be drawn from the House of Representatives.
We could go further – allow up to say 1/3 of the Executive to be drawn from outside Parliament. They would become Ministers without being in Parliament but would be required to testify to Parliament and otherwise hold themselves to account to the Parliament.
At present only Members of Parliament are elgible to be Ministers. This is a constrained optimisation problem: by allowing members of the community to become Ministers there would be a broader pool of talent available and by definition we would have better quality ministers (since we can choose the from the present MPs PLUS other people). Under this reform proposal, the Prime Minister should of course be an MP.
For effective Opposition, more senior staff positions are necessary. Electorate office staff salaries are only enough to pay recent graduates, not the people with the experience needed to be able to give detailed advice on policy.
Andrew Norton
24 Aug 10 at 8:32 am
Andrew,
you are possibly too young to remember but pre-howard it is quite regular for bureaucrats ( Treasury being naturally the most popular) to be seconded to work on the Opposition’s staff. Howard had Tim Stewart in his first Oppo leaders days and then had of course had Arthur Sinodinos in his second. Both were high class.
The Bureaucracy encourage this as it enabled public servants to understand the political role better.
It was very noticeable this only occurred to Ministers staff under Howard.
This should be encouraged to happen again.
Butterfield, Bloomfeld % Bishop
24 Aug 10 at 9:02 am
Right. Rudd’s politicisation was all Howard’s fault.
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24 Aug 10 at 11:12 am
Howard was in for how long and how many of those in the public service were ever seconded to the ALP.
none.
It started with Howard you clown.
Rudd actually didn’t politicise things as much as Howard
Butterfield, Bloomfeld % Bishop
24 Aug 10 at 1:05 pm
“Rudd actually didn’t politicise things as much as Howard”
Your fawning is vomit inducing.
Rudd didn’t politicise: Yeah right!
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/yes-minister-meets-alice-in-wonderland-20100220-omsa.html
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24 Aug 10 at 1:13 pm
Marky,
you can neither read an article nor understand about what politicising the public service meant.
Butterfield, Bloomfeld % Bishop
24 Aug 10 at 1:20 pm
“you can neither read an article nor understand about what politicising the public service meant.”
Did I ever say that Howard didn’t do it and shouldn’t have been publicly flogged for it?
No. In other words, shut up before you embarass yourself more.
Howard never made the Treasury his bitch.
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24 Aug 10 at 1:23 pm
Making the Senate a genuine house of review will require more than preventing Senators joining the Executive. Senators are still members of the same Party as the Executive and the Executive can still enforce party discipline on Senators.
Removing this disipline would require seperating Senators from the Executive’s Party. This could be achieved by requiring political parties to run candidates for either the Senate or the House of Reps, but not both.
Sure you will end up with a Liberal,ALP and Green Senate Party and a Liberal, ALP and Green House of Reps Party, but the Senate Parties would need to transparently structually separate from their respective House of Reps Party (eg different Constitutions, Office bearers etc and a ban on automatic dual membership). There would still be pressure on Senators to tow the party line, but it will be significantly weaker than present.
johno
24 Aug 10 at 3:43 pm
Homer – There are about a dozen senior staff financed for the Opposition. But it’s not much to cover so many policy areas.
Andrew Norton
24 Aug 10 at 5:58 pm
Andrew,
I do not disagree but using public servants in advisory positions like what used to happen would be a huge improvement in standards.
Marky,
you never read your linked article.
no evidence at all of your allegation.
can’t read can’t think
Butterfield, Bloomfeld % Bishop
24 Aug 10 at 7:35 pm
“you never read your linked article.
no evidence at all of your allegation.
can’t read can’t think”
Shorter Homer: I don’t like what the bad man said. Kevin Rudd is a saint! Waaah!
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25 Aug 10 at 7:29 am
Malcolm Fraser needs taking out the back and put down. FFS, the senile old loon clearly has not looked in a mirror since color television arrived in Australia.
TRADITION dictates that the party that wins the most seats in a knife-edge election has the first chance to govern, says former PM Malcolm Fraser.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/power-to-the-incumbent-if-seat-count-tied-says-fraser/story-fn59niix-1225909629883
Peter Patton
25 Aug 10 at 7:57 am
Marky produce evidence in the article that Treasury was Rudd’s bitch.
No you can’t.You never have and can’t now.
You simply rant on and on and link articles that you haven’t read.
Butterfield, Bloomfeld % Bishop
25 Aug 10 at 9:53 am
“produce evidence in the article that Treasury was Rudd’s bitch”
We’ve all seen the Henry confession. Until then, it wasn’t an issue.
It is breath taking duplicty and arrogance that sees you demand proof for a claim.
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25 Aug 10 at 9:59 am
you are the most breathtaking liar around.
No evidence at all merely your uneducated prejudice at work AGAIN.
can’t read , cant think
Butterfield, Bloomfeld % Bishop
25 Aug 10 at 10:01 am
Marky produce evidence in the article that Treasury was Rudd’s bitch.
Homes, produce evidence that Madam Skankee Ho was Chiang Kai Shek’s bitch
jtfsoon
25 Aug 10 at 10:01 am
I have already but you lamentable research skills can’t find it.
however produce evidence Mark Latham knew the Rap version of the term was as you assert!
Butterfield, Bloomfeld % Bishop
25 Aug 10 at 10:04 am
“you are the most breathtaking liar around.
No evidence at all merely your uneducated prejudice at work AGAIN”
Bullshit.
Stone was Secretary under the ALP and did a bang up job with plenty of respectability.
Compare his legacy to that of Henry.
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25 Aug 10 at 10:05 am
“I have already but you lamentable research skills can’t find it.”
Yes, Sinclair quoted it here on the cat. You’re basically admitting you’re wrong by saying it exists.
You halfwit.
“however produce evidence Mark Latham knew the Rap version of the term was as you assert!”
You’re a completely and utterly deranged loon. You will say anything to defend the ALP, even if it looks ridiculous six years after the fact.
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25 Aug 10 at 10:07 am
Stone was an appalling secretary.
He allowed NO debate on issues and gave the Treasurer only one option, his option.
He resigned because Keating insisted on talking to the Treasury operatives who wrote the submissions rather than Stone all of the time.
Under Bernie Fraser debate was encouraged and views on different subjects encouraged.
Yeah great legacy.
your appalling ignorance is shown up again
Butterfield, Bloomfeld % Bishop
25 Aug 10 at 10:09 am
“He allowed NO debate on issues and gave the Treasurer only one option, his option.”
He gave advice without fear or favour and resigned when he had a conflict of interest.
The Treasury Secretary shut down the Treasurer from debating topics?
Um yeah sure. BTW, Keating came around to his views.
The only thing that is appalling is you haven’t been given a Clozapine today.
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25 Aug 10 at 10:19 am
Stone was also insecure about the late Chris Higgins his intellectual superior.
True to nature you uphold a person who was a terrible secretary and knew nothing about him.
Can’t read, can’t think
Butterfield, Bloomfeld % Bishop
25 Aug 10 at 10:26 am
“Stone was also insecure about the late Chris Higgins his intellectual superior.”
Oh really Homer, did you conduct a psychoanalysis?
“was a terrible secretary”
Yep, so terrible he knew what a conflict of interest was and Keating came around to his views.
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25 Aug 10 at 10:45 am
Can’t read, can’t think
is that the Paxton family motto?
jtfsoon
25 Aug 10 at 10:48 am
Homer thinks this is the mark of an intellectual lowlife:
“After gaining First Class Honours in Mathematical Physics for his Bachelor of Science degree and representing Western Australia (under 21) at hockey, Stone was selected as the Rhodes Scholar from Western Australia for 1951.
At Oxford he was awarded First Class Honours in Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) and won the James Webb Medley Prize for Economics before joining the Treasury in 1954.”
You’re a brainless shill, Homer.
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25 Aug 10 at 10:50 am