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The
Senate, Policy-Making and
Community Consultation*Ian Marsh The
debate on a goods and services tax (GST) has placed the Senate in an unfamiliar
relationship with the executive. On the one hand, there are the habits and practices
of governance of roughly the past eighty years. Throughout this period, the executive
has enjoyed almost unchallenged power. The rituals of parliament have positioned
the Opposition as an alternative government. This is implicit in the description
of the system as adversarial politics. Parliament has provided the stage for this
drama. It has, to use Bernard Crick's insight, provided the setting for what is
in effect a continuing election campaign. As a consequence, Parliament has had
virtually no substantive policy-making role. [1] More
recently, and notably in the GST debate, substantive parliamentary policy influence
has been tentatively renewed. The Senate is the key institution. It has the necessary
formal power and seems likely, for the foreseeable future, to lack a majority
party. [2] What does this mean for the Australian political
system? Does it hold in prospect destructive conflict, frustration of the electorate's
will, policy gridlock, sectional pay-offs and lowest common denominator policy
compromises? Or does it offer the opportunity to strengthen the policy-making
capacity of Australia's political institutions? In what follows, a case
for seeing this as an opportunity to renew necessary, but now atrophied, policy-making
capacities is outlined. The argument develops through several steps. First, the
central strategic, opinion framing and interest integrating contribution of party
organisations in the classic two party system is sketched. Second, the
causes of the progressive atrophy of these organisational contributions since
the 1980s are explored. Third, the pluralisation of value and attitudes in the
Australian community over the past twenty or so years is traced and its significance,
from the perspective of interest integration and opinion framing, is evaluated.
Finally, the potential to renew interest integrating and opinion framing capacities
through the Senate is considered. Precedents for such a role are reviewed and
some contemporary requirements explored. The `classic' two party system
The two party system emerged in Australia roughly in 1909. Mass parties
were novel political formations. Hitherto, local action committees selected candidates
who stood mostly as independents. In parliament they generally aligned behind
one or other of the acknowledged faction leaders—either because of shared
agendas or for promised electoral pay-offs or for some combination of these factors.
The parliamentary norm of independence meant allegiance could vary on particular
issues. Governments thus were frequently defeated on particular measures—but
they resigned office only on specific confidence votes. [3]
The contemporary reemergence of independent MPs gestures to these older patterns.
The Labor Party was the first mass party in Australia. It emerged on the
parliamentary stage in the 1891 NSW state election. [4]
Its electoral success precipitated the progressive consolidation of non-Labor
groups. At the federal level, three parties or groups shared power—the Deakinite
Liberals, the Free Traders and the Labor Party. The 1901, 1903 and 1906 elections
did not award a clear majority to one party. In the period before 1909, the Deakinite
Liberals and the newly emerging Labor Party had overlapping agendas for social
reform and governmental action. By 1909 these produced the legislation that constituted
what has since become known as the Federation settlement. But the Deakinites'
opposition to nationalisation and their imperial loyalties divided them from Labor
and thus, in 1909, they linked with the Free Traders to constitute what has become
the modern Liberal Party. This marked the emergence of the two party system. [5]
A hegemony of only two (later three) parties was a remarkable achievement,
which familiarity has since obscured. [6] The sources
of the encompassing power of the major parties provides a perspective on current
dynamics and possibilities. First, party ideologies then attracted, broadly, one
or other half of Australian society. The initial fervour of activists subsequently
congealed into strong party identification, in which socio-economic class and
religion were also significant factors. [7] In the electoral
arena, these loyalties were later theorised in the link between party identification
and voting behaviour. [8] Second, if ideologies provided the rationale
for encompassing parties, the party organisations provided the institutional
means. They provided machinery through which hitherto independent groups and activists
could be integrated into political processes. In keeping with party ideologies,
the Labor Party linked to the trade union movement and the non-labor parties linked
to business and larger mining and rural interests. Until roughly the 1960s, the
trade unions and business were the principal organised economic interests active
in politics. [9] Interest integration was one
prime function of party organisations. Agenda setting was another. This is evident
in the two great periods of strategic agenda development in Australian politics
prior to the 1970s—1901 to 1909 and 1945 to 1950. The Labor Party, with its
nationalisation and welfare agenda, was the primary party of change. Yet Sir Robert
Menzies, in reconstituting the Liberal Party in the 1940s, renewed its Deakinite
legacy in endorsing the post-war extension of the welfare state and managed economy.
Labor's internal processes were influential in determining the agenda for
the parliamentary party. The structure of the party gave the trade unions special
status and its national executive for many years exercised considerable influence
over the parliamentary party. Resolutions of its biannual conference were binding.
The Labor
Party organisation provided a structure for integrating trade unions
and its ideologies provided a rationale for broader community identification and
mobilisation. [10] For its part, the Liberal Party (in its
various forms) was defender of the status quo and this was reflected in its organisational
structure. States' rights was a powerful theme. Thus the state organisations preserved
their relative strength and the national organisation lacked disciplinary powers.
Business groups, the principal source of funds, were integrated directly through
a federal committee and indirectly at the state level. [11] Electoral dominance, organisational agenda
setting roles and the integration of interest groups through party organisations
was the ground for the particular division of roles between the parliament, the
executive, and the bureaucracy which has since become familiar. This particular
political architecture has many attractive features. From a policy-making perspective,
it consolidates political power to a remarkable degree. The Cabinet, some fourteen
people, constitutes the link between the bureaucratic system on one side, and
the parliamentary, party and electoral arenas on the other. The parliamentary
arena, where electoral considerations dominate and where the Opposition maintains
significant powers to project its alternative program, is sharply separated from
the arena concerned with policy-making, where the real business of government
is largely conducted. [12] But the `classic' two party system rested
on particular organisational and electoral foundations. Organisationally, it involved
the mobilisation of activists and interest groups through party forums. Party
conferences and committees allowed activists and interest groups to influence
the formation of the strategic political agenda. Electorally, it was based on
a broad division of the community into supporters of one or other of the major
groups. The party label or brand provided a sufficient cue for the formation of
opinion by most electors on most issues. This allowed strategic policy development
to be (largely) internalised within the major parties and muted the need to seed
the broader `education' of public opinion. Recent developments have undermined,
if not destroyed, these foundational features of the two party system. The
systemic gap in interest integration and opinion framing Major party
organisational change in the past couple of decades has basically excised interest
integration. Over the same period, the capacity of party labels to cue public
opinion has diminished. These developments have been caused by the coincidence
of at least four factors. [13] First, economic
globalisation made the Federation settlement no longer viable. Manufacturing industry
could no longer be developed to serve only domestic markets. Economic globalisation,
new technologies and a new role for service industries required new capacities
for economic adaptation and adjustment. Needs-based, nationally determined wages
were seen to introduce dysfunctional rigidities and inflexibilities. Both major
parties have been obliged to progressively redefine their policy stance. This
has had ideological, organisational and arguably electoral consequences. At the
ideological level, differences between the major parties have progressively blurred
as their approach to economic strategy has converged. After 1983, both major parties
broadly adopted the neo-liberal economic agenda. Thereafter electoral considerations,
not ideological dispositions, determined which parts of this agenda would be championed
or resisted in public. The jettisoning of old agendas has had different
organisational consequences for the major parties. In recasting its agenda, the
Labor Party parliamentary leadership has often found it expedient to bypass formal
party forums. Conferences and councils have become stage managed affairs. The
organisation now rarely exerts influence on policy issues. For its part, the Liberal
Party has turned from being defender of the status quo to being a (the principle?)
advocate of economic change. [14] In the process, it
has largely jettisoned its Deakinite wing and thus weakened its encompassing capacities.
[15] Perhaps the Democrats, if they have the imagination,
are positioned to inherit this constituency? Electorally, ideological convergence
has arguably been one of the factors eroding the standing of the major parties.
Federally, the number of electors casting a first preference vote for other than
the major parties in the House of Representatives has doubled from around 10 per
cent in the 1970s to around 20 per cent in 1998. Over the same period, the proportion
voting for other than major parties in the Senate increased to 25 per cent in
1998. [16] Further evidence of the weakening role of
the major parties is provided by trends in party identification, for so long the
sheet anchor of the stability of the Australian political system. The number of
Australians without a party identification has increased from roughly 2 per cent
in 1967 to around 18 per cent in 1997. Further, the number acknowledging only
weak identification has increased from 23 per cent in 1967 to around 37 per cent
in 1997. Thus over half of the electorate have no or only weak identification
with one or other of the major parties. [17] This is a particularly significant trend if party
labels are relied on as a primary cue for citizen attitudes. The second
factor contributing to the excision of interest integration and the weakening
of opinion framing by the major parties has been loss of their agenda setting
roles. The major parties have been displaced by the social movements which have
emerged in the post-70s period. These have become a new source of agendas and
new agents for the mobilisation of activists (their emergence will be considered
later in the context of the pluralisation of Australian society). The women's,
environment, gay, Aboriginal, consumer, multi-cultural, so-called `new right',
and republican movements are all organised independently of the major parties.
Every significant extension of the political agenda in the past decade or so has
originated with one of the social movements, not the major parties. [18]
This development is symptomatic of a significant change in the role of
major party organisations. The locus of agenda development has shifted and activists
are detached from especial allegiance to one or other party. Agenda development
has largely ceased to be an internal process. Party forums are not the principal
arenas for activists. Internal processes have not provided the medium for testing
strategic acceptability and for initiating opinion formation. The initiative has
moved elsewhere. Public opinion has been framed through public campaigns by activists,
and through the resultant media attention. This has been used to pressure the
parliamentary leadership of the major parties to adopt new agendas. The success
of these campaigns has significantly widened the national political agenda, raised
the importance of public opinion formation and diminished the influence of major
party organisations. Third, the major party organisations have been unable
to manage interest integration. This was partly because the general proliferation
of interest groups overwhelmed older patterns. Peter Drucker has described the
contemporary United States as a `society of organisations', a description that
is equally applicable to Australia. Further, established organisational linkages—the
trade unions with Labor and business with the Liberals—have demonstrably
weakened. Finally, a disinclination to deal with groups was reinforced in the
major parties by a fashionable economic ideology, public choice theory, which
cast interest groups as selfish and self-serving, and disputed their representational
legitimacy. This has reinforced the disengagement of interest groups from the
major parties. [19] The fourth factor contributing
to the loss of opinion framing and interest integrating roles by the major parties
results from change to their organisational orientation and staffing. Party managers
are much less likely to be organisational loyalists. They are much more likely
to be professionals in public opinion polling, and marketing and advertising techniques.
Direct marketing, polling and media advertising and packaging promised to make
organisational policy development activities and the associated membership base
dispensable. Clever marketing, focused on the parliamentary leadership, could,
it was imagined, sufficiently compensate for weakened party identifications amongst
electors. Indeed conferences, large memberships and internal policy development
processes came to be seen as constraints on the political leadership. Liberation
from them allowed the parliamentary leadership to reach out directly to electoral
opinion. Sophisticated marketing techniques seemed capable of delivering the required
outcomes in mass opinion formation. [20] In
combination, these four factors have progressively resulted in the major party
organisations largely jettisoning their roles in interest integration and opinion
framing. Party leaders now mostly rely on a direct reach to public opinion via
elections and a direct reach to interest and cause groups. Summits express the
latter strategy. Meantime there could be no stronger evidence of the strengths
and weaknesses of a direct reach to public opinion than the Howard Government's
approach to the GST. [21] A direct reach to
public opinion by the leadership of the major parties is clearly one viable approach
to building public opinion. But this approach is suffused with constraints. It
is extremely risky politically, as the last election demonstrated. The leadership
of the rival party will almost certainly oppose what is proposed, irrespective
of its own past policies (e.g. Labor on the GST in 1985). This creates a public
debate in which one side declares black whatever the other asserts is white. This
outcome, almost inevitable in our adversarial structure, is dysfunctional from
the point of view of building electoral understanding about real choices and options.
It is also dysfunctional from the perspective of mobilising supporting interest
group coalitions. Further, a proposal for a GST was first registered on
the public agenda in 1974 through the Asprey Report. It was to be followed by
three attempts to introduce this measure—a push by Treasurer Howard in 1981,
the Tax Summit of 1985, and the Fightback campaign of 1993. The adequacy of the
tax system was an issue at the 1983, 1984, 1987 and 1990 elections. It is hard
to believe this protracted period of public exposure had no impact on public opinion.
But must we always wait decades to settle major issues? Must we accept
the political hypocrisy that adversarial politics imposes on the major parties?
Must we accept this as inevitable, part of the nature of things, and of no consequence
from the perspective of public confidence in the political system? Is there no
better way of introducing major strategic issues to the Australian people? Is
there no better way of testing the scope for even partial bipartisanship, engaging
interest groups and beginning the process of seeding public opinion? [22]
Think of the issues currently or potentially on the political agenda: reconfiguring
the welfare system, drugs, Aboriginal reconciliation, a reorientation to Asia,
euthanasia, the republic, developments in Indonesia. All of these issues raise
fundamental questions. [23] All mobilise differing interests and coalitions.
All engage a cadre of immediate activists, and all are opposed by other significant
sectional groups. On some of these issues the groups immediately affected have
been mobilised, but the system has so far demonstrably failed to institutionalise
interaction between protagonists and raise the level or quality of attention in
broader community forums. The jettisoning of interest integrating and opinion
framing roles by the major parties leaves a worrying gap in policy-making capacities.
This gap concerns the ability of our political system to explore contested issues
in a strategic phase. A strategic phase in opinion formation and interest mobilisation
is critical in constituting shared interests among citizens in particular longer
term outcomes. [24] The political system needs a capacity
to routinely engage interest group and broader opinion in a strategic, what might
be termed `framing', phase. This constitutes a prelude to an `operational phase'
when detailed distributional issues might be settled. These phases were fused
in the GST deliberations. A strategic, framing, phase in opinion formation
can lay the groundwork for subsequent action in an operational phase. [25]
This phasing of policy development is recommended in relevant scholarly literatures
and routinely practiced in business and voluntary organisations and institutions
throughout Australia. [26] And the need for strategic capacity has been significantly
enhanced by the pluralisation of Australian society. Yet in the much more important
political domain where our shared aspirations are articulated, common purposes
constituted and common interests realised, the capacity to focus public and interest
group opinion on emerging issues has substantially diminished. The pluralisation
of Australian society The proliferation of interest groups and social
movements is arguably the single most significant change in the character of post-war
domestic politics. [27] It is hard to overstate the
degree to which Australia has become a group-based community. The array of organised
actors on any issue is legion. These groups vary enormously in size, budgets,
political skills, organisational sophistication and campaigning capacities. But
the major groups are as effectively organised as the major political parties.
There are at least nine major movements in Australia: environment, ethnic,
consumer, indigenous, women, gay, peace/third world, animal rights and the New
Right or neo-liberal movement. All represent a concern at some level of generality
below, or different from, that of socio-economic class, and they articulate new
patterns of political differentiation. In each case the evidence of organisational
capacity and political capability is clear. In turn, these groups have
stimulated imitators advocating new issues (e.g. euthanasia, legalised heroin,
a republic) or defenders of traditional values (e.g. shooters party, monarchists,
anti-abortion, anti-euthanasia groups). This approach to political engagement
recalls patterns last seen in the nineteenth century—indeed, membership of
social movements was then the standard mode of citizen political participation.
[28] Their existence was symptomatic of the wider differentiation
then evident in citizen attitudes, but in political communities where participation
was more narrowly confined. With their emergence, the modern mass parties subsumed
most of these organisations behind their broader agendas—or delegitimised
the more narrowly focused concerns to which the movements gave expression. [29]
So the image of the contemporary Australian community as a kind of vast
silent majority with a noisy fringe of pressure groups is fundamentally wrong.
Talk of a `new class' as some alien sectional minority subverting the public interest
in favour of selfish and unrepresentative concerns is fundamentally wrong. And
the idea that Australian society has been taken over by a `politically correct'
discourse to the exclusion of a majoritarian but muted voice also is fundamentally
wrong. Images of a silent majority, of `political correctness' and of a
new class may all be useful rhetorical ploys in the political game. But as pictures
of social reality, they do not square with the facts. The pluralisation of Australian
society is the fundamental fact—and the proliferation of interest groups
and issue movements is its organisational expression. Unless political leaders
can persuade the community to jettison some of its varied aspirations, a new level
of pluralisation is here to stay. The space between the major parties and
the community is now filled with political organisations with political capacity
and media skills. These organisations have a demonstrated capacity to shape opinion
on particular issues. The capacity to mobilise opinion, or at least salient chunks
of opinion, is the currency of political influence. Opinion influence can take
many forms. Think for example of the annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras
or of talkback radio or of suitably crafted media events (business tax campaign,
the tent embassy, anti-logging campaigns). [30] The
impact on public opinion of the parties, groups and movements creates the contested
purposes that constitute the public conversation—the political dialectic—of
contemporary Australian society. A reframing of the political agenda coupled with
the proliferation of interest groups has transfigured the opinion forming task.
The neo-liberal economic strategy, more or less adopted by both major parties
after 1983, required a reduction of the role of the state and a diminished scope
for politics. While a new tacit economic consensus between the major parties has
emerged, the extent to which the state might have a role in fostering a new Australian
industrial structure remains in dispute. However there is no evidence that the
overall neo-liberal economic agenda has contracted. Environmental concerns,
indigenous rights, the new role for women, and new protections for consumers are
now all government responsibilities. This expanded agenda spawns new issues as
developments in one area have consequences in others. Think, for example, of the
emergence of biotechnology. Policy trade-offs are now more complex. Protagonists
need to share perspectives. The grounds for supporting or opposing particular
developments amongst relevant interests can be fluid. Dialogue, deliberation and
interaction are all required in settings where benefits and costs can be clarified,
issues redefined in more encompassing terms, and compensation strategies explored.
This is the problem with summits. They can be effective as the capstone of a more
embedded process, but otherwise they are too short for the necessary development
of views. In a more complex world, new issues such as the emergence of
euthanasia, drugs and the republic attest to widened citizen expectations for
politics. Externally, our political environment remains uncertain and our regional
linkage requires a fundamental development of public attitudes and orientations.
Thus the need for capacities to frame and develop public and interest group opinion
has actually increased. This is the context in which the role of the Senate deserves
fresh appraisal. The Senate and community representation The
Senate was constituted as a `strong' House by the founding fathers of Australian
Federation. As is well known, the immediate stimulus was fear by the small states
of domination by their larger cousins. [31] But more
deeply, this particular constitution of power has deep roots in liberal traditions—majorities
should rule but not heedless of collective minorities. Protections for minorities
need to be entrenched in the structure of power. [32]
The principal collective minorities at the time of Federation were the states.
State identification remained strong. Inter-colonial ambitions and anxieties remained
significant. State identity continues to be a potent force in Australian
politics. But it has been joined by cross-cutting sources of sectional or minority
identity. Think of the unions, small business, or the women's, gay, aboriginal,
multicultural, or republican movements. These and many other organisations are
the sites through which, and from which, the opinions, aspirations and interests
of a newly diversified and pluralised Australian community are refracted and framed.
Australia's founders created, and intended to create, a distinctive constitutional
structure, looking to Britain for ways to institutionalise `strong' government
and to the United States for ways to institutionalise collective minority rights.
Strong government was necessary to realise aspirations for nation-building and
equality of opportunity between citizens from vastly different initial conditions.
Collective minority rights were essential as protection against illiberal majorities.
This resulted in our distinctive constitutional settlement made up of two virtually
co-equal federal Houses. [33] One might speculate that this arrangement institutionalises
exactly the aspiration for collective fairness which is such a rich element in
Australia's political culture. [34] The potential
of the Senate as a forum for minority representation was displayed in the first
ten years after Federation. In this more pluralised world, no party enjoyed an
absolute majority in either chamber. The main parties, Alfred Deakin's Protectionists,
George Reid's Free Traders and the newly formed Labor Party, needed to reach accommodations
with each other to form governments and to pass legislation. In three elections,
the public awarded a clear majority to no single group. In addition, the norm
of freedom of conscience for individual members of parliament was then dominant,
at least on the non-Labor side. So governments could not automatically rely on
the votes of their supporters on contentious issues. A variety of hotly
contested strategic issues needed to be resolved in setting the economic and social
foundations of the Australian Federation. Tariffs and wages were the most divisive
issues, but others such as old age pensions, nationalisation, the construction
of national railways, and the establishment and role of the Post Office, were
also prominent. Joint or Senate select committees were established to investigate
each of these issues, to establish the options for handling them and to build
awareness amongst key constituencies. [35] Findings
were debated in both Houses. Since the government could not be assured of a majority,
debate on particular issues was decisive. The Senate used its powers regularly
against governments in the first ten years. [36] The Senate functioned not as the poodle of the
major parties, which was the role it mostly adopted up until the loss of a government
majority in 1981. Then it functioned as the house of review it was intended to
be. It used its committees to gather information and to build opinion amongst
senators. The Senate's committee system became the key institutional mechanism
for investigating strategic issues. There were frequent disagreements between
the Houses, particularly on tariff issues. Disputes between the chambers were
fierce, but accommodations were ultimately reached. Indeed, these cameo dramas
became an occasion for public learning. Contention was sited not in party conferences
or in internal party committee processes. It was based in parliamentary committees
and in debates within and between the Houses. The political drama constituted
the mise en scene in which the educative role of political investigation
and deliberation was more fully realised. Indeed committees are the only
mechanism available to express the investigative capacities of parliamentary institutions
and they provide essential foundations for parliamentary deliberations. [37]
They are the only mechanism through which the scope for even partial bipartisanship
between the major parties might be explored. [38] In
the more confined, but more plural, political world of nineteenth century Britain,
and in the more democratic Australian colonies before the genesis of mass politics,
legislatures and their committees were a primary means for investigating contested
issues. In the process, the development of member, stakeholder and perhaps broader
community views was seeded. [39] The legislature and
its committees have always contributed to interest group integration and to community
education in the very different political system of the United States. [40] Building a consensus about strategic issues,
about the options for handling them, and building public understanding of the
benefits and costs of alternative courses of action, and perhaps about how winners
can compensate losers, are all the challenges we face anew in becoming a flexible
and adaptable community. The GST debate points to the means for renewing interest
integrating and opinion-framing capacities in a strategic phase—that is,
through the Senate and its committees. It illustrates the capacity of parliamentary
structures to mobilise expert, bureaucratic and interest group opinion, to attract
publicity, and perhaps to contribute to the formation of a majority coalition
for action. In the classic two party system, these roles were mostly located in
the major party organisations. The GST debate emerged at the, so-to-speak,
operational end of the policy development process. It illustrates a mechanism
whose role could be routine at the strategic end of this process. This would require
a significant enhancement of the Senate committee system and a more focused appreciation
of its potential contribution. I have explored these issues in detail elsewhere.
[41] The structure of committees needs strengthening
and they would need to intervene routinely in the policy development cycle within
departments. Staff support for committees needs significant strengthening. The
capacity of committees to challenge the executive may need to be refurbished.
Clashes between the Senate and the executive at appropriate moments in the policy
development process, far from occasioning hand-wringing, might be welcomed for
their contribution to the broader development of opinion throughout the Australian
community. Of course, the risks in such developments also must be acknowledged.
The combination of a strong executive and minority rights imposes distinctive
behavioural norms on participants. Above all, protagonists would need to be willing
to compromise, and to display qualities of moderation in the parliament or its
backrooms that they might not choose to display to their more ardent supporters.
But such are the familiar ways of democratic politics. [42]
In the mutation envisaged here, the major parties might even occasionally combine
to discredit unpalatable opinions or to make public the bipartisanship on broad
strategy that is now mostly tacit. Protagonists for majoritarian, winner-take-all
conceptions of government now, as in the past, see only instability in the further
development of the Senate's role. [43] On the contrary, I believe underlying electoral
trends may progressively precipitate a significant mutation in our familiar two
party system. The Senate, armed with a clear sense of its potential policy-making
contribution and with appropriate capacities, is the principal potential agent
of regime change in Australia. The minor Senate parties have most to gain immediately
by a change in the structure of policy making. [44]
But the major parties too may ultimately come to see gains in a structure that
holds in prospect improved opportunities for all participants to advance their
policy agendas. Australia has a strong tradition of fairness along with
a rough-and-tumble political style. As we adapt to the changed world economy and
to our own changing aspirations as a people, the need to change the structure
of politics may be increasingly forced upon us. These things do not happen easily
or quickly—many societies require revolution and insurrection to achieve
new distributions of political power. Yet in the twenty years from 1890 to 1910
the new Australian union was successfully crafted and a compact that provided
the framework for its economic and social development in the subsequent eighty
years was constructed. Are we in such a phase once more? Trends in voting
and weakening party identification affirm the possibility. [45]
There are at least three more federal elections between now and 2010. By 2010
I think we will be well on the road to a more open and transparent political and
policy-making system. There will doubtless be much turbulence, uncertainty and
perhaps instability in the process—the two party system is too deeply embedded
in our habits and routines, and too many able people have a stake in its preservation,
for change to be simple or easy. Nor should it be. These are basic issues touching
the kind of people we are and might aspire to be. I think we will ultimately be
best served by a mutation of the two party system and the emergence of a more
plural alternative. Liberal democracy, not economic rationalism, is after all
the crowning ideal of our time. Question — Is the GST fair,
when someone earning $100,000 or more will get a reduction of $85.77 per week,
but someone with $10,000 will get $5.34? Regarding pensioners, they will be given
a 4 per cent increase in the pension, and then taxed at 10 per cent, which is
$38.14. This is not fair. The current government will be the first in history
to tax pensioners, if the Senate votes for it. Also, how will the GST stop the
tax avoidance schemes and stop profits made by multinationals from going overseas.
I believe the GST will do nothing to prevent this. Also, despite the elimination
of the wholesale tax, the 10 per cent GST will go up and so will the cost of living.
Ian Marsh — One of the great privileges of being a political
scientist involved in institutions is that I can't parade any expertise on the
precise conclusions of my economist colleagues. We are immensely enriched by having
a huge volume report currently before a Senate committee that I think addresses
all the issues that you raised and that represents detailed calculations on issues
of fairness. We are seeing a process that is actually working through how it will
be defined from a public policy perspective, and that is going to resolve the
issue that you put before us. I think we must wait and see how that comes through
the system. Question — Surely the problem for interest groups
having a say in the formation of parliamentary decisions is that they only know
that an issue is on the table after it has passed through a binding parliamentary
caucus. So in many ways the deliberations of a Senate committee come at the wrong
end of the process, because by the time an issue gets to a committee and people
present evidence, the discussion and the binding decision have already been made
in the caucus room. If you were talking about reform to include more community
participation and more perspectives being presented, how would you see these fitting
into the binding caucus structure, which is obviously the major difference? Ian
Marsh — My language must have been too abstract; all those words about
`framing' and `strategic' were about creating a role for committees at that agenda
entry end of the process. Furthermore, all the references to the 1901–1909
period were about the legislature in conflict, moving the locus of squabbles out
of the caucus and out of the party rooms and on to the floor of Parliament and
on to the relations between the Houses. So you are really looking, in a more plural
system, at the dynamics of all those activities shifting into other arenas. There's
a perfect illustration of it—you can see how it would all work—if you
look at the Hansard record for the 1901–1909 period. So in our history there
is available, on the record, examples of how this process would work. But it would
shift all those dynamics you are talking about. Many of the things that are now
behind closed doors would move into a more public domain, with all the benefits
that I tried to identify. Question — A year or so ago Phillip
Adams was interviewing Ian Sinclair on Late Night Live about the outcome
of the Constitutional Convention, and they were commenting on how successful that
had been, both in the processes and the quality of debate. One of the difficulties
raised by Ian Sinclair—in response to a suggestion by Phillip Adams that
our Parliament should operate in a similar fashion—was that governments bring
their ideas forward to the Parliament in the House of Representatives in the form
of fully drafted bills, and governments therefore find it hard to have the humility
to back away from the fully worded and drafted proposals. They could perhaps come
forward with an agenda or a set of ideas in general form, and debate those, and
then go away and prepare their bills in the light of comments and discussion.
You propose that the Senate be the focus for this activity, but could we avoid
some of the problems generated in the House by having the House take a different
approach to the way in which it deliberates ideas? Ian Marsh —
I got involved in these activities many years ago for my doctorate when I
was looking at the new committee system Mrs Thatcher established in the House
of Commons in 1979. One of the striking features of the committees that were set
up in that House was the way in which they came to mirror the kind of policy development
process in departments, so that the typical committee each year would have a couple
of inquiries on an emergent issue, which would give the committee the kind of
information base to lock into the policy cycle in which ministers had been the
exclusive political actors. In that way, committees can buy themselves into the
agenda entry and the emergent phases of the policy process. Of course, the Commons
committees in the workings of adversarial politics were totally impotent and the
late Stuart Walklend, a very distinguished British political scientist, described
them as a kind of new House-of-Commons-in-waiting. When you come to Australia,
the evidence suggests that there will still be two major parties, and we still
need a House to allow majoritarian action, and to allow governments to play out
their role. The Commons has over 600 members; our House of Representatives has
only 148 members. In terms of the number of people in the House of Representatives,
and the dynamics that are necessary to sustain Government and Opposition relations
and to constitute an executive, I just don't see that chamber being an effective
vehicle for the more plural and more strategic processes that we need to add to
our political system. But we have the Senate, which is (a) elected on a difference
base, so its composition is somewhat different from the House, and it more truly
reflects the community; and (b) has quite distinct and separate powers. So our
founders, with the wisdom of prescience, have endowed us with the basic institutional
arrangement that would allow us perfectly to move into a more plural world, if
that is how the electorate continues to push the system. Question —
You've touched on the importance of the electoral system to the way the Senate
operates. Given that, do you think there could be an opportunity to advance the
policy-making process either by skewing the numbers from the states—so, for
example, there are twenty senators from NSW and five from Tasmania—or getting
rid of state representation altogether? Half the Senate could be elected from
right across Australia given the irrelevance of the Senate as a states' House.
Ian Marsh — I think it's better to see the Senate as a House
of minorities. States were the minorities at the time the system was conceived,
and now there are many more cross-cutting minorities, but state identity remains
a very significant factor in this country. There have been a lot of lectures—and
I've stopped going to them now—where people talk about a referendum to abolish
the states, and a referendum to change this and that. I just don't see that you'd
get it through our system. If someone is willing to put in the time and energy
and a charismatic figure who can galvanise the country into seeing that there
is some desirability in shedding a state identity and moving to some different
structure, full marks. While it could happen, it's just very hard to see how on
the evidence of public opinion and public attitudes. Of course, the major
parties could gang up and change the voting system for the Senate, and that would
be another way of altering the game. It's a perfectly feasible strategy, and has
happened in Tasmania. Senator Faulkner is on the public record saying he will
never do this, but of course there are a lot of people on the public record saying
they will never do things. I do think that ultimately it is a step that might
come back to bite the major parties. If I am right in putting to you that
the pluralisation of Australian society is a fundamental fact, then we will only
put that genie back in the bottle at the cost of de-legitimising the system. If
the major parties try to squeeze out, or put into private forums, or try to internalise
the complexity and diversity of our society—in other words, if they don't
allow representation to occur—then it will lead to the electors losing confidence
in the system. It will produce more One Nations and events of that kind. So I
can understand the strategy for changing the Senate voting system and I can understand
how these developments might make life uncomfortable for ministers—the gods
of the present system—but any effort to try and contain them would simply
undermine the legitimacy of the whole system. Question — Do
you think that your vision for an enhanced role for committees would be better
served by removing the executive from the Senate, i.e. no ministers, no question
time, no Opposition, no Government, just senators? Ian Marsh —
David Hamer had a suggestion along those lines many years ago, and I have
a speech of his in the bottom of a file somewhere that talks about that. I am
not sufficiently familiar with the constitutional arrangements to know how that
could work or would work. The Senate is still not a big House to constitute an
array of committees that could mirror the constitution of Cabinet, and there's
a lot to be said for liberating the sort of talent that is now absorbed into the
spokesperson and ministerial positions into committee chair roles. But I have
not thought my way through the issues clearly enough to say whether it is feasible
or not. Question — Regarding the role of the media and their
relations with committees, there has been criticism from members and senators
from time to time that they often already do a lot of the issues-based work, but
the media chooses to report only those controversial issues, like the GST, when
in fact there are other committees that do a lot of work. Would you like to comment
on that? Ian Marsh — That's again why it's so instructive to
look at the 1901–1909 period. The media has a sure instinct for power. Politics,
at one level, is about a structure of power. Why have question time? It's a charade,
a ritual. Why is question time such an attractive gladiatorial struggle every
day? Because the rival leadership teams, one or other of whom will hold the real
strings of power in the country, are on display every single day. And as we see
with the GST inquiry, there is now a real game going on between the Senate and
the House and between the Government and the Senate, and it is of interest to
the media. As we see in the 1901–1909 period, when the Senate really was
willing to use its power against the Lower House when controversy was on, the
media naturally honed in on what was happening. I have no doubt that in a reconfigured
system, where the flow of power is organised differently, there would be attendant
publicity. But the media recognise quite rightly at the moment the irrelevancy
of many of the rituals that go off on the side. I think if the structure of power
moves, public attention will also move. Question — You mentioned
in your remarks that there was probably a need for staff support for committees
to be strengthened, and I was wondering if you'd care to elaborate on that? Ian
Marsh — One doesn't want to go to the extent of the US Congress, although
I just point to the US Congress as an extreme of what you need. To come closer
to home, the House of Commons' select committee staffs are about fourteen-strong.
Our committee staffs are about one or two people, by and large. It seems
to me crazy; if an organisation like EPAC (it's now dispensed with) is going to
perform any kind of bridging, mediating, intersecting role, it's crazy to do it
within the executive—it ought to be doing it within the structures of Parliament.
Once you do it within the executive, as soon as you let out information that's
going to be ammunition for the Opposition, you're creating all the incentives
in the world for the Government to squeeze you in or close you down. Whereas the
Parliament's interest is quite different. Of course, the bureaucracy is
full of immensely able people. Just look at the GST debate—look at the arguments
about modelling, or Warren and Harding versus the Treasury. The Treasury is an
immensely able institution. If you're going to, as we need to, make much more
transparent the kinds of deliberations that inform policy-making, then you have
to make sure that alternative points of view, alternative expertise, and other
legitimate perspectives are brought on to the stage. You can't do that with a
one-and-a-half-person staff committee; there's just no way in the world. Committees,
in some sense, will be dependent on the capacity of their staffs to arm their
abilities, and we've got to achieve that. In the House of Commons, where
the committees are in exile, so to speak, you've still got about sixteen qualified
people serving each of the major committees. I should also add that one of the
remarkable absences in our Parliament is a Treasury committee. The most important
committee in the British structure is the Treasury Committee, which calls the
Governor of the Bank of England, the Secretary of the Treasury, and routinely
takes evidence on the state of the economy. It's extraordinary that we don't have
an equivalent of a Treasury committee in this country, although we have started,
to some extent. Question — I welcome your comments regarding
the Senate and its potential role. I underline your comments regarding the intellectual
activity that seems to have ended in 1901. We hope that it comes back. I was bit
appalled by your easy way of handling the House of Representatives by saying that
because the government has the power there won't be any discussion. I think there
can be more discussion. I know that in a number of European, and I think the American,
parliaments, parliamentarians accept a deduction of their salary to pay for a
very powerful office which attracts a lot of young lawyers and economists from
the universities. This office assists everybody whether in the Government party
or the Opposition party, to draft legislation, to engender discussion, with a
consequence that a private member's bill has a far greater chance of getting support
in public because it is funded by this particular office. I knew a young lawyer
in America who was involved in such an organisation, and he happened to be a German,
so they bring in the intellectual elite from all over the world. Ian
Marsh — I must correct the first point. I didn't want to suggest that
all intellectual life was drained from our system in 1909. Rather I wanted to
suggest that it moved into the back rooms and ceased to be as prominently on the
public stage. Of course, the deal in most European Parliaments is very
different because they are operating with different kinds of political systems.
Many of the European systems are much more multi-party than our own political
system, and the dynamics and possibilities are different in those environments.
I don't know whether people noticed the other day a photo in the Herald of
the new Reichstag in Germany. If you look at the layout of the seats in that chamber,
it was a semi-circle in front of the speaker's chair—a completely different
seating arrangement, expressing a completely different character of the nature
of the way the institution frames political interaction. If we change the
voting system in this country for the House of Representatives and therefore turn
it into a more plural House, all the possibilities of the sort that you suggested
could come to pass. But again, it's one of those things that is possible, but
I just don't see it as something that's on the practical horizon within the foreseeable
future. I think the Lower House will remain an adversarial house and I think there
are probably quite good reasons why that might be so, and therefore I see the
Senate as the focus for this kind of activity. But again, if someone can persuade
the major parties to change the Lower House voting system, to make it more of
a multi-party house—fantastic. If we go New Zealand's route, so be it, and
then of course that would come to pass. Question — I share
your optimism about the true constitutional role of the Senate in the legislative
process, but are we not being a bit optimistic in claiming to see it in evidence
now in the tax debate, where the Opposition appears to be opposing and refusing
to propose amendments, and all amending is being done by a senator with 24,000
votes out of an electorate of 11 million? Ian Marsh — Well,
(a) I might be completely wrong; and (b) if I'm half right or three-quarters right
we are in a sort of transition phase and you're going to see all kinds of weird
things happening in that kind of period. The Opposition is naturally and rightly
still wholly adversarial. The norms of adversarial politics totally write its
scripts, and you wouldn't expect it to be otherwise. And if it wasn't Brian Harradine
it would be the Democrats after 30 June, which has got a different constituency,
but I think they would be playing the same sort of game. Well, they'd be playing
a slightly different game—the bells and whistles would be different—but
it would be in the same general direction. So these things always will happen.
There could always be in a more plural world one person holding the balance of
power. There is no perfection on this earth. We're going to have aberrations and
absurdities, and people will make wrong decisions, and people will throw up their
hands in despair at various times if we move into a different arrangement; it's
just the way of the world. Politics is a reflection of our imperfection, and I
don't expect it to be otherwise. So I'm not surprised that a single man from a
state holds the balance of power. This is just the way our world works and it
is inevitable in a period of transition. Maybe it will be the same if we do transit
to wherever it is that we're transiting to. That's the system, that's the world.
Question — If you browse Hansard for say the first decade of
the Commonwealth of Australia, and of the thirties and of the nineties, you cannot
escape the conclusion that the nature of debate in both Houses has changed. To
what extent, in your opinion, is this due to the introduction of broadcasting,
and secondly, the introduction of television? Or is it generational in our politicians,
or is it generational in us? Also, you seem to be suggesting that we would get
better acts if they were in some way drafted in the House. My comment is that
our present Constitution was drafted, my understanding is, by three men on a yacht.
Ian Marsh — On the influence on why parliamentary debate is
better, worse or indifferent, I really don't have a strong view. As you would
expect me to argue, given the kind of analysis I've tried to present, the primary
difference in periods of debate is in pre-1909 and post-1909, and I would see
adversarial politics, the two party system, as the primary re-shaper of the character
of the political debate. I've read some Senate transcripts. Some of the unnoticed
debates around this place can occur at a reasonably elevated level for at least
some of the time. I'm not too concerned. In a more open political environment,
I do believe the quality of deliberation would rise to some degree. As
to where legislation is written, again I wasn't trying to suggest that legislation
ought to be written in the House. It could be written in either chamber. I was
simply suggesting that there is a very important role for committees of the Parliament
at a pre-legislative stage, at an agenda entry stage, at the strategic phase of
the process, which is before we decide to have legislation, but when we are trying
to decide whether something ought to be recognised in the system and how the issue
should be defined. These are both very important steps in the process of beginning
a public conversation about the need for legislation. Question —
Would you agree that, to a very large extent, the uselessness of the House
of Representatives has come about primarily because the Labor Party has always
insisted on absolute unity within caucus. If you are a member of the Labor Party
in the House, you may dislike certain aspects, but once caucus has decided, that's
it. Consequently, because of that situation, the same thing came to happen with
the other side, and that's why it's all froth and bubble and hot air essentially,
in both Houses, but less so in the Senate. Ian Marsh — One
of Deakin's three big reasons for not merging with Labor (because the Deakinites
and Labor both voted together quite a lot in the 1901–1909 period) was exactly
that issue, that freedom of conscience was such a potent symbolic and practical
thing. But I don't think it is the only reason for the froth and bubble of the
lower House. And I actually don't think it's all froth and bubble, in the sense
that whatever world we live in we will still need executive teams, and the job
of being prime minister and minister is immensely demanding. I don't think there's
any job outside Parliament that calls for the qualities of physical stamina, much
less intellectual agility and being smart on your feet, like the job of prime
minister or a senior minister. The lower House, if it serves no other purpose,
is an immensely important testing ground, to see who is going to be able to actually
get up there every day, no matter how well they slept or what time they went to
bed, and to handle a question with intelligence and some apparent command of the
facts. When I was very young and first worked at Parliament House, I can
remember the minister I worked for would leave the old Parliament House at 3.00
am and come back at 8.30 am and begin the day again. I would come in, I was twenty-two
I think, totally ragged, feeling like death warmed up, and this guy would just
begin his day as though he had had a sound night's sleep. Those kinds of qualities
are absolutely essential in our leadership and we need a chamber that has the
capacity to really test people at those levels. I think the House of Representatives
chamber does that, as well as exposing the two major alternative governments.
In the world that I'm talking about, you would never go into the Senate if your
ambition was to govern the country. You still need an executive, you still need
to concentrate power and you still need that power to be challenged by an Opposition.
And the House of Representatives, I think, does and would do a very good job of
that very important task. Question — While you have given a
very factual summary, maybe you underestimate the importance of the individual,
and this is one of the reasons why Pauline Hanson is going to upset a fine leader
like Timothy Fischer and why Senator Brown and Senator Harradine are so critical
at the present juncture. If you're going to reform the tax system, what are you
going to do about tax evasion, what are you going to do about helping the people
down at the bottom? Neither party has control of that, and the criticism is coming
from individuals outside of it. Do you think there is a bigger role for the individual?
Santamaria was never in Parliament, both Menzies and Evatt doted on him until
the split came in the Labor Party and then they ignored him. Those personalities
are known in Canberra from one decade to another, but they are not figuring publicly
in the analytic discourse of the universities. Ian Marsh — I
agree with that, although in the hearings before the various inquiries, my impressionistic
judgement is that they have been very successful in engaging and drawing in many
perspectives and individuals from society into the process. On the first
point you make on evasion and its role in the tax system and the impact on pensions,
we haven't seen whether the Government's going to get a GST out of this exercise.
It is still not clear. Presumably, issues of the kind you have raised will weigh
with our representatives who are charged with taking it forward. All the commentary
tells us that Senator Harradine is going to make concessions on certain points
and we will get a deal, but let's wait until it all happens, and see what the
Democrats do. That is our political system at work. I was listening to
the debates in my car, driving around Sydney the last few days, and the kinds
of issues you raise are the kinds of issues that senators have been speaking about
on the floor of the House. We pay them money to balance these very large and complicated
questions, and let's wait and see how they come out. It could still be that the
issues you have raised will tip the scales. I don't know. I think they have been
well recognised and that is one of the very important tasks you ask of a public
political process, that issues that are legitimately concerning people, issues
that are legitimately entitled to a standing in the process of deliberation, get
ventilated and get their due weight. We may not all agree, and we won't always
all agree, of course, on whether they have been weighed properly, but that they
have been ventilated, that they have been recognised in the process of coming
to a judgement is a very important part of our broader sense of the fairness of
the system. I think that is what we are seeing work through at the moment.
Footnotes* This paper was presented as a lecture in the Senate Occasional
Lecture Series at Parliament House on 23 April 1999. [1]
Bernard Crick, In Defence of Politics, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, Vic.,
1964; for the three principal structures of politics in the Westminster context
see Samuel H. Beer, British Politics in the Collectivist Age, Vintage Books,
New York, 1969. [2] On the Senate's formal powers
and theoretical background see John Uhr, Deliberative Democracy in Australia:
the Changing Place of Parliament, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 1998;
and Marian Sawer, `Dilemmas of representation', Representation and Institutional
Change: 50 Years of Proportional Representation in the Senate, Papers on Parliament
no. 34. December 1999, pp. 95-104. [3] On
independence in nineteenth century parliaments see P. Loveday and A.W. Martin,
Parliament, Factions and Parties, the First Thirty Years of Responsible Government
in NSW, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Vic., 1966; on the emergence
of the two party system see, P. Loveday, A.W. Martin and R.S. Parker (eds),
The Emergence of the Australian Party System, Hale and Iremonger, Sydney,
1977. [4] Bede Nairn, Civilising Capitalism:
the Beginning of the Australian Labor Party, Melbourne University Press, Carlton,
Vic., 1989. [5] Ian Marsh, Beyond the Two Party
System: Political Representation, Economic Competitiveness and Australian Politics,
Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 1995, especially Chapter 1, `The Formation,
Structure and Impact of the Two Party Regime', and Chapter 10, `Governments and
Parliament'; also Alfred Deakin, Federated Australia, Selections from Letters
to the Morning Post, 1901–1910, Melbourne University Press, Carlton,
Vic., 1968. [6] `What makes political parties
so indispensable is the aggregating and representational functions that they fulfil.'
Clive Bean, `Parties and Elections', in Brian Galligan, Ian McAllister and John
Ravenhill (eds), New Directions in Australian Politics, Macmillan Education,
Melbourne, 1997, p.102; also Peter Mair, Party System Change: Approaches and
Interpretations, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1997. [7]
Ian McAllister, `Political Parties in Australia: Party Stability in a Utilitarian
Culture', a paper prepared for Political Parties and the Millennium: Emergence,
Adaptation and Decline in Democratic Societies, Brunel University, March,
1998. [8] Ian McAllister, `Political Behaviour',
in Dennis Woodward et al., Government, Politics and Power in Australia,
6th Edition, Longman, Melbourne, 1997, pp. 240–268. [9]
L.F. Crisp, The Australian Federal Labor Party 1901–1951, Longman
Green, Melbourne, 1955; Katherine West, Power in the Liberal Party, Cheshire,
Melbourne, 1965. Other organised interests, such as returned servicemen, were
also active in federal politics. [10] Crisp,
op. cit.; Dean Jaensch, Power Politics: Australia's Party System, 3rd Edition,
Allen and Unwin, St Leonards, NSW, 1994. [11]
West, op. cit.; Jaensch, op. cit. [12] Ian Marsh,
`Political learning disabilities of the two party regime', Australian Journal
of Political Science, Special Issue, vol. 30, 1995, pp. 40–61. [13]
Paul Kelly, The End of Certainty, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1992; John Edwards,
Keating, the Inside Story, Viking Books, Melbourne, 1996; Stephen Mills,
The Hawke Years: the Story from the Inside, Viking, Melbourne, 1993; Dean
Jaensch, The Hawke–Keating Hi-Jack: the ALP in Transition, Allen and
Unwin, Sydney, 1989. [14] See, for example, the
(albeit unofficial) Commission for Audit Report, (R. Officer, Chair), Australian
Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1996. [15]
Ian Ward, `Leaders and followers: reforming the Liberal Party', Current Affairs
Bulletin, vol. 71, no. 3, November, 1994, pp. 4–16. [16]
Ian Marsh, `Political Integration and the Outlook for the Australian Party System',
in P. Boreham, R. Hall and G. Stokes, (eds), The Politics of Australian Society:
Political Issues for the New Century, Addison Wellsley Longman, Melbourne,
forthcoming. [17] Ian McAllister, `Political
Parties in Australia: Party Stability in a Utilitarian Culture', op. cit., p.
9. [18] Marsh, Beyond the Two Party System,
op. cit., Chapter 3, `Setting and Implementing the Political Agenda'. [19]
F. Gruen and M. Grattan, Managing Government: Labor's Achievements and Failures,
Longman Cheshire, Melbourne, 1993; G. Singleton, The Accord and the Australian
Labor Movement, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Vic., 1990. [20]
Stephen Mills, The New Machine Men, Penguin Books, Ringwood, Vic., 1986.
[21] Ian Marsh, `The GST and the Policy Making
System: Is There a Gap in Strategic Capacity? How Might it be Closed?', a paper
presented at a conference on Tax Change in Australia, Centre for Public
Policy, University of Melbourne, February, 1999. [22]
John Hewson, `Yes Minister, there's no debate', Australian Financial Review,
26 February, 1998; John Stone, `Some modest proposals', Adelaide Review,
December, 1998, p. 14. [23] On welfare systems
see Gosta Esping-Anderson, Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economies,
Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999. [24] Donald
Schon and Martin Rein, Frame Reflection: Towards the Resolution of Intractable
Policy Conflicts, Basic Books, New York, 1996. [25]
D. Yankelovitch, Coming to Public Judgement, Syracuse University Press,
New York, 1992; Robert Reich, (ed.), The Power of Public Ideas, Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, 1990. [26] Dennis
Turner and Michael Crawford, Change Power, Business and Professional Publishing,
Warriewood, NSW, 1998, especially Chapter 5; Doug Stace and Dexter Dunphy, Beyond
the Boundaries, Leading and Recreating the Successful Enterprise, McGraw Hill,
Sydney, 1996, especially Chapter 5; David A. Garvin, `Building a learning organisation',
Harvard Business Review, July, 1993, pp. 78–91; Peter Senge, `The leaders
new work: building learning organisations', Sloan Management Review, Fall,
1990, pp. 7–23; John Kay, Foundations of Corporate Success, Oxford
University Press, Oxford, 1995. [27] Peter Drucker,
Post-Capitalist Society, Harper Business, New York, 1993; S. Tarrow, Power
in Movement: Social Movements, Collective Action, and Politics, Cambridge
University Press, New York, 1994. [28] Examples
of social movements in the nineteenth-century include the Suffragette, Temperance,
Single Tax, Anti-Slavery, 8 Hour Day, and Anti-Corn Law League. [29]
V. Burgman, In Our Time, Socialism and the Rise of Labour, 1885–1905,
Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1985. [30] Larry
Galbraith and Ian Marsh, `The political impact of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi
Gras', Australian Journal of Political Science, vol. 30, no. 2, 1995, pp.
300–320. [31] Brian Galligan, A Federal
Republic: Australia's Constitutional System of Government, Cambridge University
Press, Melbourne, 1994; Helen Irving, To Constitute a Nation, Cambridge
University Press, Melbourne, 1997; J.A. LaNauze, The Making of the Australian
Constitution, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Vic., 1972; Alfred Deakin,
The Federal Story, Robertson and Mullens, Melbourne, 1944. [32]
Uhr, op. cit.; Campbell Sharman, `The Senate and good government', Papers on
Parliament no. 33, May 1999, pp. 153-170; Geoffrey Brennan, `The unrepresentative
swill feel their oats', Policy, Summer, 1998–99, pp. 3–9. On
earlier uses of Senate power see L. Young, `A disproportionate amount of power?
Influence of minor parties in the 1993 budget process', Legislative Studies,
vol. 13, no. 1, Spring, 1998, pp 1–17. [33]
Richard Mulgan, `The Australian Senate as a house of review', Australian Journal
of Political Science, vol. 31, no. 2, 1996, pp. 191–205. [34]
For an American contrast see Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America:
an Interpretation of American Political Thought Since the Revolution, Harecourt,
Brace and World, New York, 1955; on the United Kingdom see W.H. Greenleaf,
The British Political Tradition, Methuen, London, 1983. [35]
Marsh, Beyond the Two Party System, op. cit., pp. 294–297. [36]
Surveyed in Geoffrey Sawer, Australian Federal Politics and Law, 1901–1929,
Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Vic., 1972. [37]
Writing in The English Constitution in 1867, Walter Bagehot identified
a number of functions for the House of Commons that extended well beyond `watching
and checking ministers of the Crown.' These included `expressive', `teaching',
`informing', and `elective' functions. [38] The
power of bipartisanship was clearly displayed in the 1980s. Floating the exchange
rate, financial deregulation and the reduction of protection all attracted bipartisan
support. By contrast party u-turns under electoral and/or interest group pressure
are evident on the GST and Telstra privatisation. [39]
`After 1820 … Select Committees were used with a regularity and purpose quite
without precedent. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of this development.
Through session after session, through hundreds of inquiries and the examination
of many thousands of witnesses a vast mass of information and statistics was being
assembled. Even where (as was uncommonly the case) the official inquiry was in
the hands of unscrupulous partisans, a sort of informal adversary system usually
led to the enlargement of true knowledge in the end. A session or two later the
counter-partisans would secure a counter exposition of their own. All this enabled
the administration to act with a confidence, a perspective and a breadth of vision
which had never hitherto existed. It had also a profound secular effect on public
opinion generally and upon parliamentary public opinion in particular. For the
exposure of the actual state of things in particular fields was in the long run
probably the most fruitful source of reform in nineteenth century England.' Oliver
MacDonagh, Early Victorian Government, 1830–1870, Holmes and Meir,
New York, 1977, p. 6. [40] Arthur Maas, Congress
and the Common Good, Basic Books, New York, 1983. [41]
Ian Marsh, `Parliament and Policy-Making' in Beyond the Two Party System,
op. cit., Chapter 9. [42] An example is the procedural
norms in the US Congress. [43] Weekend Australian,
editorial, `Undue power shows Senate reform needed', 28 November, 1998; Sydney
Morning Herald, editorial, `The Senate needs to be reformed', 8 February,
1999; Herald-Sun, editorial, `The tyranny of minorities', 25 November,
1998; Helen Coonan, `The Senate: safeguard or handbrake on democracy?' Address
to the Sydney Institute, February, 1999. For an overview see Hugh Emy, `The
mandate and responsible government', Australian Journal of Political Science,
vol. 32, no. 1, 1997, pp. 65–78. [44] Ian
Marsh, `Liberal priorities, the Lib-Lab pact and the requirements for policy influence',
Parliamentary Affairs, vol. 43, no. 2, July 1990. [45]
The development of multi-party politics in New Zealand, devolution to Scotland
and Wales and possibly the English regions, the possibility of an MMP voting system
in the UK, and the possibility of constitutional change in Canada all point to
regime movement in the countries closest to Australia in political culture and
institutions. 
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