No, Australia should not extend parliamentary terms

All states adopted four-year maximum parliamentary terms without much fanfare, and yet, at the federal level, Australia remained at three years. Is it time for Australia to bite the bullet and extend the mandate?

To debate this question in today’s Friday Fight, we have a political columnist Rachel Withers arguing in the affirmative and former Senator Margaret Reynolds arguing in the negative.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton recently expressed support for changing the length of parliamentary terms from three years in Australia to four years. In March, a survey showed 51% of Australian voters supported this proposal but 37% opposed it. Yet all state governments already have four-year terms. Why is there such a difference in voter attitudes – apparent acceptance of longer terms for state governments but rejection at the national level? An obvious answer is that the Australian Constitution specifies that the House of Representatives must have a maximum of three years from the first meeting after a federal election.

Australian parliamentary term limits were first raised at the Constitutional Convention of 1891. Colonial state governments had inherited five-year terms from the British government, but by the 1890s had moved to terms of three years, with only Western Australia having a four-year term. term. The four-year proposal was rejected at the 1897 Constitutional Convention, so the three-year term of the House of Representatives was enshrined in the Australian Constitution in 1900. This decision was influenced by the need to harmonize the mandates of the House of Representatives with those of the Senate. , where there was an agreement that there would be rotating six-year terms so that half of the Senate would be elected every three years.

Four-year terms for the national parliament have been advocated for many years, but in practical terms they would be difficult to achieve because they require constitutional change by referendum, requiring the support of a majority of voters by a majority of ‘States.

The Royal Commission on the Constitution (1927-1929) was the first opportunity to consider a change in national legislatures. He strongly recommended introducing a four-year term, but no action was taken at the time.

In 1983, the Federal Parliament approved the Constitutional Amendment (Simultaneous Elections) Bill which gave the Hawke government the option of putting a four-year term option to a referendum, but disputes between the Federal Government and the Senate delayed this decision until 1988. , the referendum proposal to increase the term of the House of Representatives from three to four years was rejected by the Lowest YES vote ever recorded in a referendum since 1900. It has been argued that the four-year term issue was affected by more controversial issues, including the reduction of the Senate term to four years and the prospect of electing half of the Senate for eight years. More recently, the Australian Parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Reform gave unanimous support to four-year terms following inquiries into the 1996, 1998 and 2001 federal elections.

The two main political parties still dominate Australian politics, so when their leaders appear to agree to increase their own power, questions invariably arise about the motivations for such reform. The established party system has created well-established internal structures to control the pre-selection of candidates and some of these choices do not always align with community priorities.

The preselection of Labor and Liberal/National parties is primarily the choice of the faction or group wishing to retain control of its influence. Although many people may bring political skills and varied experience, they are not specifically chosen based on their ability to initiate public policy reform, review legislation, oversee the overall financial management of the civil service or to respond to the priorities of the electorate. Political party pre-selections do not comply with professional hiring procedures: there are no standard applications, job descriptions, selection criteria, interview panels or continuing education to provide guidance on way of managing the demands of representative democracy.

Increasingly, the Australian electorate is questioning the well-established policies and practices of major political parties and choosing to support smaller parties and independent candidates. Therefore, when a current Prime Minister and an opposition leader cooperatively discuss financing elections or increasing the parliamentary mandate, suspicion is inevitable.

There may well be some advantages to moving from three to four year terms, but Australia’s Constitution requiring a clear referendum majority suggests that old party hierarchies will need to reconsider and adapt their outdated partisan strategies to win over skeptical voters.

Australia’s national democracy has functioned effectively for over a hundred years, but it can be improved if major political parties place a greater value on diversity and respect for minor parties and independents. Various coalition and minority governments continue to cooperate in many countries, but our Labor/coalition duopoly insists that only a majority government can succeed. Leaders of major political parties must examine their own internal processes before attempting to persuade voters to support four-year terms.

Read the argument opposed by Rachel Withers.