cover image: Power sharing in Australian parliaments - Why the hang up about hung

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Power sharing in Australian parliaments - Why the hang up about hung

31 Oct 2024

The likelihood of shared power in the Commonwealth parliament has increased as the major party vote has declined significantly since the end of World War 2, and the 2022 election marked the lowest combined vote for the two largest parties since the Great Depression. [...] Under the Australian Constitution, the executive government is decided by the composition of the lower house, but the passage of new laws requires the support of the Senate. [...] The influence of crossbenchers can be seen in legislation protecting the Franklin River from damming in the 1980s, AusAID prohibitions on funding family planning in the 1990s and 2000s, the passage of the GST and the National Anti- Corruption Commission legislated last year. [...] The number of crossbenchers in the federal Senate also reached record numbers during the 2010s: the 2016 election returned a record 20 crossbenchers to sit in the Australian Senate, a reflection of the proportional representation system used and the lower threshold for a double-dissolution election. [...] This necessitates a more mature and nuanced analysis of both electoral outcomes and the contribution of crossbenchers and their roles, just as the electoral success of the Labor Party in the 1890s and 1900s forced the political class to reckon with the political labour movement.

Authors

Bill Browne

Pages
33
Published in
Australia

Table of Contents