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All the states have adopted four-year maximum parliamentary terms without much fanfare, and yet at a federal level Australia has stayed at three years. Is it time for Australia to just bite the bullet and extend the term?
To debate that very question in today’s Friday Fight we have political columnist Rachel Withers arguing in the affirmative and former senator Margaret Reynolds making the negative case.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton recently expressed support for changing Australia’s three-year parliamentary terms to four years. In March, a poll showed 51% of Australian voters supported this proposal but 37% were opposed. Yet all state governments already have four-year terms. Why is there such a difference in voters’ attitudes — apparent acceptance of longer terms for state governments but rejection at the national level? An obvious answer is that the Australian Constitution specifies the House of Representatives is required to have a maximum of three years from the first meeting after a federal election.
The length of Australian parliamentary terms was first raised at the Constitutional Convention in 1891. Colonial state governments had inherited five-year terms from the British government but by the 1890s had moved to three-year terms, with only Western Australia having a four-year term. The four-year proposal was defeated at the Constitutional Convention of 1897, so the three-year House of Representatives term became enshrined in the Australian Constitution in 1900. This decision was influenced by the need to harmonise the House of Representatives’ terms with the Senate, where there was an agreement that there would be six-year rotational terms so that half the Senate faced election every three years.
Four-year terms for the national Parliament have been advocated over many years, but in practical terms would be difficult to achieve because it requires constitutional change by referendum, requiring the support of a majority of voters from a majority of states.
The Royal Commission on the Constitution (1927-1929) was the first opportunity to consider change to national parliamentary terms. It strongly recommended introducing a four-year term, but no action was taken at the time.
In 1983 the federal Parliament approved the Constitution Alteration (Simultaneous Elections) Bill which gave the Hawke government the opportunity to bring a four-year term option to a referendum, but argument between the federal government and the Senate meant this was delayed until 1988. However, the referendum proposal to increase the House of Representatives from three to four-year terms was defeated with the lowest ever YES vote of any referenda since 1900. It has been argued that the four-year term question was affected by more contentious issues, including the reduction of Senate terms to four years and the prospect of electing half the Senate for eight years. More recently, the Australian Parliament’s joint standing committee on electoral reform has given unanimous support to four-year terms following inquiries into the 1996, 1998 and 2001 Federal elections.
The two major political parties still dominate Australian politics, so when their leaders appear to agree to increase their own power, there is invariably a questioning of their motives for such reform. The established party system has created entrenched internal structures to control the preselection of candidates and some of those choices do not always accord with the priorities of the community.
Labor and Liberal/National party preselection is primarily the choice of the faction or group wanting to maintain control of their influence. While many individuals may bring skills of political capacity and varied experience, they are not chosen specifically on their suitability to initiate public policy reform, scrutinise legislation, monitor overall financial management of the public service or respond to the electorate’s priorities. Political party preselections do not conform to professional employment procedures — there are no standard candidate applications, job descriptions, selection criteria, interview panels or in-service training to provide guidance on how to manage the demands of representative democracy.
Increasingly, the Australian electorate is challenging the entrenched policies and practices of the major political parties and choosing to support smaller parties and independent candidates. Therefore, when a current prime minister and opposition leader talk cooperatively about election funding or increasing parliamentary terms, suspicion is inevitable.
There may well be some benefits in moving from three-year to four-year terms, but the Australian Constitution requiring a clear referendum majority suggests that the old party hierarchies will need to reconsider and adapt their outdated partisan strategies to win over sceptical voters.
The Australian national democracy has functioned effectively for over one hundred years, but it can be improved by the major political parties placing a higher value on diversity and respect for minor parties and independents. A variety of coalition and minority governments continue to cooperate in many countries, yet our Labor/Coalition duopoly insists that only a majority government can be successful. Leaders of the major political parties need to look at their own internal processes before attempting to persuade voters to support four-year terms.
Read the opposing argument by Rachel Withers.