Horse 1403 - Best Parliament In The World

If I have been taught anything over the past month it is that the Australian Federal Parliament and its peculiar form of Westminster Government is probably the best in the world. I find it remarkable that for 112 years, we've had stable and boisterous government and I think that by accident and design, we've stumbled on a good thing.
I think that this comes down to a few key factors.

1. Compulsory Voting
Mitt Romney himself made that now famous gaff that he didn't have to worry about 47% of the population because they would always vote against him. There is a very large kernel of truth about that but if he had been in Australia it would have been very very different.
Unlike voluntary voting which exists in the US and the UK, compulsory voting sends a great many more of the apathetic masses out to vote. Also unlike the US and UK, parties and politicians have to work far harder to entice a far larger amount of people to vote for them. Romney's comment about the 47% probably equally works the other way; twice 47 is 94 which means that election results in the US swing on only 6% of voters. In Australia, swings of more than 15% are commonplace and even sitting Prime Ministers can not automatically assume that they will even retain their own seat; this is something which most politicians in the US and UK never have to deal with, so they don't; to the detriment of good governance.

2. Shorter Terms
I think that one of the powers which is utterly central to proper democracy is the power of the people to fire governments through the ballot box if they don't like them. Governments should always remember that they only rule via the consent of the people and a very simple way of doing this is to keep them on their toes.
NSW has shown that when you have a bad, mad and sad government in power, five years is a terrible amount of time to have to suffer whilst it careers out of control. The UK which has only just adopted a five year term will soon learn that exact same lesson and I think that the effects will be horrible. Five years is far too long a period to have to sit through and the only people it benefits are the sitting members themselves, which is most likely why they voted for it.
The US experience with four year fixed terms fares no better. Even with the mid-term elections which occur in the even years between a year when both the President and Congress are elected, you can still end up with gridlock. The 112th Congress is set to be the least productive since WW2 and the 113th which begins in January is not markedly different in composition from it; therefore it in all likelihood will be just as unproductive.

In Australia though, there are mechanisms to both unseat a government before term, for a government to call an early election if they think that the winds are blowing the right way and because the maximum length of a parliament is only three years plus the issue of the writs etc. Australia is able to depose unpopular and unworthy governments far more easily. This means that the Government and Opposition have to formulate policy which is palatable to the electorate and adjust that policy more often or else suffer sitting on the other side of the chamber. Although the name Shadow Cabinet sounds darker, edgier and cooler than the Cabinet proper, there are no cool weapons at their disposal and so an Opposition generally  works harder than a Government to formulate new policy.

3. The Cabinet In the Chamber
One of the features which we inherited from the grand old lady of Westminster was that the Cabinet itself is selected from sitting members in parliament. This means that every member of the Cabinet has to have been voted there by someone in the country because the only way you even get into either chamber is through the ballot box.
The Cabinet in the US is made up of people who are selected by the President. This means to say that the executive of the United States is made entirely of unelected persons save for the President and Vice President. How this is tolerated in a land which prides itself as being a bastion of democracy is beyond me. This looks like a perfect avenue for corruption to thrive in, to me.

The other problem which faces the US which never occurs in Australia is the prospect of government shutdowns because a budget can not be passed. The remedy for this in Australia is that when governments are unable to pass a budget, a loss of supply occurs and we have a new election.
Even in the midst of the 1975 constitutional crisis which was caused by a delay in supply, we still saw an election called because the Governor General in my opinion quite rightly dissolved parliament under his undefined reserve powers. At very least it shows that the system has workable controls.
In the US because the Department of Treasury (as indeed all departments) has the Secretary sit outside of the chamber, they're subject to the machinations of a sometimes hostile and toxic Congress. In Australia though, the Treasurer is part of the sitting government which is by definition made from a majority of members in the lower house; so half the job should in theory already be done save for members of the government crossing the floor.

4. Election of the Upper House.
The framers of the Australian Constitution when faced with six colonies who would become states and who were frequently both at each others' throats and couldn't normally agree on anything, decided to take the best of the US system and afford equal representation in the Senate and more importantly make it an elected body.
The effect of proportional representation as a voting system has led to a greater plurality of voices in the upper chamber which the lower chamber could never achieve through single member; preferential voting and ensures that there is a proper check on legislation in parliament, unlike Queensland for instance which abandoned its upper house and now has governments who are able to pass legislation in complete impugnity; free from the prying eyes of someone checking their work.
In contrast, the House of Lords in the UK which is an unelected body, is incapable by definition of representing anyone and basically acts as a.holding pen for otherwise unelectable ex-Members of the Commons and people who are unemployable in the real world. Being a Lord I imagine must be about the easiest job in the world because if you behave reasonably, you can have yourself a nice government wage for life without ever going through the utter bore of elections like those Commoners do.

5. Preferential Voting in the Reps and Proportional Voting in the Senate.
A sitting member in the House of Representatives because of preferential voting must at some point during the counting achieve 50% of the vote. In a first past the post system like the UK which still has somewhat meaningful third parties, it would be possible for a member to be voted in on just 34% of the vote with the other two candidates scoring 33% each. If for example the Horrible Party won a seat over the Lovely Party and the Nice Party with those sorts of figures it would mean that despite almost two thirds of voters in active disapproval, they still get in anyway. Basically the only parties who support the first-past-the-post method are those parties who are in power but stand to lose significantly. Preferential voting requires parties to work harder.

With proportional voting in the Senate, even smaller parties are represented. Although there is sometimes talk of small parties holding the balance of power being somehow bad for democracy, this very statement almost denies the fact that the vast bulk and actual power to determine the direction of policy is still held with the majors. A member of a party with only one seat in the Senate can not seriously expect to direct policy about them like some weird legislative traffic cop. The power of one vote might seem like a lot but how does it compare with the power of thirty.

In closing:
I'm sure that there are a host of other things I could say here but I don't think I need to. Ultimately good governance results in stability and Australia's parliament produces precisely that; even with the bickering which goes on but that's more about politics than the system itself.