Parliament of Australia
The Parliament of Australia is the federal legislature of Australia. It consists of three elements: the monarch of Australia, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. The Parliament combines elements from the British Westminster system, in which the party or coalition with a majority in the lower house is entitled to form a government, and the United States Congress, which affords equal representation to each of the states, and scrutinises legislation before it can be signed into law.
The upper house, the Senate, consists of 76 members; twelve for each state, and two for each of the two self-governing territories. Senators are elected using the single transferable vote and, as a result, the chamber features a multitude of parties vying for legislative control. No party or coalition has held a majority in the Senate since 2007, and this usually necessitates negotiation with either the opposition or crossbench to pass legislation.
The lower house, the House of Representatives, currently consists of 150 members, each elected via full preferential voting from single-member electorates. This tends to result in the chamber being dominated by two major political groups, the centreright to rightwing Coalition and the centreleft Labor Party. The government of the day must command the confidence of the House of Representatives in order to gain and remain in power.
The House of Representatives has a maximum term of three years, although it can be dissolved early. The Senate has fixed terms, with half of the state senators' terms expiring every three years. As a result, House and Senate elections almost always coincide. A deadlock-breaking mechanism known as a double dissolution can be used to dissolve the full Senate as well as the House if the Senate refuses to pass a piece of legislation passed by the House.
The two houses of Parliament meet in separate chambers at Parliament House, which itself is located on Capital Hill in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory. Members of the House of Representatives usually convene in the so-called Green Room, while Senators convene in the adjacent Red Room.
History
Temporary home in Melbourne (1901–1927)
The Commonwealth of Australia came into being on 1 January 1901 with the federation of the six Australian colonies. The inaugural election took place on 29 and 30 March and the first Australian Parliament was opened on 9 May 1901 in Melbourne by Prince George, Duke of Cornwall and York, later King George V. The only building in Melbourne that was large enough to accommodate the 14,000 guests was the western annexe of the Royal Exhibition Building. After the official opening, from 1901 to 1927 the Parliament met in Parliament House, Melbourne, which it borrowed from the Parliament of Victoria. During this time, Sir Frederick Holder became the first speaker and also the first parliamentarian to die during a sitting. On 23 July 1909 during an acrimonious debate that had extended through the night to 5 am, Holder exclaimed: "Dreadful, dreadful!" before collapsing as a result of a cerebral haemorrhage.Old Parliament House (1927–1988)
The Constitution provided that a new national capital would be established for the nation. This was a compromise at Federation due to the rivalry between the two largest Australian cities, Sydney and Melbourne, which both wished to become the new capital. The site of Canberra was selected for the location of the nation's capital city in 1908. A competition was announced on 30 June 1914 to design Parliament House, with prize money of £7,000. However, due to the start of World War I the next month, the competition was cancelled. It was re-announced in August 1916, but again postponed indefinitely on 24 November 1916. In the meantime, John Smith Murdoch, the Commonwealth's chief architect, worked on the design as part of his official duties. He had little personal enthusiasm for the project, as he felt it was a waste of money and expenditure on it could not be justified at the time. Nevertheless, he designed the building by default.The construction of Old Parliament House, as it is called today, commenced on 28 August 1923 and was completed in early 1927. It was built by the Commonwealth Department of Works, using workers and materials from all over Australia. The final cost was about £600,000, which was more than three times the original estimate. It was designed to house the parliament for a maximum of 50 years until a permanent facility could be built, but was actually used for more than 60 years.
The building was opened on 9 May 1927 by the Duke and Duchess of York. The opening ceremonies were both splendid and incongruous, given the sparsely built nature of Canberra of the time and its small population. The building was extensively decorated with Union Jacks and red or blue Australian ensigns. Temporary stands were erected bordering the lawns in front of the Parliament and these were filled with crowds. A Wiradjuri elder, Jimmy Clements, was one of only two Aboriginal Australians present, having walked for about a week from Brungle Station to be at the event. Dame Nellie Melba sang "God Save the King". The Duke of York unlocked the front doors with a golden key, and led the official party into King's Hall where he unveiled the statue of his father, King George V. The Duke then opened the first parliamentary session in the new Senate Chamber.
New Parliament House (1988–present)
In 1978 the Fraser government decided to proceed with a new building on Capital Hill, and the Parliament House Construction Authority was created. A two-stage competition was announced, for which the Authority consulted the Royal Australian Institute of Architects and, together with the National Capital Development Commission, made available to competitors a brief and competition documents. The design competition drew 329 entries from 29 countries.The competition winner was the Philadelphia-based architectural firm of Mitchell/Giurgola, with the on-site work directed by the Italian-born architect Romaldo Giurgola, with a design which involved burying most of the building under Capital Hill, and capping the edifice with an enormous spire topped by a large Australian flag. The façades, however, included deliberate imitation of some of the patterns of the Old Parliament House, so that there is a slight resemblance despite the massive difference of scale. The building was also designed to sit above Old Parliament House when seen from a distance.
Construction began in 1981, and the House was intended to be ready by Australia Day, 1988, the 200th anniversary of European settlement in Australia. It was expected to cost $220 million. Neither the deadline nor the budget was met. In the end it cost more than $1.1 billion to build.
New Parliament House was finally opened by Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia, on 1988, the anniversary of the opening of both the first Federal Parliament in Melbourne on 1901 and the Provisional Parliament House in Canberra on 1927.
In March 2020, the 46th Parliament of Australia was suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia; an adjournment rather than prorogation. Its committees would continue to operate using technology. This unprecedented move was accompanied by two motions raised by the Attorney-General of Australia, Christian Porter, and passed on 23 March 2020. One motion was designed to allow MPs to participate in parliament by electronic means, if agreed by the major parties and the speaker; the second determined that with the agreement of the two major parties, the standing orders could be amended without requiring an absolute majority.
Composition and electoral systems
The Constitution establishes the Commonwealth Parliament, consisting of three components: the King of Australia, the Senate and the House of Representatives.Monarch
All of the constitutional functions of the King are exercisable by the governor-general, whom the King appoints as his federal representative in Australia on the advice of the prime minister. However, by convention, the governor-general exercises these powers only upon the advice of ministers, except for limited circumstances covered by the reserve powers.In Parliament, the monarch legally shares co-equally the law making powers of the Commonwealth with the Senate and House of Representatives. As such their royal assent is required for a bill to become an act and thus part of the law. The government does not formally advise the governor-general to grant assent, but it is expected that they will act in accordance with the democratically elected houses of Parliament and assent has never been refused.
Senate
The upper house of the Australian Parliament consists of 76 members and is called the Senate,. It has founding principles dervied from both the British 'Westminster' traditions and the US 'Washington' models structure, often referred to as the "Wash-minster' model. Drawing inspiration from the United States Senate fundamental structure, the Australian Senate includes an equal number of senators from each state, regardless of population. Conversely the Australian Senate draws many of its traditions and symbols from the British House of Lords, such as the Red Chamber and the Usher of the Black Rod.The Constitution allows Parliament to determine the number of senators by legislation, provided that the six original states are equally represented. Furthermore, the Constitution provides that each original state is entitled to at least six senators. However, neither of these provisions applies to any newly admitted states, or to territories. Since an act was passed in 1974, senators have been elected to represent the territories. Currently, the two Northern Territory senators represent the residents of the Northern Territory as well as the Australian external territories of Christmas Island and the Cocos Islands. The two Australian Capital Territory senators represent the Australian Capital Territory, the Jervis Bay Territory and since 1 July 2016, Norfolk Island. Only half of the state Senate seats go up for re-election each three years as they serve six-year terms; however territory Senators do not have staggered terms and hence face re-election every three years.
Until 1949, each state elected the constitutional minimum of six senators. This number increased to ten from the 1949 election, and was increased again to twelve from the 1984 election. The system for electing senators has changed several times since Federation. The original arrangement used a first-past-the-post block voting, on a state-by-state basis. This was replaced in 1919 by preferential block voting. Block voting tended to produce landslide majorities. For instance, from 1920 to 1923 the Nationalist Party had 35 of the 36 senators, and from 1947 to 1950, the Australian Labor Party had 33 of the 36 senators.
In 1948, single transferable vote proportional representation on a state-by-state basis became the method for electing senators. This change has been described as an "institutional revolution" that has led to the rise of a number of minor parties such as the Democratic Labor Party, the Democrats and the Greens who have taken advantage of this system to achieve parliamentary representation and the balance of power. From the 1984 election, Group voting tickets were introduced in order to reduce a high rate of informal voting but in 2016, group tickets were abolished to end the influence that preference deals amongst parties had on election results and a form of optional preferential voting was introduced.
Section 15 of the Constitution provides that a casual vacancy of a senator shall be filled by the state Parliament. If the previous senator was a member of a particular political party the replacement must come from the same party, but the state Parliament may choose not to fill the vacancy, in which case section 11 requires the Senate to proceed regardless. If the state Parliament happens to be in recess when the vacancy occurs, the Constitution provides that the state governor can appoint someone to fill the place until fourteen days after the state Parliament resumes sitting. The state Parliament can also be recalled to ratify a replacement.