TRANSCRIPT
You might have heard the term minority government thrown around a lot this campaign.
And for good reason, says Associate Professor Paul Williams from Griffith University.
“We are staring down the barrel of minority government this time.”
With the last election delivering the biggest crossbench in Australian history, it's looking pretty likely that there will be a minority government elected.
But what does that even mean?
“Under our system, inherited from Britain, but shared with countries like India, New Zealand, the Prime Minister is the person who has the support of the majority of members of the House of Representatives.”
That's Professor Graeme Orr from the University of Queensland.
Whilst the simplest way to form government is by winning a majority of the seats in the House at an election - there are other options.
“A minority government would be one where you don't have a single party or coalition who've got 76 out of 150 in the House of Reps. In that situation, there's a period of negotiation, of horse trading involving the independents, the Greens and so on, to see who can come up with a magic number of 76.”
That's not something we've seen very often at a federal level in Australia.
Before 2010, we hadn't had one for 70 years.
Professor Orr says that trend is changing.
“We had a minority government partly in the Turnbull area, but also in the Gillard era. It's becoming more common because fewer and fewer people are locked on to voting either Labor or Liberal National. So as their primary vote share slips into the 30s or even lower, there's more chance there'll be other people elected to the House.”
The first three governments in Australia were minority governments, when there were no real established parties or coalitions.
And it's still common at a state and territory level.
The minimum that the minor parties and independents need to offer the government to form a minority is referred to as "supply and confidence".
Professor Orr says that's what happened in the Gillard minority government.
“You might just have promises of support, and they won't be members of the government. They won't hold ministerial power, but they'll reserve the right to block legislation, and all they will do is guarantee that the government gets budget through, because the one thing that can bring down a government that otherwise has numbers is if it can't get the budget through Parliament.”
Other parties or independents can ask for bills to be brought forward, although the government doesn't have to ACTUALLY fulfill that promise.
They can also ask to play a bigger role in the government, like holding a ministry.
Associate Professor Williams says it's not popular with the big players.
“Major parties don't want that double barrel effect where they've got to not just herd cats in the Senate, but having to herd cats in the House of Representatives, it's a huge headache.”
And the public isn't a fan of it either.
“Most people don't like the idea of a hung parliament or a minority government, because the first thing you think is uncertainty, unpredictability. And that's the beauty of the party system. We can say lots of things about the political parties that the major parties bully the minor parties. The major parties form a cartel, and they write the rules for themselves, that major parties rob the parliaments of originality and individuality and spontaneity. But one things political parties do do is that they offer certainty and they offer simplicity for voters.”
In a minority government, there's no guarantee that legislation will automatically pass the lower house.
That can make things a bit precarious.
Under a majority government, the negotiating to pass legislation happens mostly in the Senate, but that effect is doubled in a minority government.
But across the Tasman, minorities are the norm.
New Zealand has a different political system to Australia with just one house of government and a different method of proportional representation.
Seven out of the last 10 governments have been a minority.
Professor Richard Shaw from Massey University of New Zealand says it doesn't cause issues.
“You wouldn't from Australia, look across, at us, and think, my God, that mob, they're a model of constitutional instability and political turmoil. You know, stuff just continues to happen. No government has lost a confidence vote. No government's lost a budget vote. Governments lose votes on legislation reasonably regularly, but constitutionally, nothing happens. It's rarely a political crisis.”
And allows for more input on bills.
“I think the advantages are that you have more views at the cabinet table, and if they're not at the cabinet table, then they're in ministerial positions outside of cabinet. So more variety, I guess, more diversity, more voters seeing their points of view represented in government.”
Although there is potential for a logjam of legislation under a minority government, that isn't always the case.
The Gillard minority government managed to pass more than 90 per cent of the bills introduced to parliament - more than was passed under the majority Rudd government, and most of the Howard governments.
Associate Professor Williams says there were other effects too.
“By and large, the parliament was extremely well behaved. MPs behaved because they didn't want to get kicked out through unruly behavior from the House of Representatives, because that would reduce their numbers even more. So a hung parliament can mean politicians are being on their best behavior. They don't miss sessions that you find that people are read up on pieces of legislation because they want to make sure that they have the biggest impact. And you also find politicians are very responsive to people in the community.”
As the major party votes slip, Professor Orr says it's something they need to adjust to.
“So I think we have to be more adult about it and accept the fact that not only having more minority governments in Australia, State and Commonwealth, but we need parties to adjust to this idea of negotiating.”
