Table Of ContentParliament in the Twenty-first Century
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Parliament in the Twenty-first Century
Institutional Reform and Emerging Roles
John Halligan, Robin Miller and John Power
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MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY PRESS
An imprint of Melbourne University Publishing Limited
187 Grattan Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia
[email protected]
www.mup.com.au
First published 2007
Text © John Halligan, Robin Miller and John Power 2007
Design and typography © Melbourne University Publishing Ltd 2007
This book is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act
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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Halligan, John.
Parliament in the twenty-first century: institutional reform and emerging
roles.
Bibliography.
Includes index.
ISBN 9780522851861. (pbk)
ISBN 0 522 85186 X. (pbk)
ISBN 9780522851878. (pdf)
ISBN 0 522 85187 8. (pdf)
1. Legislative bodies—Australia. 2. Parliamentary practice—Australia. 3.
Australia—Politics and government—1965– . I. Miller, Robin, 1933– . II.
Power, John (John Marcus). III. Title.
328.94
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Contents
Acknowledgements vii
1 Parliament under Challenge and its Response 1
2 Interpreting Parliamentary Change 17
3 Parliament’s Development, 1901 to 2006 38
4 Policy Roles of Committees 60
5 Scrutiny 74
6 Investigative Inquiries 108
7 Appraisal of Legislation 154
8 Parliamentarians’ Careers 180
9 Institutional Development 197
10 Committees and Public Policy 217
11 Constraints and Opportunities 241
Appendices
1 Parliamentary database 261
2 Methodology 263
3 Interview schedule for MHRs and senators 265
4 Committee types and powers 267
5 Supplementary chapter tables 273
6 Policy fields and institutional ecology 297
Bibliography 305
Index 321
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Acknowledgements
Many people have helped this study over a long period of research. To
start at the beginning, we wish to thank Harry Evans, Clerk of the
Senate, for his comments and advice when we were starting to con-
sider the broad scope and purpose of the study, and the Australian
Research Council for its subsequent funding for the core research of
the project.
As the research got under way, we received a great deal of willing
help with our collection and interpretation of data from parliamen-
tary staff, mainly from the Departments of the Senate, House of
Representatives and Parliamentary Library. There are too many for us
to name them all but we must mention a few, including John Carter,
Cleaver Elliott, Peter Hamburger, Wayne Hooper, Peter Keele, Anne
Lynch, Rosemary Laing, Ann Miller, Anthony Marinac, Peter O’Keefe,
Kay Walsh, James Warmenhoven and John Vander Wyk from the
Department of the Senate.
From the Department of the House of Representatives we
received advice and assistance from Ian Harris, Clerk of the House,
and various senior members of the staff, particularly Malcolm Aldons,
Ian Cochran, Peter Gibson, Gillian Gould, Robyn McClelland, Jim
Pender and Robyn Webber. The Department of the Parliamentary
Library was also a significant source of assistance and Nola Adcock
and Martin Lumb were of considerable help. We should also mention
our appreciation of the members of the House of Representatives,
senators, and committee secretaries and other senior staff who agreed
to be interviewed.
The Centre for Research into Public Sector Management at the
University of Canberra was the project’s ‘home’, and staff associated
with the centre provided much help with research tasks, notably Jill
Adams, Maria Maley and Suzanne Vaisutis-White. The typing of drafts
of our manuscript and the preparation of the interview survey records
were ably handled by Christine Hansen, Noni Hazelhurst, Lillian
Holden, Paddy Onton, Kate Ransley and Lisa Strickland.
As the manuscript approached its final form we had valuable
comment from Brian Galligan and staff of the Departments of the
Senate and House of Representatives. The Catholic University of
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Leuven, Belgium, provided a congenial environment for John Halligan
to progress editing of the manuscript. Wayne Hooper from the Senate
supported John Halligan becoming a Senate Fellow during the final
stage. The University of Canberra has supported the project in many
ways, most recently when Deborah Ralston, PVC of the Division of
Business, Law and Information Sciences, relieved John Halligan of
some management responsibilities so that he could ensure that there
was a final stage. The Departments of the Senate and House of
Representatives also purchased the detailed database that had been
developed for the study.
Melbourne University Publishing had expressed interest in this
study for a number of years and we appreciate their support in seeing
it through to this book, most particularly former commissioning editor
Brian Wilder, current editor Nathan Katz, and Ann Standish, editor of
academic monographs, for her thoughtful editing.
Finally, we have to thank our partners, Penelope St Clair, Sue
Miller and Ann Morrow for their patience and tolerance with a large
and seemingly endless task.
While so many have thus contributed towards this book, final
responsibility for the contents rests of course with the authors.
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Chapter 1
Parliament under Challenge and its Response
Parliamentary systems of government are distinguished from the
other major democratic form—the presidential—by the fact that min-
isters in the executive branch are drawn from the membership of the
parliament. With the rise in the twentieth century of disciplined polit-
ical parties, this distinctive feature of parliamentary regimes was gen-
erally believed to have a fatal weakness. The central political
institutions in parliamentary democracies had become the political
parties disciplined by those contending for executive office.
In the first half of the twentieth century, the power of parliamen-
tary institutions around the world suffered a distinct decline. By the
end of the 1960s, parliaments had been largely confined to the institu-
tional dustbin, except as a vehicle for the executive to formalise deci-
sions made elsewhere.1 Over the past forty years, however,
parliamentary institutions internationally have undergone a revival.
This resurgence has occurred on the back of extensive institutional
change and adaptation. A heightening of interest in parliamentary
institutions can be identified in a range of countries, from those in
Eastern Europe and Asia with transitional and developing economies
that were classified as possessing marginal or minimal legislatures to
well-established parliaments in Western Europe, where parliamentary
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roles have evolved as a result of constitutional and electoral changes.
The strongest legislature, the US Congress, has sought to strengthen
its powers in relation to the executive and even the Westminster-style
parliaments of Britain, Canada and Australia have been developing
new institutions since the 1970s. And in all this strengthening, the
parliamentary committees featured prominently.
The institution of parliament was once deemed to be inhospi-
table to innovation.2 The emergence of new patterns of activity, how-
ever, indicates that over the last three decades it has become more
accommodating to change. Members of parliament have found new
and effective ways of pursuing policy agendas. In this book we explore
the Australian situation, looking at how much potential there is in the
parliamentary institution, what forms it takes, how far the changes
have gone, the significance of committees and how vulnerable the
institution remains to executive dictates.
Decline of parliament?
The nineteenth century has often been represented as a golden age of
parliaments, where they enjoyed greater discretion and influence.
Before the rise of the modern disciplined parties, individual MPs
enjoyed much greater freedom in forming differing voting blocs as
differing issues arose. Certainly, in pre-federation Australia, colonial
legislatures played more active roles than they were to play in most of
the twentieth century, as political factions were fluid and modern
parties absent. Moreover, the nineteenth-century pattern continued
with the establishment of the new national parliament in 1901.
Indeed, this parliament experienced an unusual period of activism in
its first decade, when the member could exercise far greater inde-
pendence than would subsequently be the case.3
The decline of parliament as a central institution of government
was widely recognised as a feature of much of the twentieth century.4 If
we accept the traditional conception of parliament as an independent
actor in the structure of government that allowed the individual
member to exercise influence over the making and reviewing of public
policy, then the institution has been wanting in Australia for most of its
history.5 However, even if the benefits of stable party government are
recognised, as they must be, there appeared for several decades to be
an unduly rigid party discipline in Australian parliaments.
2 Parliament in the Twenty-first Century
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