Double Dissolutions, Third Party Politics, and the Balance of Power.

Politically, we are in strange times. At a federal level, we are nearing the end of our first hung-parliament since 1940, and only the second since 1910. If, as is consistently predicted by the polls, there is a change of government, we might be faced with perhaps the second rarest event in Australian politics: the Double Dissolution election. I don’t intend to go into the reasons for why we are in a hung parliament or why we there most likely will be a change of government at the next election. These reasons are well known. What is not so well known is why a Double Dissolution election may be called subsequent to a change of government. Exactly what such an election entails might also be a mystery to some, so an explanation is called for.

 

At any normal election, every seat in the House of Representatives is vacated and contested anew. In the Senate, however, only approximately half the seats are. As it stands, the Senate is comprised of twelve Senates from every State, and two from the Territories. At each election only six State Senators and both Senators from the two Territories are up for re-election. A total of 40 Senators are up for re-election at any normal election, while the remaining 36 can rest easy for another three years. At a Double Dissolution election, however, every Senator is up for re-election. This special type of election, however, requires a trigger before it can be called. This trigger, put simply, is an intransigent Senate that refuses to pass government legislation. More specifically, the trigger occurs when the Senate rejects the same piece of legislation that has passed the House of Representatives twice over a specific period of time. It is up to the government of the day, however, to pull the trigger, so to speak; it does not happen automatically. The full provisions for Double Dissolution elections are found in Section 57 of the Australian Constitution.

 

The Double Dissolution election is designed to overcome legislative deadlock between the Upper and Lower houses. Because only roughly half the Senate is elected at any normal election, it is entirely possibly for non-government parties to hold the majority, or what is commonly referred to as the "balance of power." As such, non-government parties can obstruct the government, rejecting legislation, even blocking budgetary measures. Section 57 of the Constitution allows the government to respond to such obstruction by calling an election where every seat is contested, clearing the decks, as it were. Nonetheless, it is still possible after a Double Dissolution election for the Senate to be controlled by non-government members. This is has occurred in all but two Double Dissolution elections.

 

If the Senate remains intransigent after a Double Dissolution election is called, and the Senate again rejects legislation from the House of Representatives then a Joint-Sitting wherein both Houses sit together and vote as a single body. It is important to note, however, that only the legislation that was rejected prior to the Double Dissolution and rejected once again after the new parliament is sworn in is eligible for a Joint-Sitting vote. This Joint-Sitting favours the government because, in accordance with the Constitution, the House of Representatives must have twice as many members as the Senate, meaning a large majority in the Lower House will easily outnumber the smaller majority from the Upper House. There has, however, only been one Joint-Sitting in Australian political history, after the 1974 election.

 

The Double Dissolution, arguably, is the most powerful electoral mechanism after Constitutional Referenda, which are notoriously unsuccessful. While there have been 44 Referenda in Australian history, eight of which have been successful, there have only been six Double Dissolution elections: 1914, 1951, 1974, 1975, 1983, and 1987. While Double Dissolutions are powerful, they are also incredibly risky. Double Dissolution elections often have unintended consequences that only become apparent years later. There are some important historical facts to address first in order to contextualise the subtler more complex consequences that follow.

 

Of the six Double Dissolution elections, two have resulted in a change of government: 1914 and 1983. The 1975 Dissolution election is a special case, because it came about subsequent to the infamous dismissal of Gough Whitlam. While Malcolm Fraser was installed as “caretaker” Prime Minister after Whitlam’s sacking by Sir John Kerr, technically Whitlam retained the majority on the floor of the House. Fraser, as Prime Minister, won the 1975 election but Whitlam lost the majority that would normally have seen him in the top job. The 1974 Double Dissolution, which Whitlam did win as Prime Minister, is the only such election to have resulted in a Joint-Sitting.

           

The 1914 Double Dissolution election is of little relevance to modern analysis. Of the participants in that election only the Australian Labor Party remains. What is more, the electoral conditions under which it was conducted bear no resemblance to the modern system having taken place before any of the major electoral reforms were instituted (I will address these shortly). The only significance the first Double Dissolution election has – other than being the first – is it was also the first in which such an election resulted in a change of government. The Double Dissolution can resolve deadlocks, but not always in the favour of those who instigated it. Sometimes, pulling the trigger backfires, as Malcolm Fraser would learn nearly 70 years later.

 

The 1951 election is significant because it occured subsequent to the electoral reform that introduced proportional representation into the Senate. Up until 1949, the Senate vote was conducted under block voting rules. Without going into great detail, block voting almost always resulted in massive victories, awarding all the Senate vacancies in a given state to one party. Due to the lopsided nature of such victories there were occasions where single parties held all but a handful of seats in the Senate. In the lead up to the 1949 election, for instance, the governing Labor party held 33 of 36 seats in the Senate. While the Coalition won government in that election, the subsequent Double Dissolution became necessary because the Labor party still held control of the Senate. This was due to the fact that, in a normal election, only half the Senate is up for election. The Senate increased in size that election, but this did not affect the ultimate result.

 

The 1951 Double Dissolution election ended Labor’s control of the Senate, handing control to the Coalition parties. The significance of the election is that, effectively, the Double Dissolution was used to clear the decks for the new Coalition government to govern unobstructed. The Coalition would continue to govern until 1972 when they would be defeated by Labor under Whitlam. The following 1953 election would be a “half-Senate election” in which, as the name suggests, only half the Senate would be up for re-election. House elections would not follow until 1954. Half-Senate elections may be necessary if elections are, essentially, called out of cycle. The House and the Senate do not, strictly speaking, run to the same cycle. Sometimes, when an early election is called, whether by Double Dissolution or normal mechanisms (such as in 1963), House and Senate elections are run at different times. It may require a new election, appropriately timed, to re-align the cycle of the two houses, such as in 1984.

 

The 1951 election is significant for another reason. In 1951, as I have already said, this election gave the Coalition parties control over the Senate. The Coalition retained control of the Senate after the 1953 half-Senate election as well. In 1955, however, the very first third party would come to take the balance of power: the Democratic Labor Party. The electoral reforms in 1948 that brought proportional representation to the Senate would lay the foundations for future third parties to assume the balance of power. The 1951 Double Dissolution election, however, would also play a role by setting the scene for the 1955 election in which the DLP would win its first two seats under the name of the Anti-Communist Labor Party.

 

There are, of course, other reasons contributing to the rise of the DLP. As the original name– Anti-Communist Labor Party – suggests, the DLP broke away from the ALP over the issue of communism. I won’t broach those issues here. In terms of the influence of the 1951 Double Dissolution election on the emergence of the balance of power, there are a couple of points. Firstly, it exploded the legacy of numbers left over from the 1946 election in which block voting was still used. From that point on, the Senate would not swing as wildly in terms of numbers; a narrow margin would exist between each side of politics in which a strong enough third party could manoeuvre itself. Secondly, there would be no full general election until 1955. There would be a half-Senate election in 1953, and a House-only election in 1954. The houses would not realign until 1955 when the DLP would break through.

 

The readjustment of the Senate to full proportional representation was only ever going to take two elections. That the second election after the 1948 reform was a Double Dissolution is simply a matter of fortune. The Double Dissolution election had no causative effect on the split between the DLP and the ALP. By giving the Coalition control over both houses, however, it created the need for a balance of power, while the 1948 reform gave the opportunity. At the 1953 half-Senate election, the Coalition retained its Senate majority, while in the 1954 House-only election, for the first time, the Labor party won the popular vote but not enough seats to form government. At the 1955 general election the first modern balance of power was formed. The DLP benefited from proportional representation and the growing anti-communist sentiment. At the same time, however, the DLPalso benefited from what one might call an anti-incumbency sentiment, or, more specifically, the public concern surrounding the potential for one party to control both houses. This anti-incumbency could now be effectively expressed through a newly proportional Senate.

 

The next Double Dissolution election wouldn’t be until 1974, and it would be followed the next year by another such election. This is reflective of the turbulence of the time. The 1975 election would come as a result of the dismissal of the WhitlamLabor government. The 1974 election, on the other hand, is important for a number of reasons. It is the first, and only, time that there has been a Joint-Sitting of the House and Senate pursuant to Section 57 of the Constitution. The 1974 election also saw the end of the DLP’s time in parliament. It wouldn’t be until 2010 that the DLP would return to federal politics. The Double Dissolution was in fact called because of the DLP’s recalcitrance in the Senate. Where there were six DLP Senators, after a single election there were none. The 1974 election illustrates the precarious nature of holding the balance of power in the Senate for minor parties.

 

To draw from this event that the Double Dissolution can be used to remove minor parties from the Senate, however, would be a mistake. The 1974 election would be the only time a minor party was entirely removed from the Senate in this fashion. The demise of the Australian Democrats, the only other minor party to have disappeared from federal politics after having had more than one member in the Senate, would be a much slower affair. The 1974 election had another significant impact on the Australian political scene. With the DLP obliterated there was no significant third party force in the Senate. The fact that there was no multi-member party in the Senate at this time to hold the balance of power – either on its own or in conjunction with independents – would have repercussions for subsequent elections. In the absence of a strong balance of power party Malcolm Fraser, in 1975 would win and retain absolute majorities inboth Houses from 1975 to 1981. This state of affairs, however, would have its own impact in helping to bring about the next major third party in Australian politics: the Australian Democrats.

 

The DLP were wiped out in 1974, but the Democrats wouldn’t emerge until 1978. The gestation of the Democrats however had begun earlier than that. The Liberal Movement, a breakaway group from the South Australian Liberal Party (then called the Liberal Country League), came to prominence, albeit fleetingly, in the 1974 election. The former Premier of South Australia, Steele Hall, was its first and only Senator. The Liberal Movement can be seen as the forerunner to the Australian Democrats. Firstly, a number of members would eventually migrate to the newly formed Democrats after Steel Hall quit the party – and the Senate –to rejoin the Liberal party. Secondly, an Australian Democrat, Janine Haines, was appointed as Hall’s successor by the South Australian Labor government, which perceived the Democrats as the natural successor to the now-defunct Liberal Movement.

           

Double Dissolution elections in consecutive years paved the way for a new third party, but only first by eliminating the original third party and, in essence, gifting the in-coming Liberal government a majority in both Houses. The Double Dissolution, it can be seen, not only provides a government the opportunity to clear the decks, so to speak, as it tries to reassert its agenda, but it also provides the opportunity for third parties and independents to gain access to power. The Double Dissolution is, however, a danger to them if they decide to take an obstructionist route when they attain any degree of power. However, as the 1914 election demonstrated, Double Dissolution elections are also a danger to the governing party, as the 1983 election would reiterate.

 

The 1983 election illustrated the dangers of hubris. Not only would Fraser be the second Prime Minister to lose at a Double Dissolution election, but he would also suffer the worst electoral loss at a federal level in Liberal Party history. The 1983 election also helped to bolster the Democrats position as the balance of power party, having first taken hold of that position at the 1980 election. At the 1980 election the Democrats suffered a swing against them, despite having taken the balance of power. At the 1983 election they would recover a minor swing back towards them. This pattern, of corresponding swings away and back, would be repeated between the next general election in 1984 and the subsequent Double Dissolution election in 1987.

 

The need for the Democrats would be borne out of consecutive Double Dissolutions, and their position would be strengthened through two more a little more than a decade later. Four Double Dissolution elections were held in a 14 year period from 1974 to 1987, which is emblematic of the turmoil of the period. A period of turmoil that began with the end of a 24 year Liberal government and the accession of a Labor government that, arguably, was not properly equipped to take the reigns after so long in the wilderness. This period came to a head with the constitutional crisis of 1975. Other events, including the death of the first balance of power party and the birth of the second, along with the largest and longest majorities of any government in both houses since 1948 are also aftershocks of that seismic shift in the political landscape that began with Whitlam’s election, or perhaps even Menzies’ retirement before that.

 

The Democrats were born from the shaking ground of this period, and they benefited in various ways, both direct and indirect, from the four Double Dissolutions that occurred during this time. While the Democrats would find favour as the nation’s second third party to hold the balance of power, their continuing fortunes were anything but stable. While they encountered minor popularity bumps at the 1983 and 1987 elections in comparison to the general elections that preceded them, the period spanning from the elections in 1990 to 1993 and 1996 would see them encounter more pronounced swings back and forth of between 4% and 5%. While the Democrats benefited from the tumult of the 1970s and 80s, they would also reflect the shakiness of the time in their own polling. Nevertheless, through much of the 80s and 90s the Democrats held the balance of power, either outright, or with independents and other parties, such as their eventual successors The Australian Greens.

 

The Democrats further benefited under the Hawke Labor government through the 1984 electoral reform which saw the introduction of group voting or “above the line voting.”This reform would have major implications for independents and minor parties in the Senate. While it would initially benefit the Democrats, it would also contribute to their demise. Group voting allowed for the voting process in the Senate to be streamlined. Where, since 1948, voters had to number every box for every candidate, which could number as many as 60 or 70 in some states, now they need only number one box “above the line” and those tickets would be filled in automatically by the party’s preferences. This reduced the number of informal votes on the Senate ballot, but also allowed parties to trade preferences with one another in the pursuit of securing a Senate seat. The limitations on this, however, were that such preference trades had to be done prior to the election so that voters could find out where the preferences for their vote would go if they cared to know.

 

Group voting has had a profound effect on politics in Australian politics, because it empowers, perhaps unfairly, minor parties: they can acquire a small percentage of the vote - a fraction of a percent in most cases - and use that as leverage in preference deals. Given that most minor parties get less than one percent of the vote, this doesn't seem like much of a problem, but when lots of like-minded parties harvest small numbers of votes they can eventually combine their totals through preference swaps. This is, in part, how Steve Fielding of the Family First Party gained his seat in 2004 in Victoria, and how John Madigan of the DLP gained his seat in 2010 (essentially replacing Fielding). Both candidates received less than 3% of the vote but reached the 14.3% quota required to obtain a seat through preferences.

The 2004 election of Steve Fielding is an interesting case. He was elected, in part, because the Labor Party, along with the Democrats, preferenced against the Australian Greens in an attempt to prevent them from winning a Senate seat. Ideologically, Family First is very conservative; it was, as such, counter-productive for Labor to preference against an ideologically sympathetic party. The Labor Party and the Greens are now in something akin to a symbiotic relationship (in the Senate at least), where they need to preference each other or risk letting through a conservative party in the place of a progressive party. The Senate is so finely balanced in this way that one seat can make a massive difference.

 

There has not been a Double Dissolution election since 1987. The influence of group voting, as such, has not been fully tested. At a Double Dissolution election all Senators are up for re-election, and this means the quota is effectively cut in half. The quota goes from 14.3% to 7.7%. Therein lies the opportunity for minor parties that are just at the fringes of electoral success. Half of those Senators elected, to be sure, will serve less than half a Senate term; those that just squeeze through will likely be gone at the next general election. But a few years with a platform like the Australian Senate is an opportunity to spread your message.

 

If we take the 2010 as an example, looking at Victoria, had it been a Double Dissolution election the likely breakdown of Senators would look like this: Labor 4 (likely 5), Coalition 4, Greens 2, with one remaining seat contested between the Coalition, the DLP, FFP, and the Australian Sex Party. In New South Wales, the breakdown might look like this: Coalition 5, Labor 4 (possibly 5), Greens 1 (possibly, but unlikely, 2), with two seats contested between Labor, the Liberal Democrats, the Christian Democrats, the Sex Party, and the Greens. In Queensland, for instance, the emergence of Katter's Australian Party would further complicate the contest in that state. Closer analysis would reveal the likely winners; my point is to illustrate that a Double Dissolution opens the door for minor parties to compete for seats that are, under normal circumstances, out of their reach.

 

As seems likely, the Coalition, led by Tony Abbott, will win a majority in the House of Representatives, but he will face an intransigent Senate with the Greens holding the balance of power until at least June 2014 and openly hostile to an Abbott-led government. A Double Dissolution is not out of the question given the promises Tony Abbott has made, especially to repeal various pieces of legislation. Depending on the make-up of the post-June 2014 election, Abbott might need to go to a Double Dissolution election in an attempt to assert his authority. It is important to note that, unlike the DLP, the Greens will not disappear in a single election - in fact, a Double Dissolution may result in a more unwieldy Senate with a multi-party balance of power (including Greens). It is entirely possible that the balance of power under such circumstances will be held, in part, by a mix of libertarian, religious, regional conservative, and environmentalist parties. Having to negotiate, even for a few years, such a quagmire might be impossible.

 

To coin a phrase, a Double Dissolution is no solution; it is a double-edged sword. Given the suspicion with which both major parties are held, it could be very easy to frame any Double Dissolution trigger as a "power grab," which would only exacerbate the anti-incumbency sentiment that is growing in the Australian electorate. Nonetheless, the next few years, regardless of the result of the forthcoming election, will remain turbulent. In my personal opinion, we are in the middle of a period of "correction"; having emerged from almost 25 years of stable governance we are pretty much due. I draw a parallel between the end of the Coalition's 24-odd year reign and the Whitlam-Fraser eras; the latter was not a stable period of governance. I think there are parallels between then and now. I think we are in a period of correction, and I think a Double Dissolution is due.