Two cheers for minority government. It's as good as any alternative and has advantages and disadvantages which must be balanced against each other in any situation. That lesson hasn't been learned despite considerable informed commentary following the 2010 federal election result which delivered three years of minority government.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Effective minority government is common around the world. It is a form of government which depends on compromise and negotiation and can deliver more inclusive outcomes. At the same time it can be slower, apparently messier and less decisive. It can also give too much power to individual MPs.
Those who don't like minority government include the major parties which prefer a two-party system with government alternating regularly between the two. They each get a turn in the lolly shop. The big parties don't like any interference with executive government when they hold the reins of power.
But when they condemn the idea of a so-called hung parliament it must always be recognised that it is self-interest speaking not disinterested analysis. They did that last week when Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten expressed their horror at the prospect of any sort of alliance with the Greens. This possibility had been suggested by Adam Bandt, the Greens member for Melbourne, who said the Greens were ready to form an alliance if the big parties fell short of a majority in their own right.
Neither the Coalition nor Labor wanted to admit the possibility that they might not achieve a majority this time. That would be a sign of lack of confidence in their prospects. They also didn't want to invite speculation about an alliance with the Greens as they might then have to negotiate policies with the dogmatic minor party on matters like climate change and refugees.
It was the prospect of a Greens alliance which drew most of the front page publicity, but the bigger issue was minority government per se. The first thing to point out was the Gillard government was not a Labor-Greens alliance at all but a more widely-based minority government. Julia Gillard needed four extra votes to govern and she managed to negotiate the support of the Greens, then Andrew Wilkie, and finally Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott. Surprisingly no one made that point.
Secondly, it was surprising that Shorten chose not to defend the legacy of the Gillard government, a successful minority government which executed a considerable legislative program under extreme pressure between 2010 and 2013. The same applies to the majority Rudd government, 2007-2010. There are good reasons why Shorten would not want to focus on those years, given his role in the two leadership changes, one in 2010 and the other in 2013.
However, given that, Labor must find a way of showing pride in its legacy. The same thing happened after Labor's 1996 election defeat when new leader Kim Beazley unwisely failed to talk up the positive Hawke-Keating legacy. Labor had a lot to be proud of then, and it does this time too. If Shorten allows 2007-2013 to be portrayed as disaster years it will ultimately hurt his chances of becoming Prime Minister.
The much bigger problem for Labor over the Rudd-Gillard years than minority government was leadership instability. That is the legacy which will hurt Labor, despite Turnbull subsequently ejecting Tony Abbott from office. The stain of deposing two prime ministers remains. It should not, however, be conflated with minority government.
Australia doesn't have a true majoritarian system anyway. It has a bicameral system with two chambers of parliament, the House of Representatives and the Senate. At any one time there are many power possibilities and we have had most permutations and combinations recently.
The Howard majority government also controlled the Senate in 2005-2007.
The Rudd majority government lacked Senate control in 2007-2008 as did the Abbott majority government in 2013-14.
The Rudd majority government had effective Senate numbers with Greens support in 2008-2010.
The Gillard minority government had effective Senate numbers with Greens support in 2010-2013.
The Abbott-Turnbull majority governments lacked Senate support in 2014-2016.
During all this time government has continued more or less effectively as governments have learned to live with the cards they have been dealt. It is true there has been plenty of grizzling about the supposed effects of either minority government or Senate power. Eventually this led the Coalition and the Greens combined to change the Senate voting system to eliminate micro parties.
But the outstanding negative characteristic of this period, which history will remember, has not been these House-Senate issues but the three occasions on which Prime Ministers have been deposed.
The next most negative examples have come from over-confidence and broken promises, leading to the two most damaging events for the Coalition over the past decade. The first was Work Choices, the extreme industrial relations legislation introduced in 2006 when John Howard's government over-reached because it controlled both the House of Representatives and the Senate. More than anything else it led to Howard's defeat in 2007.
The second major aberration was Abbott's 2014 budget, the most unpopular delivered in recent times. It was the product of out-of-control self-confidence by a newly-elected majority government and led eventually to Abbott's demise. It remains to be seen whether the Coalition can recover from that hit.
So when major party leaders express their unmitigated horror at the thought of minority government remind them of the weaknesses of majority government and give thanks for the checks and balances built into our system.
John Warhurst is an emeritus professor of political science at the Australian National University.
