Elective ministries

In the early decades of Australia’s post-Federation history, one of the most common suggestions for constitutional reform advanced by progressives (i.e., the ALP, Deakinite liberals, the agrarian radicals of the early Country Party, feminists such as Vida Goldstein, and quasi-republican nationalists such as John Boyd Steel) was the idea of elective ministries. Instead of a prime minister commissioned by the Governor-General (or Premier commissioned by a Governor) appointing her own cabinet, each individual member of the executive would be voted on by the entire parliament. The idea is similar to the way the Swiss legislature elects its Federal Council, except that there the members cannot be removed mid-term. Ministers would be personally responsible to the legislature, and would not form a collective body expected to resign upon failure to secure supply, nor would they be expected to resign if they disagreed with a decision reached by the entire executive.

A similar idea would be to establish an executive committee, with the same structure as other parliamentary committees. Whichever party or coalition had a majority on the floor would have a majority in the executive committee, but the opposition would be represented and entitled to issue minority reports where it disagreed with the decisions of the committee’s majority. This would be a modern-day update of how the French Committee of Public Safety was supposed to work, had it not become the instrument of Robespierre’s personal rule. The office of minister, with all its British and monarchical overtones, would be abolished, and the entire executive committee would directly oversee the executive branch.

The idea of an elective ministry was never implemented, though it influenced the pre-Rudd practice of the ALP caucus electing its front bench. A skeletal version has made an appearance in Britain in recent years – the devolved legislatures of Scotland, Wales, and the Six Counties all elect their chief minister, who then appoints her cabinet. But the original idea has been all but forgotten, and critics of the ‘elective dictatorship’ of the Westminster system are focused on various other panaceas – proportional representation, stronger parliamentary committees, and bicameralism.

Recently, Julia Gillard was able to shore up her floundering leadership by daring Kevin Rudd to challenge her in a leadership ballot. When he shrunk from the challenge, almost all of her ministers who supported him either resigned or were replaced. Effectively, this means that as the forty-something percent of ALP MPs who support Rudd cannot serve in the cabinet, Australia is currently ruled by the faction which commands a slim majority of the caucus which holds 71 of the 150 seats in the House of Representatives. The ability of the prime minister to use the monarchical powers delegated to her (dissolving parliament, appointing and dismissing ministers, etc.) has ensured that no Australian government has been defeated on the floor of the House since Fadden’s in 1941, and none has been defeated due to a back-bench rebellion since Bruce’s in 1929.

If the cabinet system were replaced with an executive committee, the ALP would have 71/150ths of its seats, and the pro-Rudd faction would receive its proportionate share of that tally. We might evolve something like the American system, but without its increasingly imperial and plebiscitary presidency. The distinction between private member’s bills and government bills would vanish, and minority factions of the majority party could combine with the opposition and cross-benchers to pass bills – as has happened in the United States recently with Hurricane Sandy relief and the Violence Against Women Act.

Cabinet government was blindly copied from Britain – just like the monarchy, the Union Jack on our flag, imperial honours, and imperial measurements. It belongs to an age when the duty of parliaments was to secure taxation revenue so that the monarch could go about his business of making war, feathering his own nest, and generally oppressing people. In a true democracy, the members of the executive – be they an executive committee or elected ministers – should carry out the will of the legislature, not the other way around.