Contents

Five-year maximum terms?
Should the three-year maximum term be retained?
Modifying Westminsterfour-year fixed terms?
A mixed system?
What to do with Senate terms?

List of Tables

Executive Summary

A bipartisan issue of some longevity in Australia has been the suggestion that the House of Representatives maximum term of three years ought to be increased by one year, and recent calls for such a change suggest that the question is worthy of investigation.

Australia is very unusual in having a three-year term. According to a study published by the Inter-Parliamentary Union in 1993, the overwhelming number of national lower houses have terms of four or five years. Relatively few (13 out of 148) have a three-year term.

Because the current House of Representatives term is for maximum terms only, and because of the convention that Prime Ministers can call elections virtually whenever they choose, the 38 completed parliaments have had terms of greatly varying length.

Since 1901, the average term of all parliaments has been 30.3 months, though if the six double dissolution elections are not counted, this figure climbs to 32.1 months. There has been a marked reduction in term length during the past 25 years, with the average for all elections during this time being only 27.5 months.

The case for four-year maximum terms

Modern critics focus on at least seven benefits they claim will flow from an extension of House of Representatives terms to four years:

a long-standing claim holds that longer terms would encourage governments to introduce policies that were long-term rather than merely politically expedient

Five-year maximum terms?

If an argument in favour of lengthening the House of Representatives term is that this would give government and business longer to plan and introduce policies, should the maximum term be increased from three to five years?

The lower houses in Ireland, France, Canada and the United Kingdom (UK) all have terms of this length. It is noteworthy that there have been 21 elections in Australia in the past 50 years, compared with only 14 in the UK and 16 in Canada.

Should the three-year term be retained?

Some have said that the three-year term should be retained, for a three-year term enhances the democratic nature of the Australian political system. The greater the control of Parliament by the electors, the better it is for the people, and the lengthening of the term of Parliament would tend to weaken this control.

Others have observed that the solution to this 'problem' lies with the Prime Ministers who have consistently reduced the term of Parliament by calling early elections.

One difficulty with moving from the three-year term is the lack of evidence that such a change would actually bring the benefits that are claimed.

Modifying Westminsterfour-year fixed terms?

Some argue that the power to choose the election date gives a substantial advantage to the Prime Minister, allowing arbitrary, partisan and capricious early elections. Even in Britain some see this as a weakness in the Westminster model of government, and there have been occasional proposals to introduce fixed term parliaments in that country as well as in Australia.

Senate Clerk, Harry Evans, has pointed out that a change to fixed terms would help provide a solution if the Supply problems of 1975 were to be repeated.

By contrast, critics believe that fixed terms do not sit well with the Westminster system of government, where it is axiomatic that a government be able to appeal to the electorate at any time.

A mixed system?

Some support has been heard for a mixed constitutional arrangement, namely by establishing a maximum House term combined with a qualified fixed term component.

The model usually referred to would give the House of Representatives a maximum term of four years, but the House could not be dissolved during the first three years after an election. This is the constitutional arrangement introduced in Victoria in 1984 and South Australia in 1985, and recently recommended for Queensland.

This model is said to combine the benefits of certainty and consistency of tenure without denying political parties their craving for flexibility.

A note on implementation

Despite there being much support for four-year terms, it is by no means certain that a referendum to ratify such an amendment would pass.

Although a referendum for four-year terms passed comfortably in New South Wales in 1981, a similar referendum was defeated in Queensland in 1991.

In regard to any proposal to increase House of Representatives terms, two obvious objections would be that:

There would seem to be little that could be done to lessen any possible impact the first argument might have in a society that is said to be endemically suspicious of politicians.

In regard to the second point, however, it would probably be prudent to have such an amendment worded so that the change could not be criticised simply as a change being made solely to benefit the government of the day.

What to do with Senate terms?

The question of Senate terms cannot sensibly be avoided in any discussion of the possibility of extending House terms to four years.

Although there has been much consensus about the need to lengthen lower house terms, there is far less agreement about what should be done with the terms for the upper house.

Possible options are discussed in the paper.

Introduction

A political and constitutional issue of long standing is the question of whether House of Representatives terms should be extended, possibly to four years. During the past few years there have been a few more voices, most notably that of the Prime Minister, suggesting that this issue should be revisited, and in June 2000 the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters recommended that this amendment be made to the Constitution. This paper discusses the main arguments in favour of such a change, as well as asking if the current term ought to be retained.

What is the 'best' length of term for a national lower house? The answer to this conundrum is largely subjective, for there is a paucity of international research on this matter. Whatever the answer, however, Australia's three-year terms puts us in a clear minority in comparison with other nations where four-year and five-year terms predominate. This paper canvasses the main arguments in favour of a four-year maximum term, but also asks whether the existing term should be retained, or if the term should be extended to five years. The possibility of fixed terms is also investigated. The compromise model in use in Victoria and South Australia, where there is a blend of the maximum term with the notion of a semi-fixed term, is also discussed.

Attention is drawn to the difficulty of making any alterations to the Commonwealth Constitution, and suggestions offered on how to achieve such a change to parliamentary terms.

A discussion of House of Representatives terms cannot realistically be undertaken without looking at the associated issue of Senate terms, for many people would not agree with an alteration of the House term which left the Senate's term unchanged. There may be a great deal of support for longer House terms, but it is not at all clear which arrangements should be put into place for the upper houseassuming there would be some alteration to Senate terms. A number of possible options are investigated.

Recognising that if Australia is ever to alter the House of Representatives term the deciding factors are highly likely to be political rather than constitutional, the paper makes no recommendations as to any future path that the Parliament may choose to travel, simply highlighting the main questions to be considered.

Background to the four-year term issue

Australian lower house terms

Although there has been a trend to four-year terms in the States, three of the nine Australian lower houses, including the House of Representatives, still retain three-year terms (Table 1):

Table 1: Parliamentary terms

Source: Adapted from Queensland Parliament, Legal, Constitutional and Administrative Review Committee, 'Four Year Parliamentary Terms', Background paper, April 2000, p. 7.

What is the 'best' term for a national lower house?

A bipartisan issue of some longevity in Australia has been the suggestion that the House of Representatives maximum term of three years ought to be increased by one year, and recent calls for such a change suggest that the question is worth reopening. Before one can assess this realistically, it is relevant to ask whether there is some optimum length for the term of a national lower house. What is the situation in other nations? Is Australia very unusual in having a three-year term?

According to a study published by the Inter-Parliamentary Union in 1993, the overwhelming number of national lower houses have terms of four or five years. Relatively few have a three-year term, and the United States House of Representatives is the only lower house with a two-year term. Table 2 gives the figures, and where possible includes examples of liberal democracies in each category.

Table 2: National lower house terms

Source: Inter-Parliamentary Union, Electoral Systems. A World-Wide Comparative Study, Geneva, 1993; see also Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Science, Blackwell, Oxford, 1991, p. 332.

What is the best length for a parliamentary term? Despite figures showing that four or five year terms are most preferred, the answer is far from clear cut, and a surprising lack of research data does not help in the search for an answer.⁽¹⁾ The best guidance that the Inter-Parliamentary Union can give poses the problem to be solved:

In theory, elections to a Parliament should not be so infrequent that they fail to reflect the opinions of the electorate, nor be so frequent that they are likely to produce excessive discontinuities in the process of government.⁽²⁾

As shown in this paper, the question is how Australia can balance a preference for stable government with the countervailing need to maintain democratic practices.

Some history

At the Constitutional Conventions

Three-year terms were generally favoured throughout the process of constitution-writing in the 1890s. They were provided for in Tasmanian delegate A. I. Clark's draft constitution circulated to members of the 1891 Convention, in the draft Bill that emerged from that Convention, as well as in the final 189798 Convention draft. This clear preference presumably reflected the fact that five of the colonies had three-year terms; only Western Australia had four-year terms. The initial draft at the 189798 Convention had provided for the longer term, but this was reduced to the shorter term while the draft was in committee. By comparison with other issues, however, this was not a matter which stirred much debate among the constitution founders.

The Commonwealth Constitution (section 28) therefore stated that:

Over the years

Despite the near-unanimity of the Constitution writers, over the years there have been many calls to increase the House of Representatives term, and although some have called for five-year terms (see below), most have expressed a preference for terms of a maximum of four years.

Two amendment attempts

In 1983 the Commonwealth Parliament passed the necessary legislation for five constitutional referenda that were to be held on 25 February 1984. Although there were differences of opinion among Senators and Members concerning the different proposals, most were in favour of the second of the fivethat to extend the maximum life of the House of Representatives from three to four years. The Leader of the Opposition, Andrew Peacock (LP), referred to the existence in the community of 'wide support' for this change.⁽¹⁶⁾ Perhaps unfortunately, the Hawke Government's response to the Senate's difference of opinion with it over the issue of funding for the YES case, was to defer the five referenda indefinitely.⁽¹⁷⁾ Two of the proposals (Simultaneous Elections and Interchange of Powers) eventually were put to referendum at the same time as the 1984 Commonwealth election, but the others, including the four-year term proposal, were never put to the people.

Five years later, in September 1988, voters were presented with a constitutional amendment which proposed increasing the House term to a maximum term of four years. Frustratingly for advocates of the longer term, however, the Hawke Government confused the issue by including in the proposed change a reduction of Senate terms to four years as well as a provision for simultaneous elections, the latter of which had been defeated on three previous occasions. Voters could not pick which of the three aspects to support or reject, for they were required to vote YES or NO for the entire package. Voter opposition to changes to the Senate term, and to simultaneous elections meant that fewer than one-third of the electorate was prepared to support the change. The ploy of linking a proposal that had quite a deal of bipartisan support to matters that were extremely contentious had failed, pushing the four-year term model aside for an indefinite period.⁽¹⁸⁾

Length of parliaments since 1901

Because the current House of Representatives term is for maximum terms only, and because of the convention that Prime Ministers can call elections virtually whenever they choose, the 38 completed parliaments have had terms of greatly varying length. It is not always appreciated that House of Representatives elections can actually be held further apart than three years. The three-year clock begins at the first post-election meeting of the House, which need not be held for up to 30 days from the day appointed for the return of the electoral writs. At the expiry of a House, the electoral writs need not be issued for up to 10 days, and their return is required within a 100 day period. All of this means that there is no constitutional barrier to an election being held more than three years after the previous election. There have, in fact, been ten such occasions, most recently in 2001 (Table 3).

Table 3: Elapsed time between House of Representatives elections (years)

Source: Australian Electoral Commission, Electoral Pocket Book, Canberra, 1999, pp. 6671.

* Double dissolution elections

The 1910 election was held three years and 122 days after the 1906 election, while the break between the 1946 and 1949 elections was three years and 73 days. At the other end of the scale, eight elections have been held less than two years after the previous election, though four of these (1914, 1951, 1974, 1975) were double dissolution elections which cannot be called within six months of the expiry of the House, and are therefore far more likely to be announced early in a parliament than are 'normal' elections. The remaining four parliaments (ending in 1929, 1955, 1963, 1984) averaged 18 months, with the shortest period being the 10 months and 25 days between the 1928 and 1929 elections. Since 1901 the average elapsed time between elections has been 30.7 months, though if the six double dissolution elections are not counted, this figure climbs to 32.5 months.

If we look at specific periods over the years, we note that there has been a marked reduction in term length during the past 25 years. The average for all elections during this time is only 28.5 months, though the holding of four double dissolution elections no doubt distorts the figures. Even with these four elections removed from the figures, the average parliament (ignoring the current parliament) has lasted barely 31 months (see Table 4).

Table 4: Elapsed time between House of Representatives elections,
by period (months)

Source: Australian Electoral Commission, Electoral Pocket Book, Canberra, 1999, pp. 6671.

These figures suggest that parliamentary terms have been shortening over the long haul. There is, however, no reason why this should be so. Since the 1972 election Australia had a period (197487) during which House terms averaged only 24.3 months25.7 without the four double dissolution electionsyet the average length for the nineties has been 34.5 months. As noted later in the paper, a key factor in the whole issue of House of Representatives terms is the political reality that Prime Ministers will always be seeking to call elections at times of maximum benefit to their party or coalition. The fact that more than one quarter of all elections have been held after an interval greater than three years, suggests that if successive Prime Ministers were of a mind to do so, all parliamentary terms could be of three years or more.

Despite this, even if all parliaments were to run full term, the question still remains: is a 'three-year' term too short for a modern national lower house?

Four-year maximum terms?

Among those concerned about the operation of government in Australia, the preferred option seems to be introduction of four-year maximum terms for the House of Representatives.

The case for four-year terms⁽¹⁹⁾

Over the years a number of the points once made in favour of four-year maximum terms have fallen into disuse, as can be seen in the report of the 192729 Royal Commission into the Constitution. At that time the Commissioners believed that the three-year period was inadequate for Australia in view of:

Only the deleterious effect of a short period between elections remains an important argument.

Modern critics of the status quo tend to focus on at least seven specific benefits they claim will flow from an extension of House of Representatives terms to four years.

Policy-making

A long-standing claim holds that longer terms would encourage governments to introduce policies that were long-term rather than merely politically expedient. There is a widespread view that increasing the term for the House would enable governments to enjoy the luxury of being able to take 'more responsible, long-term views' than is possible when the next election is quite likely to be less than two years away. The commonly-heard view of the typical three-year term is that governments:

this aspect of the governmental system can cause frustration within the bureaucracy; as the Queensland Constitutional Review Commission put it:

Quite clearly, there is 'little time to engage simply in good government'.⁽²³⁾

This point is said to be strengthened by the distortion caused by the uncertainties of the electoral 'game'. Too often, it is claimed, all the important players in the game find themselves distracted from the day-to-day slog of government. The electorate is too often in election mode:

Associated with this, it is argued that governments would have longer to weather the community response to the implementation of policies seen as necessary for the community good. It is said that this would be especially valuable in the area of economic management.

Business confidence

It is claimed that longer terms would enhance business confidence. The private sector has long complained that national elections disrupt their long-term planning, with deleterious effects upon the national economy. It has been noted, for instance, that retail sales drop in the period before a Commonwealth election. Calls for longer terms in New Zealand have also tended to come from business organisations.⁽²⁵⁾

The Business Council of Australia has been a keen advocate of a longer term. Writing in the late 1980s, the President of the Council, Sir Roderick Carnegie, stated:

Ron Brunton of the Institute of Public Affairs is less certain of the importance of this argument. He suggests that business support for such a change might depend less on concerns about efficiency than 'the desire for a longer period of return on all the time and resources they spend in cultivating the party in power'.⁽²⁷⁾

Cost of elections

Elections cost money. The Australian Electoral Commission has reported that the 2001 election cost almost $105 million. Over time, a great deal would be saved by having fewer national elections. Since 1980 there have been seven elections in each of New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia and Tasmania; by comparison, there have been nine Commonwealth elections for the three-year term House of Representatives. The longer the period between elections, the greater the saving for the taxpayers forced to foot the election bill.⁽²⁸⁾

Voter dislike

It is often said that Australians dislike the frequency with which they are required to vote, something that is believed to be linked to a distaste for the tough nature of our party and electoral politics. Fewer Commonwealth elections would reduce this to some extent. Former Professor of Politics at La Trobe University, Joan Rydon, has stated that any reduction in the number of elections should be seen as part of a process of 'reducing the adversary nature of our party politics'.⁽²⁹⁾

Bringing the House of Representatives into line

A change to four-year terms would bring the House of Representatives term into line with most State and Territory lower house terms. In both Queensland and the ACT there has been recent discussion about the possibility of changing from three to four year terms. If this occurs, the House of Representatives will be the only Australian lower house retaining the shorter term.

The local Member

Former MHR, Jim Snow (ALP), has claimed that at the electorate level the current system does little for the representative function that is so important a part of the MP's duties. He believes that three-year terms may make local members adept at campaigning, but they do not encourage them to work in a sustained way on long-term problems: 'Members are tempted to become show ponies rather than watch dogs'.⁽³⁰⁾

Political debate

A final, speculative assertion, is the possibility that longer periods between elections would raise the standard of political debate. It has been wondered if such a period might 'create more opportunity for genuinely bipartisan discussion of a wider range of issues [than is normally the case]'.⁽³¹⁾

In summary

Such are the benefits that it is claimed would flow from the introduction of four-year maximum terms for the House of Representatives. It can be noted that four of these are essentially unprovablethe reduction of election costs would be certain, and the House term would be another reflection of a general move to four-year terms for Australian lower houses.

It is also important to note that recent suggestions have referred to four-year maximum terms for the House of Representatives, and that making this change is not to suggest that each term would always last for four years. If the first century of our Parliament is any guide, most terms would be less than four years. If Prime Ministers followed previous practice, however, then the House usually would not be dissolved earlier than six months prior to its term expiring. The nett impact therefore would be that the usual length of a House term would have been extended by a yearand any term that did run for the full term would, obviously, be a bonus. In order to guarantee a full four-year term, fixed terms would be necessary (for fixed terms, see below).

A note on implementation

Despite there being much support for four-year terms, it is by no means certain that a referendum to ratify such an amendment would pass. Although a referendum for four-year terms passed comfortably in New South Wales in 1981, a similar referendum was defeated in Queensland in 1991. It goes without saying that it is difficult to amend the Australian Constitution. It seems that if an amendment on any topic is to be accepted by the voters, it needs to appear as non-controversial as is possible to be. There certainly needs to be no division between the major parties.⁽³²⁾

In regard to any proposal to increase House of Representatives terms, two obvious objections would be that:

On the first, there would seem to be little that could be done to lessen any possible impact this might have in a society that is said to be endemically suspicious of politicians.

In regard to the second objection it would probably be prudent to have the amendment worded so that the change could not be waved away simply as a change being made solely to benefit the government of the day. Perhaps the first extended term should not begin for the House of Representatives for which the election was being held, but for the next?

Five-year maximum terms?

If an argument in favour of lengthening the House of Representatives term is that this would give government and business longer to plan and introduce policies, should the maximum term be increased from three to five years? The lower houses in Ireland, France, Canada and the United Kingdom all have terms of this length. Table 2 shows that more nations have five-year parliaments than any other term.

Some Australians have argued for a five-year term for the national upper house. In the 1920s, for instance, William Higgs MHR (ALP, Nationalist), chair of the Royal Commission on the Finances of Western Australian, As Affected by Federation (1925), noted that the average length of a parliament was two and one half years, and spoke of the difficulties this caused for members. The time spent on electioneering made the performance of parliamentary duties, particularly in such a large country, extremely difficult. Higgs called for an increase in House terms to five years and Senate terms to ten years, asserting that:

Five-year terms have not been unknown in Australia. In the nineteenth century five of the colonies had five-year terms at some stage. Legislation passed in Tasmania in 1936 introduced such a term for the House of Assembly, and this remained in place until 1969. In 1937 South Australia also introduced five-year terms, though it reverted to the three-year term two years later, following public criticism.

Elaine Thompson of the University of New South Wales believes a move from three-year to five-year terms would be too great a change for the electorate to accept, primarily because of concerns about a perceived reduction in the democratic elements of the political system. At the same time, she acknowledges that five-year terms might be expected to give greater stability and improved government 'efficiency'.⁽³⁴⁾ Although Thompson claims that examples of the UK and Canada suggest that in these systems with five-year terms there is no guarantee of such stability, it is noteworthy that there have been 21 elections in Australia in the past 50 years, compared with only 1 in the UK and 16 in Canada.

Five-year House terms would open up the question of what to do with Senate terms. Should they be ten years with half retiring every five years? Five-year terms in parallel with House terms? Equal to two House terms? Any of these would probably be seen as too long, creating a Senate that was said to be 'out of touch' with the electorate. If the present fixed Senate term of six years was retained, this would result in the holding of many more elections, something that would fly in the face of the aim of reducing the number of elections (for more on Senate elections, see below).

On balance, it is unlikely that many MPs would support an increase from three to five-year terms. Even in the UK there has been a significant amount of sentiment expressed that the House of Commons term of a maximum five years is too long.⁽³⁵⁾

Should the three-year maximum term be retained?⁽³⁶⁾

In a dissenting note to the 1929 Royal Commission on the Constitution, three members refused to accept the need for the increase in the House of Representatives term that some Australians called for. They claimed that the three-year term 'is quite long enough', and noted that 'it is in the control of members' to alter their fixation with preparing themselves for the next Commonwealth election. Their concern was with democracy:

Former Prime Minister Keating (ALP) has also referred to the question of democracy, claiming that