Chapter 1: Making the Best of the System We Have
Table of ContenTS
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1 – MAKING THE BEST OF THE SYSTEM WE HAVE
CHAPTER 2 – THE CURRENT DYNAMIC IS ‘PROGRESSIVE VERSUS CONSERVATIVE’
CHAPTER 3 – OUR CURRENT PARTY STRUCTURES ARE INEFFECTIVE
CHAPTER 4 – INDEPENDENTS CAN’T FORM EXECUTIVE GOVERNMENT
CHAPTER 5 – BREAKING INTO THE CARTEL
CHAPTER 6 – PATHWAYS TO SOMETHING NEW
CHAPTER 7 – A POTENT POLITICAL FORCE NEEDS PEOPLE
CHAPTER 8 – PRODUCING LEADERS
CHAPTER 9 – KEEPING IT SIMPLE
CHAPTER 10 – DRAFT ORGANISATIONAL MODEL
CHAPTER 11 – PEOPLE
APPENDIX 1 – HISTORICAL COMMENTARY ON THE TWO-PARTY SYSTEM
APPENDIX 2 – AUSTRALIAN COMMENTARY
Australia’s system for forming federal governments has its roots in English parliaments, as far back as the 13th century. The key early building blocks include:
- separate elections for geographic districts with a ‘winner-takes-all’ voting system. The winner gets to be a member of parliament. Second place, even if awfully close, gets nothing
- having two opposing blocs on either side of the Speaker—an evolution of two sets of advisors on either side of the King or Queen. The UK Parliament has two rows of benches facing each other, headed by a central throne for the Speaker, reminiscent of two groups of advisors before a monarch
- the idea of the executive branch of government (the prime minister and other cabinet ministers) being drawn from the largest bloc in the legislative branch (parliament)
- the rituals and objects in the parliamentary chambers
- the names and functions of the official officers in the chamber.
There is no clear pathway to change how our system works. It also has significant strengths that enable stable governments. A more successful path is understanding how it works and using it to our best advantage. This requires understanding how governments are formed—not how legislation is passed. The two-party state is one where the political system produces two dominant political parties. The system started developing in 17th-century England. The emergence of the liberals (Whigs) and conservatives (Tories) as political factions was an evolution of the Westminster system.
In Australia, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) has been occupying one of the two spots since the early 1900s. They have either been the opposition or the government since that time. The non-Labor, more conservative side has been occupied by the Liberal and National parties since 1945. The coalition between the Liberal Party and Nationals is effectively an alliance between city and country non-Labor forces. It is a faux coalition when compared to genuine multi-party systems.
The two-party system is found in a number of countries worldwide, but mainly in the United States (US), the United Kingdom (UK) and Australia. Two-party states do not prohibit other parties from engaging in politics. Many smaller parties and independent candidates exist, but the system presents a choice of two alternatives for government. The party that wins elections forms and controls the government themselves. They do not need to form coalitions with other parties to do so. Minority governments are rare.
Australia can be described as a ‘disguised’ two-party state. There is a smorgasbord of party options, but only two of them are choices for executive government.
Two-Party Versus Multi-Party States
Multi-party states consistently have three or more parties involved in forming government. In these systems, coalitions are the norm. Individual parties rarely manage to form majority governments alone. Multi-party states generally use a proportional voting system; for example, if a given party gets 15% of the vote, they will get 15% of the parliamentary seats as well. It is more likely for multi-party states to have coalition governments due to their proportional distribution of votes.
In a two-party state, factions—i.e., groups with similar ideas but some important differences—are more likely to be found within the large parties. Meanwhile, in a multi-party state where coalitions are much more common and parties are (generally) smaller, factions don’t exist as much because they would just manifest as separate parties. The two parties are umbrella organisations, each hosting different views. American Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said during the 2020 US presidential election: ‘In another country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party’. This is in reference to the two-party system in the US and the Democratic Party’s nature as an umbrella organisation.
In a two-party system, there is a consistency to the balance of power in that it only really shifts back and forth between the two major parties. Ideological and political changes over time are more likely to be absorbed and incorporated into the pre-existing party dynamics. One feature of the two-party system is its stability. Two-party states are generally more stable due to the ability of a single party to govern unhindered between elections.
The political atmosphere in two-party states is likely to be confrontational, as the two blocs are at each other’s throats most of the time. Both the Australian and American systems offer many good examples. Multi-party states are not free of confrontation between parties, but they incentivise cooperation, bargains, and compromises to a much greater extent.
In the multi-party system, change is more enabled by the constant shift of which parties are forming coalitions with one another. As new ideas and focuses are introduced and developed, new parties reflecting those ideas are more likely to emerge, grow, and have a chance to get some power by joining coalitions. Governments can collapse between elections as alliances shift. One notable example is Italy, which has had 69 governments since 1945, averaging a change of government every 1.11 years.
In multi-party systems, centrist parties may well prosper due to the coalition-forming dynamics which are required to form government. This has been the case in Germany, with both the big centre-right and centre-left parties. They became smaller over the decades but held power for much of the Merkel era by forming a centrist coalition.
Things can go wrong in multi-party states where there are deep social fractures. A recent prime case is Belgium, which took 17 months (May 2019 – October 2020) to form a government—for over a year, through the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, Belgium had no government as no group of parties was able to form a majority in their parliament. Another example is Israel, which has held six elections in nine years due to the inability of any group of parties to remain together.
How Our System Works to Produce Two-Party Outcomes
Australia has a political system that is likely to produce two-party outcomes. This is demonstrated by our election outcomes over the last 70 years. It can be explained by looking at both the historical evolution and the mechanics of the system.
Australia uses a Westminster-style electoral system with winner-takes-all elections to choose representatives of geographical electorates. Australia has 151 federal electorates as of the 2022 federal election, each represented by one seat in Federal Parliament and home to an average of 114,100 registered voters. An independent body, the Australian Electoral Commission, determines the number of House members assigned to each state and territory based on their populations, and establishes the boundaries of the electorates.
In 1951, French sociologist Maurice Duverger identified a particular function of how voting systems relate to party systems, now known as ‘Duverger’s law’.[1] Duverger’s law examines the first-past-the-post voting system used in the UK. In first-past-the-post elections, the winner is whoever gets the most votes. This is simple if two people are standing for election, and more complex with more candidates. Duverger’s law states: ‘the simple-majority single-ballot system favours the two-party system’.[2]
Duverger argues that this happens for two key reasons: smaller parties are disincentivised to form in the first place because they will struggle to win seats or representation away from existing large parties; and secondly, voters are afraid of voting for a smaller party, even if it more closely aligns with their values than a large party, because they fear ‘wasting’ their vote. In a sort of self-fulling prophecy, these factors help ensure such minor parties never gain enough traction. While the system may be disrupted by a new party taking the place of one of its incumbents, it will reset to a duality. This is what happened in both the UK and Australia, when Labor parties took one of each country’s two ‘governing party’ spots in the early 20th century.
Early on, Australia used first-past-the-post elections but adopted preferential voting for the House of Representatives in 1918. The outcomes of elections throughout the 20th century suggest this development helped entrench the two-party system. In a preferential voting system, each voter ranks the candidates in order of preference. In Australia, which also has compulsory voting, voters must write a number against every candidate for their local seat in the House of Representatives (the Senate requires a minimum number of preferences).
After the first-preference (number 1) votes are counted, candidates with the fewest are eliminated, and the ballots that have those eliminated candidates marked as number 1 are redistributed to whoever is marked as number 2. In the House of Representatives, this process repeats until two candidates remain. Eventually, all the votes cast in the election end up supporting one or the other. In Australia, this breakdown is often called the ‘two-party preferred’ result.[3] This is one major reason Australia has a two-party system. As first preferences are distributed, the system typically defaults to a two-party preferred outcome.
Third parties saw decreasing numbers in Australia’s House of Representatives in the decades after the adoption of preferential voting. In elections from 1937 to 2007 there were no more than five seats filled by those same groups (3–6% as total seat numbers grew). The killer fact is that 16 of the 27 parliaments formed during this time had no crossbench members in the lower house at all.[4] [5]
While the 2022 election has given us the highest number of independent seats in any election so far, with a total of 16 out of 151 seats not held by either of the two major parties, it is still only 10.5% of Parliament. The election that gave us the highest percentage of independent seats was back in 1934, with 14 out of 74 seats or 18.9% being held by independents.
The final evolution—the nail in the coffin—was the introduction of public funding for political parties in the 1980s. This further entrenched the two incumbent parties as funding to a given party is based on the percentage of votes it earned in the most recent election. A party must also receive at least 4% of the overall vote count in an election to qualify for funding in the first place, another barrier to entry for alternative parties.
The normal mode of Australian government is that one of two parties wins a majority and forms executive government on their own without help from others.
For the people who want Australia to look to its challenges, having an effective organisation that can win majority governments and be effective is the best option.
A high number of people not voting for either of the two parties is a fraying of the system, but it does not in any way fundamentally alter it. It is a change in voting patterns that can change again. To not use the system as it is meant to be used—e.g., one party being able to form a majority—is to invite instability, like forcing a round peg into a square hole.
Duverger also commented on how one of the two parties can be replaced:
So long as a new party which aims at competing with the two old parties still remains weak the system works against it, raising a barrier against its progress. If, however, it succeeds in outstripping one of its forerunners, then the latter takes its place as third party and the process of elimination is transferred. [6]
In the long-term, this is the best way of ‘fixing’ the system and restoring its integrity.
The Outcomes Produced by Our System (House of Reps Elections, 1946—2022)[7]
[1] Duverger, Maurice. (1951) 1964. Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State. Paris: Armond Colin. 3rd ed., London: Methuen & Co Ltd, pp. 206-207. Citations refer to the Methuen & Co Ltd 3rd edition.
[2] Duverger, Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State, p. 217.
[3] Farnsworth, Malcolm. “A Simple Explanation of the Two-Party Preferred Vote”. 2016. AustralianPolitics.com. https://australianpolitics.com/voting/two-party-preferred/two-party-preferred-vote-explained
[4] Barber, Stephen. 2017. “Federal election results 1901-2016”. Research Papers 2016-17, Parliamentary Library. https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1617/FederalElectionResults#_Toc390336859
[5] Australian Electoral Commission. “Election results: Tally room archive”. 2021. Australian Electoral Commission. https://results.aec.gov.au/.
[6] Duverger, Maurice. (1951) 1964. Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State. Paris: Armond Colin. 3rd ed., London: Methuen & Co Ltd, p. 226. Citations refer to the Methuen & Co Ltd 3rd edition.
[7] Barber, Stephen. 2017. “Federal election results 1901-2016”. Research Papers 2016-17, Parliamentary Library. https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1617/FederalElectionResults#_Toc390336859