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It is time for Australia to change its Constitution to provide for a truly independent Speaker, and not allow this position to be used by the parties as a political football, says former Victorian MP Denise Allen.
- by Denise Allen
Australia’s Parliament has, for over a hundred and ten years, been extremely proud of how it has been run — especially with the calibre of MP’s chosen to be Speaker and President, which (next to the Prime Minister) are the most highly regarded positions in the Parliament. The MP’s who have taken up the role in the past have, for the most part, performed the role to an exemplary standard, given the state of adversarial game playing that goes on between the two major parties.
However, the Parliament has now twice been bogged down in the quagmire regarding the Speaker: once when Howard appointed Labor MP Mal Coulson as Deputy President of the Senate in 1996, in a Liberal dominated Parliament; and now with Labor appointee, the former Liberal MP Peter Slipper. Both men had extremely controversial “rumours” hanging over their heads when they were appointed and, as most expected, both have caused both sides of Parliament extreme political pain — both cases being just short of a constitutional crisis.
The Australian Constitution provides that the Speaker shall be a member of the House; similarly, the President of the Senate must be a Senator. This provision reflects the situation in the House of Commons and is consistent with the Speaker’s role as a representative of the House. It may also be considered to be consistent with the philosophy implied in the Constitution that each House is master of its own activities and is not subject to control or interference by other bodies.
In the House of Representatives, in appointing an MP from the Government ranks to the Speakership, the Governing party effectively looses a deliberative vote – a vote that would normally be cast should an MP be on the benches – and is only given a casting vote — a vote given by the Presiding officer if there is a tied division. In the Senate, the President is given a deliberative vote.
In other official roles within the House of Reps and the Senate there are two clerks: the Clerk and the Deputy Clerk. The Clerk has two main areas of work. The first is the responsibility of assisting the Speaker and the President (the presiding officers) to run the Parliament in each chamber. The Clerk must know all the rules and conventions of the Parliament and be able to assist members and senators in the day to day running of parliamentary business.
In other words the Clerks are career officials — public servants appointed to the role.
It is now time for the Speaker to be also a “career official” — a parliamentary public servant. This would mean that the Speakership would be truly independent of both parties. It would also mean that neither party would loose a deliberative vote, the Speaker would truly be able to oversee the Parliament in a bi-partisan manner, and he/she could not be used as a political football.
One would expect that this would be in the best interests of both major parties, but would both major parties be interested in changing our Constitution to allow for such a change or would they simply want to hang onto it to be used as a political weapon at times such as this?
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
5 Comments
Thanks for this informative article Denise. Discussions about a directly elected parliamentary head of state with fellow republicans identify that in the event that the president was unable to finish the term of office the nominee with the second highest vote at the election may fill the position as opposed to holding another election.
Because the second highest vote winner may have moved on with other career decisions, it would be reasonably expected this person may refuse the role.
Some nations give the speaker’s position to the next highest vote in the presidential election. They have employment and are available to move to the presidential position if needed. For Australia’s Federal Parliament, speakers of both houses would be independent, selected by popular vote, impartial, represent the people and not be a Public Servant appointee.
An independent Speaker in the House of Representatives is a great idea, but I disagree with appointing a paid official to the post. The whole principle of parliament is that it is supreme.
One way to do it would be to constitutionally create a notional extra seat in the Reps, to which a new Speaker would formally move on election by the members and in which he or she would remain until no longer Speaker.
This would also – rather nicely in my view – draw a specifically Australian parallel with venerable British House of Commons practice, where the Speaker is traditionally not challenged in his or her parliamentary seat at elections. Australia’s lower house does not have the numbers to make such felicities feasible.
That way there would not need to be an election for Speaker at the beginning of a new parliament and only relatively infrequently a requirement for a by-election in the voting seat vacated by a new appointee.
I don’t think the Senate needs a formally non-partisan President since it is a collegiate chamber.
If you want to start a shortlist for the job, I will make a recommendation — Jack Herman, currently of the Aust Press Council.
Jack managed to steer meetings of Sydney University’s SRC, back in the heady days of the politics of the Vietnam war, in brilliant style – with great impartiality, and with the mind of the proverbial elephant re memorising rules, regulations, and decisions going back decades.
This is a great article and it raises the very important point that we do indeed need a truly independent speaker. The only problem I see is that the speaker, as a legitimate MP, also has a casting vote in the case of a tie. A public servant would not be able to that as it would be unthinkable for an unelected speaker to break deadlocks. I wonder then what would happen if the numbers on a bill were even. Toss a coin?
In England, the quaintly named Mother of All Parliaments, has an elected Speaker of the house, who is expected to remain impartial on all matters. However we still have the anachronistic and highly undemocratic example of our influential unelected Head of State reading what is known at present as the Queen’s Speech. Well it is HER government after all!! Ho hum!! There are many in this country who are campaigning for a Republic, but also the removal of the Monarch from this self publicising role as she squats on the throne and addresses HER establishment. We would prefer for this to be abolished or read by The Speaker of the House, or an ‘ordinary’ member of the public. Regrettably the people in Britain, persuaded by a right wing media, are still walking backwards away from democracy. Mother of All Parliaments my derrière!