The Australian parliament has largely abandoned ceremonial attire. Neither
presiding officer wears robes but, for a short time in 2011, Peter Slipper, who
had left the Liberal Party to take the speakership when a vacancy arose,
restored some of the traditional wardrobe and also instituted a Speaker’s
procession during his brief tenure. Nor do the various officers of the chambers
robe, with the exception of clerks at the table in the House of Representatives,
who wear black gowns and previously also wore a wig until instructed by the
Speaker in 1995 to cease doing so (Harris 2005, p. 206). On ceremonial
occasions the Sergeant-at-Arms wears appropriate court dress (Harris 2005,
p. 208). Traditional parliamentary office in the Senate is so diminished that
Odgers’Australian Senate Practiceno longer pays any special attention to the
Usher of the Black Rod.
Party organization and activity is a relatively undocumented aspect of
parliamentary life and proceeding. In Australia, what is clear, from newspaper
reports, is that parties have been very active and organized from the inception
of the parliament in 1901. The Australian parliament is not a parliament
which has had some pre-party golden era where members freely debated the
great topics of the day and voted on the merits of the arguments put. Thefirst
parliament, elected in March 1901, had three parties, none of whom had a
majority in the House of Representatives or the Senate: Protectionists, who
formed the government; the Labor Party, which sat on the cross bench but
generally supported the government; and the Free Traders, the Opposition.
Deakin wrote of the ‘three elevens’. The leaders of the government and
the Opposition, Edmund Barton and George Reid, both veterans of the par-
liament of NSW, seem to have assumed their leadership positions. Labor had
an election.
Leadership has since been a matter for the party room (including senators)
on all sides of politics until Labor, in 2013, introduced a method of electing
leaders which involved the party membership on a 50–50 basis with the
parliamentary party; Labor’s new practice has been included in caucus rules
but not in the party constitution. When prime ministers have died in office
(1939, 1945, and 1967), replacements (invariably deputy prime ministers)
have been appointed on a caretaker basis until the succession has been settled.
On two occasions, 1939 and 1967, the prime minister so chosen was leader of
the Country Party in a Coalition government and thus not a contender for the
post; in 1945, the prime minister was a candidate for the succession in the
Labor Party but was beaten.
In the UK it was not until 1965 that the Conservative Party elected a leader;
the choice historically was made by what one Tory MP (Iain Macleod) called
the‘magic circle’. Whereas, in Australia, a simple majority is sufficient to elect
a leader (and, indeed, to have the leadership declared vacant), a victor in a
Conservative Party ballot needed a specified plurality over all other contenders
Australia’s Distinctive Governance