while Britain suspended them: which was the more democratic? It was a House
of Commons unsanctioned by‘perennial’elections that on 8 May 1940 real-
ized perhaps the most consequential expression of any democracy ever.
Australian parliaments are weak. They lack defences: houses of parliament
have been abolished, in blank defiance of public opinion.^27 They lack scope of
action: the executive may enter into treaties and appoint judges, without the
approval or enquiry of any House of Parliament. And they lack inner life:
Private Members’Bills are almost unknown, and‘in no other Westminster
style polity has the speakership been so debased’(Hirst 2006, p. 21). Above all,
‘the Pledge’, perfected by Labor and imitated formally by the Country Party
and informally by the Liberals, has virtually extinguished the prerogative of
MPs to vote as each thinks best, leaving only a tiny sanctuary of choice
consisting of matters of‘conscience’.^28 The consequent condensation of par-
liament into two blocs leaves it an arena of political diktat rather than of
political exchange. This constraint of MPs’choice of vote is accompanied by a
constraint on speech, with an accompanying debasement of parliamentary
disputation. One manifestation of this debasement is the rarity—almost com-
plete absence—of significant parliamentary eloquence from Australian his-
tory. A more serious upshot may be the strange and dubious ascendancy of
newspapers in Australian political life, with each paper constituting an extra-
parliamentaryOrateur.^29
Australian democracy smacks too much of the polling booth and not
enough of the parliamentary chamber.
References
Andrews, L., Fry, T. R. L., and Jakee, K. 2005.‘Compulsory Voting: Some Analytics and a
Test from Australia’. RMIT University: Melbourne.
Atkin, G. 1969.‘The introduction of compulsory voting in Queensland, 1914’,Armidale
and District Historical Society Journal and Proceedings, vol. 12, pp. 29–48.
Bentham, J. 1819.Bentham’s Radical Reform Bill: With Extracts from the Reasons. London:
E. Wilson.
(^27) In 1917 a referendum to abolish the Legislative Council of Queensland was rejected by
179,105 votes to 116, 198. Nevertheless, in 1921 the Council was abolished. 28
Australian political parties display‘a degree of party discipline unequalled by few of the
world 29 ’s parliamentary democracies’(Wildavsky 1961, p. 438).
The entire distinction between newspaperman and politician could dissolve in Australia: thus
Deakin and Pearson wrote many editorials forThe Age. The editor of that newspaper, David Syme,
not only‘converted’Deakin to protectionism, but ultimately secured the undertaking of George
Reid, the Free Trade prime minister, that Syme would vet all appointments to a projected tariff
comission (Turner 1911, p. 96).
William O. Coleman