Brave move must trigger reform
Upper House decision must spark size restoration, says Peter Chapman
NOW
the state election has been called for March 3, it is time to raise the neglected, yet most serious issue in Tasmanian politics: The reform of the Tasmanian Parliament.
This matter was addressed by the Legislative Council in a historic session late last year, but the outcome of that session has attracted little attention and deserves much more.
On November 28 last year, the Legislative Council passed by a decisive majority (10 votes to three) a resolution surrendering its historic (if not notorious) power of blocking budgets sent up by the Lower House, and replacing that power with a suspensory veto which would lapse after a period of a month, allowing budget measures then to pass.
Whilst the power of blocking budgets has not been exercised since 1948 (when an election was forced on the Lower House), that reserve power was inhibitory, and its removal is a courageous and statesmanlike step in the democratic direction and would enable more confident governance from the House of Assembly.
Equally important was another resolution passed on the same date by the Legislative Council, again by the same decisive majority, calling for the establishment of an independent review of the size of the Tasmanian Parliament.
It had been reduced arbitrarily in 1998, by a factor of 29 per cent in the House of Assembly (from 35 to 25 seats) and by 22 per cent in the Legislative Council (from 19 to 15).
Whilst these innovatory resolutions will have to be debated by the new parliament and will involve a change to the constitution, they should be welcomed and embraced by Tasmanian electors and politicians, all of whom owe a debt of gratitude to those wise legislative councillors who supported the resolutions.
The matter is particularly timely as the mantra of almost all parties in the forthcoming election has been for growth and the achievement of critical social and economic mass in Tasmania, in some form or other.
As we have previously argued ( Mercury. October 6) the achievement of such critical mass particularly applies to the parliament where overworked ministers, with a severely reduced backbench support, struggle to meet the pressing demands which an artificially reduced parliament imposes upon them.
It is time this vital matter of governance was put right, and we urge all Tasmanians to press the various aspirants for election to the new parliament for the restoration of that parliament to an effective condition, and imbue it with the talent and capacity to revitalise the governance of this state.
Such a restoration would also reinvigorate our electoral system in the spirit of its founder Andrew Inglis Clark, who wrote (in “Why I am a Democrat”, c. 1897) that in a “genuine democracy” there should be “the presence in the Legislature of representatives of all opinions”.