Slowing the Knee Jerk

Farewell Campbell Newman. I’m happy to congratulate nearly anyone who is elected to our Parliament regardless of their political views. Very few people acknowledge what a difficult job it is and the media further obfuscate the challenges involved in managing our nation and the individual states within it.

After his demise the media and politicians began the process of picking apart what went wrong for Newman. The consensus seems to have settled on three areas. Newman’s confrontational leadership style coupled with his government’s austerity policy and Queensland voters wanting to punish the Federal Liberal Government by expelling a State Liberal Government.

Of those three Newman’s confrontational nature is hardly worth mentioning as I’m not sure that his leadership was confrontational. Rather I think his governments cut backs were confrontational and that’s really what caused the anger. I suppose that’s what you get when you fire sixteen thousand people.

Compounding the cut backs is the Australian people’s fairly solid recent history of turfing out one of the major parties at a State level when the same party is in charge at a Federal level. Whilst so many of the barbs against the Abbott government have failed to stick the ‘Queensland result’ probably will do some damage to the Federal Liberal Government as it is now the second first term State Government given it’s marching orders in the last twelve months.  

What I find particularly concerning about the result is that this was the second enormous swing in a row for Queensland. The other swing delivering the Liberals government with a historically high majority and reduced Labor to a seven member caucus. It paints a disturbing picture of an electorate which is deeply unhappy and which seems to be wildly swinging from one party to the next in the hope that something – anything – will be better than what they have now.

There seems to be little recognition that the core problems, facing both our Federal and or State Governments, are similar if not the same problems. Those on the left complain that services are not being delivered to meet the expectations of the electorate. Those on the right complain that the budget is not balanced and we are living beyond our means.

Both sides of politics criticisms are in my view broadly accurate. Yet what has just befallen the Newman Government is a pretty good example of why both of these problems are becoming harder to fix over time. As much as we like to criticise our elected representative, and often our employers, over knee jerk reactions, we the public love a good knee jerk. Because of this neither side of politics can stay in power long enough to fix either services or the budget, much less both of them.

Compounding the public’s love of a good knee jerk is the needs of both sides of politics to make promises during election time that are problematic to deliver. Because of these problematic promises, the electorate forms unreasonable expectations about the government and about what is actually achievable. This exacerbates the public’s anger and encourages the need to knee jerk.

Many people have suggested fixed terms for governments can alleviate some of the questionable promises and indeed choices which both major parties regularly make in an effort to win or keep government. It is with this thought in mind that I’m going to suggest something that surely someone somewhere has thought of before. It’s too simple a solution not to have been suggested previously.  

I’d like to see what I am going to call rolling fixed terms for members of the House of Representatives. By this I mean that not only do all of our members of the House have a fixed term, but that the term of each member, whilst the same length, concludes at different times.

For example there are one hundred and fifty members of the house. Every month three of them are up for re-election. Every three months perpetually. That means that a different three MP’s in three different electorates across the country are up for re-election every month. That would give each MP fifty months in the job before they were up for re-election.

When those MP’s come up for re-election their electorates could ask them ‘what have you done for us in the last four years’ which is what should be happening. We might even get members of the house that actually represent what their specific electorates want, as opposed to being shoehorned into following party lines.

Perhaps most importantly whilst people will still over-react and perhaps make poor choices because of it we will not see the wild swings which are happening regularity at the moment. Only so much can change in government when only three seats change. Also government gets a clear signal, much clearer than any poll, when their policy is not popular.

If the majority of the house was close, say within three seats, then both major parties would have to develop meaningful policy, in case they suddenly found themselves with control of the Parliament. This would greatly reduce the more obviously ridiculous promises made by both parties. It would also allow the electorate to react quicker should a major party break a major promise.

What would happen if the majority in parliament changed just prior to the budget? The core numbers, which treasury is responsible for producing would not change. Both sides of politics would have little choice but to spread the deployment of new policy throughout the year with treasury updating the budget as and when required to do so. 

That would make treasuries job harder. However it would also stop government from turning July into an opportunity to pork barrel, through budget changes, to specific parts of the electorate and or lobby groups representing narrow interests. Instead July would perhaps become more of a time to reflect on the nation’s financial position, which is as it should be.

Some might say that with three ‘by-elections’ happening every month the blatant pork barrelling within specific electorates might increase. I’d suggest that it’s very difficult to pass legislation through both houses in less than a month. Also, would politicians be willing to pork barrel when to do so might lose your party three seats in the following month?

What happens if a minister loses their seat? The government should have a succession plan in place. Can you imagine any large publically listed private company not having a succession plan in place for its key personal? If the current government loses its majority then the opposition shadow ministers simply step into the role. If they are competent, surely that should not be so difficult to do.

More than anything else this system would force both sides of Parliament to be ready for government at all times. That alone makes it much, much harder to focus on the negatives without preparing an alternative. It makes it much harder to promise the unreasonable when you might have to deliver in a month. It forces your government to be honest or possibly lose government the following month if your promises are broken.

As is often my refrain this proposed system is not perfect. I’m sure over time it would need adjustment. At first it would be quite cumbersome, there would be problems transitioning. Who decides which electorates go to the polls first? There are many questions. Perhaps you the reader could ask some of those questions and through doing so we can all find an answer.

I have not mentioned the Senate in this post and that’s with good reason. I have a different view on what the Senate should be and on how they should be elected. I’ll cover that in another post at a different time. Rest assured it’s just as challenging as my thoughts on the House of Representatives is and just as imperfect.