Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Australian Politics and Policy
The Australian executive
The fact that Australian states were British colonies ensured that the design of
Australia’s executive governance was lifted from Westminster. The relationship
between the executive and the legislature developed differently in England,
compared with its main European rivals. England’s early development of a taxation
system during the Hundred Years War (1337–1453) and the assertion by the lords
of their rights in the Magna Carta (1215) meant that the English Crown could not
ignore parliament as continental monarchs did. In fact, they needed parliament to
pay for their armies. England’s adoption of Protestantism during the Reformation
further empowered the parliament over the King’s other great rival for power, the
church.
The tension between monarch and parliament became horrendously violent
during the English Civil War (1642–51), and pressure again built up during the
1680s, resulting in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The Glorious Revolution saw
a dramatic but peaceful rebalancing of power between the Crown and parliament
within England, but led to wars in Ireland and later in Scotland. After the
revolution, the monarch could not raise any taxes without parliamentary consent.
Another unforeseen consequence of this revolution was that the heir to the British
monarchy became the German elector of Hanover, George I. During the reign
of the ‘foreign’ Hanoverians, the role of the monarch’s ‘minsters’ became ever
more important. The effect was to entrench parliamentary government and slowly
transfer the direct application of the monarch’s powers to his ministers, who ran
his government. Yet this transfer was slow because the King and his aristocratic
supporters retained control over access to parliamentary seats until successive
democratic reforms during the 19th century. To this day, the Australian prime
minister and the Australian government derive their authority from the Crown – it
is Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s government. 6
Responsible government
When the practice of ‘modern’ British government was first described in the 1860s
by the English journalist Sir Walter Bagehot, he characterised the monarchy as the
‘dignified’ part of government and the exercise of partisan power in Cabinet as
the ‘efficient’ part. 7 Politics at the time was not dominated by political parties as
we understand them today. Therefore, it was not uncommon for governments to
collapseandnewgovernmentstoformwithoutanelection.Ifagovernmentshould
fall, it was the duty of the premier/prime minister to advise the monarch, or in
Australia’s case the governor, who might be able to form another.
6 Norton 1981.
7 Bagehot 1963.
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