Re: OT: For information only !

Joe wrote:

> Tristan Mc Leay wrote:
>
>> (Note: In spite of the fact that we have a Westminster lower house, our
>> upper house is _very_ powerful, thanks in part to it being modelled
>> after the US Senate rather than House of Lords.)
>
>
>
>
> Alright, I'm not exactly knowledgable of Australian politics.  But the
> Australian Democrats and the Greens are fairly evenly balanced in the
> Senate

Probably, but recent polls have generally shown the Democrats to have
fewer and fewer people voting for them and the Greens more and more; I
think the current voting intention has Greens more than twice the Democrats.

(Roy Morgan Research's polls shows the following for primary votes (i.e.
the person voted number one):

                          Democrats     Greens

Election March 2, 1996    6.8           1.7
Election Oct. 3, 1998     5.1           2.1
Election Nov. 10, 2001    5.4           4.4
Morgan Poll:
  Jan 3, 4, 10, 11 2004   1.5           7.5
  Jan 17, 18, 24, 25      2.5           8
  Jan 31, Feb 1, 7, 8     2.5           5.5


And so forth, with the Democrats peaking at 3.0 on the poll from May 22,
23, 29, 30 and the Greens peaking at 9.5% on March 27, 28, April 3, 4.
Note that this is for the House of Representatives; you can assume that
it'll be higher in the Senate but I don't know by how much...
(Australians are more likely to vote for minor parties in the Senate
because they're more likely to get in. Which is silly because you aren't
wasting your vote by voting for a minor party in the HoR...)

> Is it really modelled on the US senate?  It seems a lot more,
> well, democratic - proportional representation, etc.

Well it is, as far as I know... Certainly the Australian system has been
described as a Washminster system (Wash- from Washington, DC, -minster
from Westminster). The Senate of both countries is intended as a house
of the states more than the people; the states each have equal
representation regardless of the population (New States of Australia
would,* and the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory
do, have fewer Senators though). Both Senates wield a lot of power; one
of Australia's Prime Ministers, Gough Whitlam, was fired because his
government had no access to money because the Senate refused to pass the
Budget. I assumed the American Senate was elected from the word go, but
apparently it wasn't till 1913 (so Australia's Senate was elected even
earlier). The Australian Senate wasn't proportional till 1949, but
according to <http://tinyurl.com/29wl7> it was generally expected that
it would be proportional in the very beginning.

* According to the constitution they only get two rather than the
Original States' 12, but there aren't any New States. The Northern
Territory relatively recently rejected a referendum to become a state,
and the separatists of the region of New South Wales known as New
England haven't got the support they'd need for a referendum in NSW...
New Zealand also hasn't joined us yet :)

Early drafts of Australia's constitution were, as I understand it, based
on America's, though it was going to have to change even at that stage
because the intention was always to have a Westminster style

Also, Canberra (our capital city), which was designed by an American,
has a hill known as 'Capital [sic] Hill' on which the federal Parliament
is located.

Other similarities between the two nations are the fact that we're both
federations and we both have a capital city created for the purpose in a
separate territory (the District of Columbia in America, the ACT in Oz).

(Incidentally---Canadians note well---you can tell our Senate does a
good job: Most Prime Ministers want to reform it to make it _less_
powerful and, I suppose, more like the Canadian Senate.)

> Just out of
> curiosity, was there ever an Australian Conservative Party?.

No. The Liberal Party of Australia is our conservative one. They were*
an amalgamation of various conservative parties, principally the United
Australia Party. I suppose it's possible that one of the various parties
was called the Australian Conservative Party or some such like that but
I don't know... The conservative parties who have been in Government are
the (defunct) Protectionist Party, the (defunct) Free Trade Party, the
(defunct) Commonwealth Liberal Party, the (defunct) Nationalist Party,
the (defunct) United Australia Party and the Country Party (now 'The
Nationals' and part of the Coalition).

* As I understand, Americans would've said 'The Liberal Party is ... It
was', and Brits would've said 'The Liberal Party are ... They are'...
It's not too unusual in my experience to use plural pronouns but
singular verbs after the actual collective noun itself (they can also
take singular pronouns, but the British usage is rare). Is that an odd
Australianism or does it happen elsewhere?

>
>>>   The US is the
>>> only nation I know of that only has two parties represented in its
>>> Parliament(Yes, it's called Congress, but it's still a Parliament).
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> No... the Congress is a congress. There's two distinct systems: the
>> Parliamentary system, which has parliaments, as used by Britain and most
>> Commonwealth countries, and the Presedential system, which has
>> congresses as used by America and various other countries... I think the
>> difference is that the executive is kept separate from the legislature
>> in one and mixed in with the other, but it could be that I'm focussing
>> on the wrong distinction...
>
>
>
> In general, that's the excuse given.  But France has a Presidential
> system, and has a Parliament.  I think it's just that they like to be
> difficult.

France is freaky. They have a Prime Minister and a President. I don't
think the French planned on making sense in the first place.

--
Tristan.

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