The rare occurrence of a hung parliament in the Senate and House of Representatives has to some degree forced the alteration of Sartori’s initial rules. Now, minor parties must be counted in both houses of parliament in order to hold numerical and real balance of power (Janech and Mathieson 1998). Having said this, there is an implicit component, which outlines that the party must have a balance of power with the freedom of the utilization of this power in return for concessions (Janech and Mathieson 1998). The compulsory preferential voting system in Australia also warrants an adjustment to Sartori’s second rule. A minor party can be discounted if its preferences are considered unimportant (Janech and Mathieson 1998). However if a minor party’s preferences are vital to the establishment of a major government, then the party can be considered extremely important (Janech and Mathieson 1998). According to this most minor parties, such as Family First and One Nation, can be considered unimportant while a small portion which includes the Greens are conceivably vital to the political outlook.
Roles and Functions of Minor Parties
A comprehensive understanding of three main issues will allow a summation of whether, or not, minor parties play an important role in Australia. These views points include: the party system, the electorate and the balance of power.
The Party System
The party system is defined as the inter-relationships between the parties within (Janech and Mathieson 1998). In general the electorate believe that the party system is quite bipolar in nature. Once this system is broadened, the continuing pattern of inter-relationships, which includes minor parties, is evident. The themes of the halfway house, the general political outlook and the idea of stability and realignment demonstrate the party system and the significance of the minor parties.
Halfway House
The Democratic Labor Party (DLP) was a prime example of the halfway house, which was a party that mainly consisted of Catholic individuals who had a falling out with the Australian Labor Party (ALP) (Janech and Mathieson 1998). During its early years, the party was a firm follower of the Labor Movement however this dramatically changed after the effect of two components of the halfway house were realized. The first was the shift of votes from former Labor supporters, through preferences, to the Liberal and National Parties. In fact 90% of the minor party’s voters were willing to allocate their vote to the coalition (Janech and Mathieson 1998). This is primarily due to the fact that the prime reason for the development of the DLP was to oppose Labor’s ‘so called’ communist policies and essentially inhibit the Labor party from entering office (Janech and Mathieson 1998). The second component is that the DLP experienced a large shift of Catholic voters from the Labor party to the coalition. The halfway house can also be applied to minor parties as a political channel for marginal group. Individuals that are major party supporters, but perceive as though their particular interests and issues are not being addressed by the major parties may endeavor to form a minor party to continue to express these points (Janech and Mathieson 1998). V.O. Key states that minor parties are often a step in the process of reshuffling and in fact major parties can gain by losing its ‘discordant elements to the other’ (Key 1967: 280). It can also be argued that in the grand scheme, minor parties play an insignificant role in major policy development, which adds little value to Australian politics.
Political Outlet
According to R.R. Alford minor parties are a temporary channel (outlet) for the expression of grievances arising from the attempt to coalesce diverse interest within two parties (Alford 1964). For the initial 60 years after 1910, this was restricted as Labor and Liberal did not seek to encompass a wide range of interests. This is a partial explanation for the lack of minor parties prior to 1945 (Hazlett 1966). Post 1970 the trend has changed towards major parties attempting to gain the support of a wide range of interest (Janech and Mathieson 1998). This has essentially impelled the growth in terms of significance and mass of minor parties. Under the catchall model created by O. Kirchheimer parties will inevitably alienate a range of interest groups (Kirchheimer 1966). The result is the potential increase in the amount of minor parties or support for the current minor parties (Janech and Mathieson 1998). The formation of the first federal hung parliament for 71 years, during the 2010 election, and establishment of 6 crossbenchers, including the first Greens member in the House of Representatives, demonstrates a general discontent for the catchall policies used by the major parties (Cassady 2010). In addition, Pauline Hanson (the founder of One Nation) cites in her autobiography in relation to the Howard Government that "the very same policies I advocated back then ... are being advocated today by the federal government" (Hanson 2007). This adds to the catchall political outlook and the overall importance of minor parties. Having said that the shear fact that One Nation’s electorate support has diminished reflects the notion that in the long term, minor parties are unimportant and only exist to demonstrate holes in major party policies.
Stability and Realignment
Minor parties are often seen to be playing a positive role in the stability of the party system. This is partly due to the fact that its existence has created a numerical multi-party system. In addition, past elections have only witnessed minor parties erode electoral support for the major parties at the margins and a general high turnover of these small parties (Janech and Mathieson 1998). However, this has also had little impact on the political system. On the other hand, some analysts argue that the increase in activity of minor parties in modern politics is an indicator of an electoral realignment (Janech and Mathieson 1998). Key argues that a realignment is inaugurated by ‘critical elections’ in which the: “.........decisive results of the voting reveal a sharp alteration of the pre existing cleavage within the electorate…….new durable electoral groupings are formed” (Key 1955: 4). The most prominent realignment occurred in 1949 with the establishment of the Liberal-National coalition (Janech and Mathieson 1998). However the most significant change to the political system was the emergence of the Australian Democrats (Janech and Mathieson 1998). Major parties were forced to take notice of this minor party due to drastic electoral success, which culminated in the formation of the balance of power in some legislatures. There is also an indication that the democrats have produced ‘two parallel, overlapping, but distinct party systems’ (Carty 1997:10) in two distinct ways. Firstly, as the democrats were firmly ingrained in the high importance category for the major parties due to the balance of power they achieved during the 1990s within the Senate, greater policy debate occurred. Secondly, the patterns of electoral support differed greatly between the upper and lower house. The levels of support for the Democrats were considerably higher in the Upper House, which creates certain issues (Janech and Mathieson 1998). As the Democrats usually didn’t gain a large support in the lower house they, often established a balance of power in the upper house, which meant that many of the political debates occurred behind doors that reduced the transparency of the system.
The Electorate
Minor parties may be considered as a positive component political system as it allows a larger range of the electorate to express their views. According to S.L. Fisher, the existence of the minor parties is simply to allow individuals to express their social and economic dissent and essentially serve as a political outlet for social groups whose grievances have been ignored by the major parties (Fisher 1974). It can also be seen that minor parties are safety valves as those impassionate or marginalized individuals from the major parties are able to sublimate their mortification through party activity (Janech and Mathieson 1998). Australia’s unique preferential voting system allows the minor parties to have a significant influence, through preferences, over who wins the seats (Janech and Mathieson 1998). The unique arithmetic used to decide the results of elections allows minor parties to affect the outcomes of the elections. In the 2010 election, the minor parties experienced a total swing of 4.09% which has meant that the major parties were inherently reliant on these minor parties for their preferences. Therefore, they had a considerable influence over the translation of votes into seats.
The Balance of Power
Minor parties can be extremely vital to the Australian political outlook once it achieves a balance of power. This occurs once the party accomplishes a numerical balance of power or absolute power (Janech and Mathieson 1998). It is far more likely for minor parties to gain a numerical balance of power, which essentially occurs when neither of the major parties gain an absolute majority of seats in the house (Janech and Mathieson 1998). In the current hung parliament, a genuine balance of power is essentially where a minor party is willing to negotiate and engage with both sides of the political scheme (Sharman 2003). This was certainly not the case for the Domestic Labor Party during its stint with the balance of power in the Senate, during the 1960s and 1970s, as its ideologies and policies essentially inhibited them from bargaining with the Labor Party (Janech and Mathieson 1998). Those minor parties, which have a balance of power, have the ability to influence legislature. This brings into practice Sartori’s second rule. The modern political outlet is a shining beacon to this concept mainly due to the results of the 2010 federal election. The Labor Party and the coalition both have 72 seats, in the lower house, therefore meaning the six cross benchers (one green and 5 independents) hold the balance of power (Cassidy 2010). Julia Gillard and Bill Shorten have both suggested that the hung parliament has forced the government to abandon its original plan for an Emissions Trading Scheme for a Carbon Tax. Reports suggest that this was in an effort to gain the support of the Green’s member of parliament (Q and A: 2011). This is a dramatic shift from Gillard’s pre election promise of not introducing a carbon tax. Therefore we can conclude that the minor parties, in particular the Greens, were extremely influential in this decision.
Conclusion
There is insurmountable evidence to suggest that minor parties are important to Australian Politics. While they may often gain a relatively minuet electoral support and are considered by some to be short-term parties with a lack of substance, the importance of their relevance and roles and functions is clearly high. Throughout Australian political history, minor parties have played vital roles in terms of policy development, the evolution of the political system and the creation of government. Therefore it is clear that their utilitarian value to Australian politics, throughout history, has been of the highest importance.
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