Australian Political System

This paper elaborates on the structure and dynamics of the Australian political system and applies various theoretical models to the analysis of political behavior in Australia. It evaluates different perspectives on issues and problems and discusses the voting system, federal elections, and culture of the Australian political system.

Running head: AUSTRALIAN POLITICAL SYSTEM
Australian Political System
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State or governmental affairs, better known as politics has always been one of the key
subject of debate. It is a general opinion of almost all that the society that has a faulty
political system is bound to failure. According to Dinar et al. (2015), politics is related to the
phenomenon of cooperation and conflict. However, the Australian political system is a very
interesting version of democracy and the reason behind it would be described in this paper
further. This paper is going to elaborate on the structure and dynamics of the Australian
political system and would apply various theoretical models to the analysis of the political
behaviour in Australia. It would further evaluate the different perspective on the issues and
problems.
Structure and dynamics of the Australian political system- Australia is a federation of
six states which have their own governments, constitutions, laws and parliaments. The
political system of Australia has taken its elements from political systems of Great Britain
and from the United States. Liberal democracy of the country has been built around the
constitutional monarchy and British Westminster system along within various features from
the United States’ Federal structure (Keane 2018). The politics of Australia conducts and
operates its government as the two party system that has compulsory voting and at the same
time, the constitutional monarchy of Australia recognised Queen Elizabeth II as the head or
chief of the state (Fraenkel 2016). She is a formal, ceremonial and symbolic position holder
and possess the administrative power for governing the country. Queen Elizabeth II is also
the queen of United Kingdom and many other nations that used to be the parts of the earlier
British Empire. However, it is also to note that role of her as the queen of Australia and that
of the queen of United States are both different. The government of United Kingdom plays no
part in the role of the queen as that is played in the queen of Australia. Australia is one of the
countries that has introduced the printed secret ballet system for the voting procedure in the
year 1855 when the local elections in the Victorian colony took place by means of this

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system. The Australian government is constructed on the basis of democratic liberal tradition.
The Australians with the democracy have the right to elect the members of the federal
parliament of the nation that is a bicameral body which assimilates the elements such as the
federalist senate and fused executive.
The Australian political hierarchy is composed of three different levels and they are
executive level, legislative level and judicial level. The executive level is the highest most
level in the Australian political hierarchy, which is headed by the monarch. The monarch is
politically represented as the Governor General of Australia (Dowding and Martin 2017). His
major responsibilities include- issuing writs to bestow elections and honour, providing a royal
assent to the legislation and appointing ministers, judges and ambassadors. The monarch of
the system also plays the role of commander of the armed and defence forces of Australia and
is also the president of the federal executive council. After him, the main power lies with the
Australia’s prime minister. He heads the cabinet and the government as the highest level
government minister. He is also considered as one of the strongest political figure of the
nation. The prime minister of the country achieves his position through getting elected as the
leader of the part in Australian government.
Secondly, the legislative level of the Australian political hierarchy deals with the
development and creation of flaws. Australia’s legislative branch is the parliament that is also
considered to be the commonwealth or federal parliament (Cabrera 2018). The legislative
branch of the country has been impacted by two individual systems and they are Westminster
system and the federalism system. The three key elements of the parliament are the Monarch,
House of Representatives and Senate. The House of Representatives is a group of 15
members who are elected in democratic manner (by the people of the country) for a term of 3
consecutive years. Such kind of voting an instant run off system is generally used for
preferential voting and it is also to note that this kind of voting system has been derived from

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Australia. Furthermore, the senate of Australia comprise of 76 members who are elected on a
single transferrable voting system.
Lastly, the judicial level of the Australian political hierarchy concerns with the courts
and judiciary of the nation. The high court has been established by the Australian
constitution. It is the topmost and Supreme Court in the Australian court hierarchy and it also
holds the power of the judicial review on the regulations and laws that are passed by the
parliaments of the state and that of the Australian country. The High court also possesses the
original jurisdiction and appellate. There are a total of 7 justices that serve the high court as
jury and that consists of six justices as well as one chief justice of Australia (Conrad and
Clements 2018). The judges of the high court are appointed by the governor general who is
acting on the advice of the cabinet and the prime minister and they can only be removed from
their position and from the office by the Governor general following a request for the
removal from both the houses of the Australian parliament based on the ground of proved
incapacity. The primary function of the high court is to explain the constitution. While the
parliament might disallow an interpretation of any court of any ordinary law trough amending
any of the Act of the Parliament, the parliament is then subjected to the constitution. The
Australian constitution could not be changed by an Act of the Parliament alone. Referendum
of the citizen is very important.
Political behaviour in Australia- Since its inception the Australian political
establishment has followed diverse behaviour in terms of vote seeking and policy seeking
models. There are long terms and short terms behaviour models among the Australian society
that is stippled with the political mechanism existed in the country. In this regards, it can be
argued that the long term influences in political behaviour are identified as important factors.
Long term behaviour models are associated with the influence of the families and the impact
of the parents’ ideological values upon the children. For an instance, it can be seen in case of

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the political orientation in Australia. The Australian people have a keen interest and support
to their minor parties like Democratic Labour Party (DLP), the Australian democrats and the
Australian Greens. These regional parties has a prolonged support from the local
communities and subsequently this support transformed into a long term effect that the
Australian people have perceived long back. In this context, the manor parties hold the
majority in election since 1949. In fact, from 1941 to 1998, only seven of the 703 members of
the elected House of Representatives were belonged to the minor parties (Stojanovic 2014).
With an exception in Queensland, the Australian Labour Party (ALP) has got victory.
Moreover, there are short term influences in the Australian political behaviour
in the form of voting behaviour, the impact of the media and the influence of the individual
election issues. Most of the studies and scholarly articles have opined that media play a
pivotal role in influencing the political behaviour of the citizen. For an example, it can be
articulated that the Sky News became a protagonist to change the mind-set of the Australian
people in a great deal and influence profoundly during the election of 2007. As a matter of
fact, the Australian Press Council expressed in 2008 that there was a growing trend among
the Australians to access online newspapers on a daily basis (McLennan, Becken and Moyle
2017). However, the Research School of Social Science at the Australian National
University, assisted by the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes and the Australian Election
Studies had ventilated their concern about the participation of Australian people in politics
and how far the Australian media are responsible to make an impression among the people.
The report revealed that only 10 percent of the Australian population takes an active interest
in politics and less than 5 percent of the Australian is attending political campaigns and
rallies. Despite of those statistics it cannot be undermined that during the election of 2009
the Prime Minister of Australia Malcolm Turnbull sought the help of media to popularize his
political policies regarding climate, indigenous issues and the immigration problem.

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Social and ethnic groups are also considered to be an imperative factor in influencing
the political behaviour of Australia. Lobbying politics is identified as a key feature of
Australian politics. In this regards, the social groups like Refugee Action Group, Avaaz and
Safe Climate Australia have a strong impact on the Australian society as well as politics.
Different perspectives on issues and problems- It has been stated by Moffitt (2015),
that there is a crisis of confidence in the Australian political system. He has described the
crisis prevailing in the modern Australian politics as a combination of the interlocking factors
such as the sharply reduced political agenda, convergence on the major issues such as
national security and taxation, refusal to the analysis and explanation of the complex
problems such as climate change and refugees, toxicity on the trivial issues in Australia and
that of the convergence. However, despite of the frequently expressed low opinions of the
Australian politicians and the politics as well as the toxicity and vacuity of the political
discourse, the Australian voters still overwhelmingly supports the two major political
grouping of the country. The maximum variation in the combined vote for the key parties in
Australia over five different sets of elections there in the period in between 2013 to 2015 is
only 2.1 percent. It has shown a slight long lasting decline from the year 1960. However,
apart from this, it has also been argued that the Australian political system is stumped by
several wicked problems. The present iteration of the democratic system portrays a striking
incapacity in addressing the sets of the major problems. Ganghof, Eppner and Porschke
(2018) in this context have stated that the political system of the country is complex,
aggressive and circular. Some of the current issues include the climate change paralysis, the
policy abyss, the clash of the civilisations that are been updated, the security and terrorism
related issue, the dumbing down of the political debate, the telling the truth and winning of
the elections, the information or the entertainment and the speeding up by means of media,
recruitment procedure of the political elites, the failures of institutes such as the welfare

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groups, churches, sporting clubs, armed forces and political parties and the very known
problem of corruption (Maughan and Berry 2015). All these falls under the long list of the
various issues prevailing in the country.
Hence, from the above discussion it can be concluded that the voting system, the
federal elections and the culture of Australian political system are the main aspects of the
country’s politics that is making it an interesting version of democracy. Australia is a liberal
welfare and democratic country. The politics in this country is all about promoting and
protecting the social and economic well-being of the Australian citizens and in return, the
citizens of the country should bestow to their society and must respect all the rule of the law.
The liberal democratic system of Australia has been proved to be one of the highly steady in
the last few decades. Even though it is true that the political parties in Australia might have
many dissimilarity and there are several posing opinions that might take place, the Australian
citizen rest persuaded that the laws that are passed by their parliament and the decisions that
are been made are all within the best interest of the citizen.

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