Liberal Party of Australia shortened the parliament sitting days to avoid scrutiny: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/labor-accuses-government-of-cutt...
That's just the tip of the iceberg. There's much more anti-democratic changes in Australia.
That's just the tip of the iceberg. There's much more anti-democratic changes in Australia.
Which kind of begs the question, what would happen if the position was terminated and possibly replaced with a President (which would have a bigger role)
A president in Australia would be a significant departure from the current system, and I'm not sure I know anyone who would support it. We don't vote for a person to be Prime Minister, we vote for a person in our specific federal electoral seat and the leader of the party that wins the most seats is the Prime Minister.
This person also doesn't have any powers that their party doesn't give them for the most part. No veto powers etc afaik, and party leadership (and hence the Prime Minister) can be changed at any time by a party vote.
The Brexit referendum had the opposite problem; they only asked whether to leave, and not the way in which it should be done (not that they really could have, lacking a specific deal at the time) and now they can't agree on the way.
The system here does need some serious reform though (and you might as well bin the Queen while you're at it).
The STV approach at electorate level is good, but the electorates then being combined FPTP style to form a government retains most of the downsides of an FPTP system anyway. Safe seats are largely ignored and minor parties have far fewer seats than their support would warrant.
NZ's approach (a vote for your electorate MP, and a vote for your preferred party, with the government formed in line with the percentages in the party vote) is more representative and would be a big improvement to the system.
NZ's could be improved in a couple of ways though; the vote for the electorate MP is still really FPTP, we should copy the AU STV system for that part. And we retain an unrepresentative 5% minimum for representation at the party vote level*, this should be dropped entirely, or if not then votes should also be transferred from any party falling under that line to preferences above it.
Kiwi living in Australia if any of the we/you/here/there is confused :D
There are parliamentary systems with presidents as head of state with no significant power. E.g. Iceland. So it doesn't need to be much of a departure.
Iceland simply replaced their king (also the Danish king) by a president, made the president elected, and changed little else.
US style presidential government would certainly be a big departure.
Meanwhile everyone knows Merkel
NZ's approach seems safer; compulsory enrolment, so that come voting day everyone should be able to vote if they so choose. Voter turnout is still very high.
That said, while providing little benefit, the monarchy also causes little harm and there are more important things to be done than toppling figureheads.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitution...