CCF – The Senate
People are looking at the size of the Senate crossbench and muttering about how the Senate reform didn’t work. But how do you define success?
Perhaps success depends on what it was hoped would be achieved by those members of Parliament who passed the legislation.
The election count goes on. It took eight long days to find out that the Coalition will form government. There are still one or two seats unconfirmed in the House of Representatives and the Senate count is likely to take a few more weeks.
CEFA staff were alarmed on Tuesday morning 5 July when we picked up the Sydney Morning Herald and read the front page words “Australia faces a protracted political and Constitutional crisis”. But is this a Constitutional crisis? Or is the system working as it should?
Tomorrow we get to have the ultimate say about our preferred federal parliamentary representatives as each of us get one vote in the House of Representatives and one vote in the Senate.
CEFA is delighted that thousands more first-time voters have enrolled at the last minute. We wrote on 27 May that only 50% of 18 year old had enrolled for the upcoming Federal election. Thanks to an Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) media and advertising campaign, the number is now 71%.
We had a great response from our article last week about how the Senate is divided after a double dissolution election. Something that keeps coming up in the comments on our social media pages is the question of why we even have a Senate, with many stating that we should abolish the Senate.
Our Senate is designed to be a continuous body, with each Senator being elected for six year terms, while the Members of the House of Representatives are elected for a maximum of three years.
The result of children not being taught the value of democracy in school is that only 50% of 18 year olds are enrolled to vote at this election.
The writs for the upcoming 2 July election were issued in accordance with our Constitution on Monday. You might think this is not a very interesting topic. Almost like watching paint dry.
