CCF – The Senate
In the last year or two you may have read commentary discussing the possibility of the next election being a double dissolution.
But how many of us know what a double dissolution election is, what is involved or why we have the mechanism for it?
Here in Australia many people take joy in democratically electing those who will work for us in the Senate. But most Australians probably don’t realise that the people of the United Kingdom do not get to partake in the same activity as they don’t have an elected Upper House.
The discussion about electoral terms in Australia comes up every now and then. But did you know that electoral terms for both the House of Representatives and the Senate are stipulated in the Constitution?
The 2013 federal election saw a swing away from the major parties and some politically minded people disliked the fact that a large number of minor party candidates were elected. This seems to have been the incentive for a call for Senate reform before the next federal election.
After the budget announcement on Tuesday night we thought it might be time to take a closer look at what the Constitution says about Government spending.
Late last year DLP Senator John Madigan rose in Parliament to announce that he had quit his party and would serve the final three years of his term as an independent Senator.
When the Carbon Tax Repeal bill was defeated in the first vote by the Senate last year the Prime Minister described the Senate as “Situation Normal”. More recently after the University Deregulation Bill was defeated he described the Senate as “Feral”
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