The Double Dissolution

Message / Question

You seem to make it sound like too many Christians vote for minor Christian parties, and winning power is more important than getting the "balance of power". You say it doesn't happen very often... well, it's happened for every election in the last 2 decades! Don't you understand why Christians want to hold the balance of power? If you can tip the balance either way, neither of what any of the party says matters. You win everything. Can't you see that this is why the Greens have such disproportionate power, and there has been all the laws proposed about climate change and gay marriage? Open your eyes, Dr Dave! Or, speak to some Christian politicians!

Response

I presume that your comments relate to the article that I have written about how the system works. I note here again that Government is formed by the Party with the majority of votes in the House of Representatives – the numbers in the Senate are absolutely irrelevant in determining which party governs. The fact is that it is VERY rare to have a “hung Parliament” i.e. to have a balance of power situation in the House of Representatives. You say that it has happened at every election in the past 2 decades – I am sorry, but you are simply wrong. The fact is that the 2010 federal election resulted in the first hung Commonwealth Parliament for almost 70 years (info from Parliamentary Library). That was the first time in 70 years that there was a balance of power situation in the House of Representatives. So once in 70 years qualifies as “rare” to me.

The Senate is a different story, as I noted in my article “minor parties and Greens have a far greater chance to hold the balance of power in the Senate”. It is highly unlikely that Christian Parties will gain a seat in the Reps and even more unlikely that would hold the balance of power. In the Senate there is always a chance of that happening, however if a Christian held one seat in the Senate, that would not given him/her the balance of power – that balance would depend on the number of Greens and other minor parties and Independents and it depend which side of politics these other crossbenchers would be likely to support. Your hope of a Christian holding the balance of power in the Senate is a good hope to have, but it would be very unlikely to happen. In the current Senate, we could take the Family First Senator as the nominal “Christian” party representative; it is clear that Senator Day does NOT hold the balance of power in his own right – in fact, if he did have that balance, we would not be having a double dissolution election now, as he voted with the Government to pass the legislation whose defeat gave the trigger for the double dissolution.

I appreciate your comments, but you really need to your homework and get your facts right or you may mislead a lot of people!