One of the best oppositions to a government can come in the form of a Senate. Many countries have managed to do away with their senate or equivalent, but Australia is very fortunate to still have them.
TRANSCRIPT:
(This transcript is derived from an automated process. The video recording is authoritative.)
So what I'm going to talk about tonight is this role of the Senate, which by the way, you can all be relaxed. It actually is in the Constitution. Okay? It's not like the cabinet. Okay? And the reason I'm going to talk about this, because my job for about six years was working for three federal cabinet ministers from 2013 to 2019. And my job was to liaise with the Senate and to get legislation through. And this had a very telling impact on my life, which I'll explain and you'll see. But I thought I'd give, and if we've covered this in the book about the role of the Senate and being a really important place in Australian government, and I'll take you through what's been happening. And the first thing is he's a bit of history about the Senate. So we have in Australia a bicameral parliamentary system that is a lower house, house of reps and upper house, the Senate.
We sort of inherited this from the British system. They had a House of Commons and a house of Lords, okay? From the word go. Their house of Lords for a long time was hereditary. All the aristocrats used to run around with and some of the bishops. And gradually it's become an appointed upper house. Now in Australia, we did things a bit different in the 1890s when we were writing our constitution. We look to America, it's very interesting in it we look to America and America has a Senate. It's got a House of Representatives and a Senate just like we adopted that model. And it's very important that we've got a federal system of government like America and Germany and Switzerland and like Canada, Britain has a unitary system of government. New Zealand has a unitary system of government. This is really important. So we wanted to have some mechanism to represent the states, those six states that we talk about.
And that became the Senate. And we've got a written constitution. Britain hasn't got a written constitution, okay? So we've copied the American written constitution. New Zealand hasn't got a written constitution. It's a series of acts and legislation. And in Australia, when we were forming the Senate, we said we want to make sure there's going to be equal number of senators from each state. Why? Because we don't want to be swamped by New South Wales or Victoria. So equal number of senators from each state and regardless of the population, same as in America. America, two senators from every state, whether it's New York with 15 million people or Washington state with 2 million people, two senators, equal number. So this concept was very early on. It's very, and the other thing about our Senate, it's got almost equal powers with the House of Representatives, except it can't raise money, bills, budgets, it can't amend them, but it can delay them.
It can delay them, and it can reject them. Dislike The American Senate is very powerful. Unlike the House of Lords, which from 911 lost its power to block, the House of Commons can only stop things for a short time. So the House of Lords doesn't have that power. Our Senate is very powerful. And also what's really interesting about our Senate, it was elected from the word go. The American Senate wasn't elected by the directly of other people to 1913. So we beat, beat the American Senate. We had universal suffrage 20 years before them and 70 years before Switzerland, by the way. So women didn't get the vote in Switzerland to nine 70. So the Australian Senate's really unique and I don't think people appreciate we have really now the only elected upper house in Westminster Systems in Canada, they're appointed, okay? In England, Britain, they're appointed.
Okay? New Zealand got rid of its upper house in 1950. It wasn't a vote by the people, which is legislation got passed. So we're quite unique in this regard. Now we all know Queensland abolished the Labour Party abolished the Senate upper house in 9 22. They did it by a pretty sneaky sort of way. We won't go back though that the A LP when they were in government in New South Wales tried to abolish the upper house in 1961. They had a referendum which failed. Okay? I kept it in Canada. Now there's no province in Canada has an upper house. They're all gone and around the world, upper houses have been abolished in Sweden, Iceland, Peru, and the state of Nebraska and America hasn't got another house anymore. Now, the A LP had as their policy to abolish the Senate from 1919 to 1977. That was on their platform and they wanted to abolish all upper houses around the states.
Why? Because the Labour Party is, what is it called? A programmatic party. They have the great programme to implement and nothing must get in the way. So people elect the lower house. That's the voice of the people. That's it. We don't want any checks and balances. Okay? So that's really important to get our uniqueness about our Senate. Now, the Senate has changed over time. When it was first established, it only had 36 members, six from each state. Okay? There it is, 36. And that lasted right through to 9 49 and 19 49, 48, something interesting happened. The chi labour government could see the writing on the wall that Mr. Menzies was going to win the 49 election. What are they going to do? They did three things. They changed the electoral boundaries to give them an advantage. But Mr. Menzies still won, by the way. Two, they doubled the size, almost doubled the size of the House of Representatives from 75 members to 120 members.
Why? So that labour members would have a more chance. Now, when they do that, because of what we have called the nexus in our constitution, if you make the House representative bigger, you've got to make the Senate bigger. So the Senate grew from 36 to 60 members, okay? 10 from each state, none from the territories. And they also brought in proportional voting, which I'll explain about that shortly. And then we've increased the Senate again in 1975. We gave the territories representative increased it to 74 and we increased it again in 9 84. So it's now 76. Now those increases can be done by parliament, doesn't need a vote by the people. Very important. This could happen after the next election. Okay? Now the voting system is interesting. From 901 to 1919, the voting system was first pass the post. But that meant if you won a big majority in the election, you tend to win almost all the seats in the Senate.
So you have situation where the Labour party wins 33 Senate seats and the opposition wins three, and then vice versa from time. Then they change it to preferential voting. And then they brought in proportional voting. And proportional voting gives you a fairer share that was done. So the Labour Party, the 9 49 election would get a reasonable number of senators. Okay? Now, so what this all meant that for first 50 years of federation, governments largely controlled the Senate. And the Senate was a place where you sent retirees to. It was called, and I hate to say this ladies, an old man's place where you sent the political hacks because it wasn't really important. The government usually had the numbers and except for a few periods, the government largely control the numbers. Now, Mr. Menzies, he only won seven elections when he was up against the Senate.
That was opposed to him because the a LP has set it up. He caught a double dissolution and he got control of the Senate. Alright? Now, just remember only coalition or liberal prime ministers since 9 49 have got control of the Senate, have got a majority of the Senate, only them. Mr. Fraser got control. And Mr. Howard had control for a couple of years. So that's quite interesting, important fact about how the dynamics work. So I'll just give you some examples of what we had that lopsided. First pass the post or preferential voting what it meant. Nine 17, the nationalist party, which is the liberal party, got 24 Senate positions. A LP got 12 in 9 34, the UAP United Australia party got 33 a LP, and you got three senators, okay? In 9 46, the A LP got 33 senators and the liberal party country party, and you've got three.
You see the difference. See we have the voting system can distort the majority if you like. Proportional voting came in first, came in the A LP got 34 and the liberal country party 26, and then 51. Mr. Menzies won the majority. So it's a bit of interesting sort of background about all that. So we had a lopsided senate until then. Now what's really interesting about the Senate is the gradual growth of the minor parties, which I think what a lot of you're interested in. And here's a sort of a snapshot 901, there was no minor party in the Senate, okay? 9 64, 360 7 5. This is the rise of the DLP, the Democratic Labour Party who split away from the Labour Party. They're starting to come into their main here. Nine 70, we get to eight. This was like the high point of the DLP, okay? And there was a couple of independents, 77, remember Mr.
Fraser won a huge, the biggest majority in federal history in 9 75 election in the 77 election. And so the liberal party were very ascendant. The minority party went down to free. Then nine 80, what you have developing the DLP fades away. The DLP disappears and they're replaced by the Australian Democrats. How we get the Australian Democrats, well, Mr. Fraser sack his fellow minister and he formed the Australian Democrats. So we get the growth, the Australian Democrats, 87 or 88 98. We had about 10 people in the upper house, 10 minor parties. These were Australian Democrats. The first greens were starting to appear on the scene from Tasmania, and an independent guy called Senator Harridan, okay? He was a former labour member who was treated appallingly by the Labour Party. And he stood as an independent and won it all the time. And he ended up holding almost a balance of power.
So 98 12 2001, 13, 17% of the Senate, 2007 went down. And then we get big time 2013, we get to 18 minor parties in the Senate. Remember out of 76, okay? So this is when you get, the government doesn't have the numbers. Tony Abbott won the 2030 election, but he didn't have the numbers in the Senate, right? Okay. And 20 16, 20. And at the moment it's 18 in the upper house, 18, which is a mixture of greens and one nation and other micro parties and independence, and the Lamby party UAP person. And there's all these sort of people in the Senate. It's not a monolithic group, it's 18. The Greens are sort of one group, the one nation, sort of one group, but a disparate sort of group to deal with. So it's quite interesting how all this has developed Now. So what's been also happening at the same time, minor party votes are going up, major party votes are going down 9 74, 90 1%.
The two major parties got 91% of the primary vote. They're now getting 67% of the primary vote. Okay? Alright. The A LP primary vote has gone from 44 to 35. The A LP primary vote has gone from 47 to 32. Remember the last election, the coalition got a bigger primary vote than the Labour Party, okay? Alright. Growth of minor parties in the House of Representatives. There was no minor party in the house of representative to 9 74. There's now 16. We've got the Teals, we've got the independents, all those people, okay? Senate just told you. Now we had two in 9 74, now we've got 18. This means that if you want to get legislation passed in federal government, you've got to do deals with the Senate. You don't have the numbers anymore to get things through. So this really changes the whole ball game because Westminster government is basically executive government in England. The House of Lords can't stop legislation. They can delay it and then it can go through bang.
In New Zealand, you don't have to worry about an upper house because there isn't one in Canada. If the Senate causes any trouble, you just appoint some other people and they'll pass it. It's not elected. It's not elected. We've got elected upper house composing of more and more disparate sort of groups. So this makes governing harder and makes when people like me, my life extraordinarily stressful because my job was to get legislation through the Senate. Now, I was reading the other day that had the first Abbott budget, which the first Abbott budget proved to be a disaster because he couldn't get through something like 17 billion of savings. He couldn't get through the Senate.
And there's some reasons why he couldn't get through to the Senate, partly to do with Tony Abbott's manner. Okay? So all this changes the game. Once upon a time, the government dealt with the official opposition. The other major party labour, depending on who in power, the opposition was that mob who want to be in power, but, and they're the official opposition and his majesty's opposition. This is a very British idea, by the way. A lot of other countries don't have this concept. There's no such thing as an opposition in American politics. There's no such thing as an official opposition. I just, oh, oppose everything basically.
And I said before the cross bench, we've got this group of people are, no, they're not a unified group. Even within the same party, sometimes they're not very unified. Depend on what time of day you talk to them. So you've got all these different combinations of what you've got to do to get something through. So the government can do a deal with the opposition because the government and the opposition have got the numbers in the sent to get things through. But the opposition may say, we don't want to play ball with you. We want to make your life difficult, right? Okay. Surprise, surprise. Or you can deal with, you might just be able to get your legislation through if you've got some of the independence on side, right? No, you might only need four or five votes to get across the line. So you do a deal of the independent and you sideline the opposition, you make the opposition look irrelevant.
Wonderful, okay? Or you can do a deal with the cross bench. But that's a very painful deal because there's so many different interests involved. So we find in Westminster systems this very strange because we're not used to it in America, this is normal in American politics, doing deals to get things through is normal. In Australia, we find this very odd and Britain, they don't have to worry about. So these are all different tactics. You've got to decide if you've got something you want to get through parliament, which is going to be your main chance doing a deal of the opposition and bypassing the cross bench or the independent. Do you have enough votes to get the four or five independents on side or that gets you across the line or not? Or what? Or do you pick and do you pick which groups you try to do deals with? Now, what this means is your proposals get distorted and changed. Okay? Distorted and changed as you go along.
So when I was dealing with the cross bench, getting through as I'll explain a thing called amendments to school funding legislation and industrial chemicals, legislation. You do all sorts of things to convince people that this is a good thing to do. This is a beautiful policy, it's fantastic. It's good for Australia. It might be good for the government too, but we're not doing it for the government, we're doing it for Australia. Okay? We're not doing it for politics. So you can use that argument. It's going to fix the problem. It might put some people in jail or it might imprison some people it might cost $10 billion, but it's going to be good policy. That's one of the things you do. And you try to use the media, the latest opinion policy, this is a goer, right? The voice is going to be a goer, right?
Okay. It's popular. If you want to get a politician on site, it's popular mate. This is a popular move. How could you oppose it? Because politicians like to be popular. That's all right. You say you've got support from interest groups. The unions or my achievement was to get some of the teachers unions on side and those people ended up getting kicked out of the teacher's unions, but they came out and made public statements. I got the Public school Parents association on side unheard of to support a coalition government on legislation to get things on site. So you can appeal different interest groups and you try to get the interest groups to come out and support. You get letters written, go and lobby the members and so on. We'd have different people lobbying the members for us. Okay? Now you appear to people's values. This is about freedom. This is about individual rights, this is about helping lefthanders or something like that. All those you appeal to some sort of values of ideology. This is in line with the ideology. Now, I will tell you a story about school funding is the Greens agreed with us.
They came to our office. Great policy, Scott, fantastic. We really support it, but we're not going to vote for it. You're not going to vote for it. No, because if we vote for it, our supporters won't like us. So we're going to attack the Labour party for not supporting it, but we're not going to support it Now. That's what actually happened, right? Okay. So that's the sort of problem you run up with in dealing with these sort of things. And then there's taxpayer's money, your money, it's beautiful, it's endless. We've got so much of it, it never runs out. So Senator Harridan, the independent senator from Tasmania, he got lots and lots of special deals for Tasmania because sometimes he's the vote that Mr. Howard needed to get his legislation through. So you can go through and calculate the millions and millions of dollars that Tasmania got to get things through.
Alright? Okay, so there's money, and I explain this a bit further. We got Jackie Lamby on side by giving Tasmania some extra money so their teachers can teach how to read. Okay? I thought that's what teachers were supposed to do, but I'd have to tell the story regulation, you can make the legislation harder, make it softer, you can chip it off, amend it. You can amend the legislation overnight if you really want to, and you talk about future deals. If you support us this time, if you support us this time, we'll support you next time. Alright? Okay. So opposition, you'd be good to us. And when we get into opposition, we won't be nasty to you. Alright? You can believe it or we don't believe it, but that's how it's done. Okay? Now I just want to talk about the Australian Education Act, which took several years to do and believe it or not, was done.
And as you might notice, I'm not a particularly overweight person and I weigh about 62 kilogrammes. I went down to about 60 56 kilogrammes in this process over a few weeks where I didn't eat anything at all. What we inherited in the Australian Education Act from the previous government, Gillard, Gillard Governments, was an Australian education act with lots of deals in it, okay? Special deals. And it's debatable what those deals are. So we wanted to fix up the legislation. This is a good policy, okay? It's beautiful, it's pure, it's wonderful. Okay, alright, believe me. And we needed to get support from the greens and the cross bench and Lambe and one Nation and the Darren Hinch party with one person and the Zenon group. And also we had to worry about our own members, our own senators, because in the liberal party sometimes they get very, they say, look, I don't, I'll cross the floor and vote with the other mob.
So one senator, a liberal senator from Western Australia came to us and said, well look, I can't support this minister. So deal we put something special in to get him on site. We couldn't afford to lose one vote. We couldn't afford to lose one vote. So if you're dealing in the A LP, if you do that, you're out in the liberal party. If you do that, you are tolerated for a period of time. Now, money, money, money, money, okay? Not that we're doing things for money right now. When we started doing this school funding arrangement, we were going to put in 1.2 billion extra over what we're already spending. We're already spending about 14 billion a year on schools. Okay? So an extra 1.2 billion. And we thought that was enough. No, no, it wasn't enough. So we started modifying the model. And every time you modify a model to try and reflect everyone's interest, you push up the cost.
So the story I like to tell, when the first draught came up, it was going to be 4.4 billion extra. And I rang up the department and said, are you crazy? He said, Scott, you've seen nothing yet. Okay, you've seen nothing. Next one it came up was 14.4 billion. Then by May, 2017 it was $18.6 billion more than what we were originally going to do, right? This is to have the faster transition, put more money, put everyone on equal footing and so on. So we have a good case, a good argument to get the legislation through. Then we still ran into opposition. So to get Xenophon on side and Xenophon was only interest in South Australia, by the way. Any else to, we had to give some extra money to South Australia, okay, change the formula a bit more. Bring up schools faster, 25 billion extra.
So 25 billion bucks. And essentially that's what the legislation got passed. Now in all this discussion, by the way, I had to deal with, of course, Pauline, okay? And Pauline, to her credit, was the only one who asked the right question. And people don't believe this, but we needed Pauline's two votes. And I remember talking to Pauline, my minister didn't particularly get on with Pauline that well, I'm from swi. My family ran a fish and ship shop. So we were soulmates, okay? We were soulmates and so on. And she said to me, Scotty, she said, Scotty, there's all this extra money going to make any difference to education. I said, I don't think so.
She said, oh, thank goodness you gave me an honest answer, right? Look, I'll support it. So it rang up my minister, I came, yep, you've got our support, no extra deal. And then she said, the second queen, is it spending less than the Labour Party? I said, yes. Oh, absolutely. Fantastic. Okay. Now, Pauline was the only one who asked the important question in all this discussion, federal treasury never said a word. No one said, oh, you have a be too much. Whatcha are doing going to do with it? So that's how we got through. We had to set up a new agency to keep the happy Senator from Western Australia happy, the National School Resourcing Board, which I know you're all well aware of, and we've got it passed at one o'clock in the morning on the 24th of June by 34 votes, the 31, it's what you call a close vote.
And unfortunately, unfortunately a year later, Mr. Morrison's the Prime Minister and he gives it all away. We put more money in, we break down the agreement, and we're basically, the skill funding model now is back to basically a mess that it was before. And I just want to finish on a picture, which is the celebration on the morning at two o'clock in the morning when we got this legislation through. This is a very big, big victory. Big victory for a Turnbull government, okay? Turnbull is the Prime Minister. And I want to get across to you the amount of effort that has to go in to deal with things like this. And here's the number of people involved. So these people minister, prime Minister and Prime Minister staff, our staff working seven days a week, not quite 24 hours a day. It's a real team effort.
And when you have a Senate being the numbers you have, this is the sort of effort you've got to do to get things done. And I get really cranky at smart academics out at law schools who say, government should do this and government should do that. Well, you have a go. You go and have a go and see what you've got to do to get legislation through. Because when you have a Senate with constitutional powers democratically elected, it takes a lot of effort to get legislation through. Now that's good for democracy, okay? The implications of this. So my view is that the opposition concept has moved from her majesty or his majesty's opposition, the Labour Party or the liberal party, to now this group of cross-bench people. And you might think that's good for democracy, but it also means you don't know how they're going to vote because they vote all over the place.
Now, on one hand, it makes government have to negotiate and that's a good thing. On the other hand, it creates a lot of uncertainty and instability, depends on what you prefer. America's had it since they were formed and they're still there. We're learning to deal with this new concept of the opposition. And I think the reason why the Abbott government came unstuck, because Tony Abbott would not go and negotiate properly with the cross bench. And that's what you're going to have to do. You're going to have to sit down and talk to them. You're going to have to listen to them. And it means the big parties are no longer totally in charge. Now the Albanese government's sort of having the same sort of problem, and that's interesting how he's going to deal with that. So government's become harder. Opposition is no longer just that other mob. It's lots of little mobs and governments become more difficult. On that note, I'll leave it. Thanks.
