THE WESTMINSTER INHERITANCE

The origins of Australia's parliamentary system are to be found half a world away in the dawn of British history. The roots of our so-called Westminster style of government reach back 1500 years, to the conquest of England by the war-loving Saxons. They have been described as 'sea wolves who lived by pillage' but they also introduced new concepts of government to the island country, including the Witan in which noblemen consulted with the king on making laws.

A later invasion brought the ruthless dictatorship of William of Normandy, who had himself crowned at the new church of Westminster in 1066. The church stood near the original Westminster Hall, the seat of royal government and, eventually, the site of the Houses of Parliament.

William enforced another new concept: that every man in the kingdom was responsible directly to him and not to local overlords, as in the old English and European styles. For the first time, this edict brought everyone in England under one government based at Westminster.

This was, nonetheless, still a feudal society in which the common man had few rights, noblemen still claimed their Saxon right to advise the king and the Church exerted a powerful influence over all. But some of William's descendants attempted to create a more enlightened style of government.

Henry II introduced trial by jury, a unique concept in a Europe ruled by absolute monarchies. The noblemen forced his son John to accept Magna Carta. This document was the first to define the rights and duties of Englishmen - or, at least, of those Englishmen who did not have the misfortune to be villeins, vassals or serfs.

Magna Carta set the tone for the centuries-long series of four-sided confrontations in which Crown and Church, rich and poor hammered out a new system of government and legislation. The Witan evolved into the Parliament - which may be broadly translated from Norman French as 'talking place' - and then divided into the House of Lords and the House of Commons. Rebellions such as Wat Tyler's accelerated freedom for the serfs. The Church fought its battles against those who strove for freedom of worship, as well as taking sides in political conflicts, and eventually divided amoeba-like into many sects. The kings ranged from the savagely selfish to reformers such as Edward I, whose Statute of Westminster proclaimed that "Common right is to be done by all as well poor as rich, without respect of persons". The English became obsessed by the notion of individual freedom and fought for it in bloody contests as well as inside Westminster.

Westminster became the anvil on which monarchs, noblemen, bishops and commoners forged the Statute Laws of England. This was often at the risk of their lives when commoners offended the Crown or the Parliament rebelled against the monarchy. Some reforming monarchs, such as the first Elizabeth, were potent legislators - even though she was said to 'change her mind as often as she changes her dress'. Her laws included what was probably the world's first labour legislation, defining the hours and wages of craftsmen, and an attempt to help the unemployed with a scheme for 'poor relief'.

Crown and Parliament also created an independent judiciary to administer the law, extending from a bench of judges at Westminster to ‘private gentlemen’ who acted as justices of the Peace in their own neighbourhoods. From fairly simple beginnings, the judiciary developed into an elaborate system of courts and assizes, often devoted to interpreting the Common Law. Unlike Statute Law, this has no clear-cut intentions and regulations but is the whole mass of unwritten law based on immemorial usage. Many decisions handed down in modern courts are based on the ‘precedents’ of Common Law: the decisions previously made in similar cases, sometimes centuries earlier, and recorded in an enormous library of law reports.

When Australia evolved out of a group of settlements into a sextet of self-governing colonies, the colonists inherited the whole instrument of government and legislation which had been sharpened and refined since the days of the ‘sea wolves' One of its most distinctive aspects was the development of the two-party system, in which the Opposition was no longer seen as an assembly of traitors plotting the downfall of the monarch. Rather, it was looked on as an essential balancing force and a body which, if necessary, could carry on the business of government in its own right. In 1832, a parliamentarian coined the phrase 'His Majesty's Loyal Opposition' to express the belief that the Opposition's function, without being disloyal, was to make the Parliament justify its actions in public debate. More recently, Don Chipp expressed the same belief with Australian bluntness when he said his Democrat Party would "Keep the bastards honest".

The year 1832 also saw the first Reform Acts, which took giant steps toward correcting electoral abuses, accelerating the transfer of power from Crown and nobility to the House of Commons and opening the way to universal suffrage.

Australians, as inheritors of the British styles of government and judiciary, fashioned the parliaments of their six colonies in the mould set by the 'Mother of Parliaments' They benefited by all the battles that had been won in the struggle for individual freedoms, though many still remained to be fought. On the whole they were glad to accept the system which underpinned the mighty British Empire.

The colonial parliaments emulated the structure, hierarchy, ritual, privileges, rules of order and standards of decorum of Westminster and became a powerful motive force in the progress of Australia. They moved even faster than their parent body in such reforms as the secret ballot, manhood suffrage, payment of parliamentarians and votes for women.

When the colonies federated into the Commonwealth, the existence of the six parliaments obliged the framers of the Constitution to create a system which blends that of Westminster with the Federal system of the USA, with the states retaining a measure of independence while the Commonwealth has supreme power over national affairs. In the American style, the High Court was set up to interpret and guard the Constitution and a Senate established to protect the states' rights and to 'advise and consent' on legislation submitted by the House of Representatives. In some ways, the Senate resembles the House of Lords but, where the power of the latter has been whittled away almost to impotence, the Senate may still hinder legislation.

Australians are, in fact, governed by seven parliamentary monarchies: those of the states and the Commonwealth, with the state governors and the Governor-General all representing the Sovereign. The great difference between the Australian and British styles of parliamentary monarchy is that in the United Kingdom it is a very long time since the monarch has intervened directly in parliamentary affairs. In Australia, Sir Philip Game exerted sovereign powers when he dismissed the Lang government of New South Wales in 1932 and Sir John Kerr was able to dismiss the Whitlam government in 1975. In both instances, Australians who had come to believe that governors and governors-general were mere ceremonial figures were shocked by the realisation that, legally, they possessed the same kind of power as the ancient kings of England.

In this and other ways, Australians have inherited the system which developed at Westminster. The Cabinet, which is the powerhouse of government in its assemblage of the Ministers of the Crown, is so named because English monarchs once met with their advisers in a cabinet or 'little room' The Speaker, now appointed by the majority party to preside impartially over parliamentary procedures, has held that title since 1377, when he was first appointed as a spokesman between Parliament and Crown. Hansard, the daily report of parliamentary proceedings, is named after Luke Hansard, who began printing them in London in 1774. The administrative staff of the Parliament, such as the Sergeant-at-Arms and the Usher of the Black Rod, bear titles instituted in the 14th century. Some of the ceremonies date from Tudor days, while the procedures are modelled on those of the House of Commons although they are generally simpler. The five stages through which every bill must pass before it receives Royal Assent as an act; the select committees and standing committees, which examine details of legislation or of public enterprises; and the Royal Commissions, which report on controversial affairs, are all inherited from the Westminster system.

It is easy to criticise the parliamentary system of government because it is simply a group of human beings striving with great problems and as often afflicted by ‘Murphy’s Law’ as the rest of humanity. Critics, impatient with parliamentary procedures, claim there should be a simpler and better way to run a country. They forget that instant political decisions are made only by dictators. Democracy demands the tedious debate which argues out every aspect of legislation. Winston Churchill summed up the Parliament when he said, "With all its faults, no one has yet been able to invent anything better."

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