Here are the two chambers of the Australian Parliament. The green chamber is the House of Representatives, and is the seat, in that the leader of the majority party or majority coalition is the Prime Minister, currently Kevin Rudd. The red chamber is the Senate, which functions much like the US Senate. The dynamics of Australian politics is much different than in the US, though. For example, while the US has only two political parties that matter, there are many in Australia, and any party that can get at least 1/8 of the vote in a state is guaranteed a seat in the Senate. So, the Senate and the House are rarely under the control of the same party or coalition.
One consequence of this arrangement is in progress right now. The Minister of Finance has submitted a budget that has made several groups angry, and so they are threatening to block the budget in the Senate. This will set the stage for a double dissolution, in which the entire government is re-elected. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
--charlie
No comments:
Post a Comment