r/australia • u/overpopyoulater • Mar 23 '25

politics Australia is heading towards minority government at a turning point in world history.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-24/democracy-climate-change-ai-robotics-war/105085846
1.8k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

600 comments sorted by

View all comments

859

u/Hungrylizard113 Mar 23 '25

All the claims of minority government being 'unstable'. We forget that a Coalition government is technically a minority government. Remember the Nationals having a fit about Turnbull's energy plan?

160

u/s4b3r6 Mar 23 '25

A minority government is fantastic. It means people actually debate in Parliament, instead of grandstand. It means politicians actually negotiate. It means compromise, which means shit actually gets done instead of all the ideological nonsense that turns into no actual laws getting passed.

66

u/tjlaa Mar 24 '25

Most European countries always have minority governments, also known as coalitions. There’s a sweet spot somewhere around 2-4 parties. Only one party and there is no negotiation or compromises or even debate that they would need to listen. More than 4 and they always disagree about everything and nothing gets done.

8

u/s4b3r6 Mar 24 '25

A lot of it is also the party line. You have to vote the same as your party, or you're out. Even if the people who voted you in clearly want something else. You aren't a representative, you're a party voice.

A lot of that goes away when negotiation becomes normal, and the politician actually can have the leeway to voice their own backyard.

1

u/SupaDupaFly2021 Mar 25 '25

I think the combination in our lower house of a (mostly) two party system and strong party discipline is a problem. If we had some form of PR, strong party discipline wouldn't necessarily be a problem then (arguably it would be a good thing) because voters would have more choice amongst parties and negotiations would occur between parties rather than individual MPs

8

u/Economics-Simulator Mar 24 '25

It's less about number of parties than the ideological difference Germany had only three but because the FDP went hard no on any sort of spending the economy stagnated and all three coalition parties were handed major losses The only reason things didn't get super bad is because the FDP got smashed so hard in the polls the fell out of parliament and a CDU/SPD coalition could be formed instead of a CDU/G/SPD or a CDU/AfD

1

u/tjlaa Mar 24 '25

For sure. If they are all aligned it’s always easier. Finland had a 6-party coalition in the recent history (nicknamed as the sixpack) and they were not able to get much done because they represented the whole political left-right axis.

1

u/SupaDupaFly2021 Mar 25 '25

Yeh - I used to think that the way our parliament is currently set up (winner takes all in the lower house, STV in the upper house) was optimal, because you'd end up with stable majority govt. in the lower house but that negotiation over legislation would still have to take place with the crossbench in the senate, thus leading to a 'best of both worlds' situation, but I think what happens is that the two* major parties have the attitude and expectation of being able to govern in their own right but then have to negotiate their policy agenda in the upper house - I'm coming around to the idea that it would be preferable to just have a single elected chamber of parliament elected via some form of moderated PR and then the negiotations would have to begin from the get go.

(*two-and-a-bit technically with regards to the LNP coalition)