Two Party System In Australia

A Political party is a group of people who have similar political thought and organized to win the seat in the government (Gorbaniuk , et al 2015). In addition, a two-party system, which means there are two major parties who have been dominating in the government for a long period of time (Singleton, et la, 2013). According to these definitions, some people think that Australian government is operated by a minority government, not a two-party system (Costar & Curtin 2004). This essay will utilize two perspectives to analyze the possibility of different party systems, namely: the formation of government and the legislative process. The former one will concentrates on the party structure of the senate and the House of Representatives, in the

Since the proportional voting system introduced in 1949, minority can win the seat easily by utilizing and the fairness of seat allocation (David 2016). According to the statistic of federal election (Parliament of Australia, 2014), although the Labor and the Liberal still won most of the seats, but the number of seat between them and minor parties or independents were very close, therefor, because of the equal power of all parties and independents, it act as a multi-party rather than a two-party system. Moreover, because most of the seats in Senate are distributed fairly, some of the Senate were operated without obvious majority, for example, the Labor and the Liberal owned the same number of seats in the Senate of Capital Territory from 1975 to 2013, whereas the Labor and the Country Liberal Party shared the Senate of Northern Territory over the same period of time. In fact, independents and the minor parties are maintain the balance of power and their political position will continue, because they establish a strong feature for the Senate (Prosser 2012). Moreover, after each time of the election, the symbol of an “Independent’s Day” was promoted because the minority continue to against majority (Prosser & Warhurst 2014). As the result of this analysis, the Senate represents a multiparty system rather than a two-party system, because the power was divided

According to Alan Siaroff’s (2003) definition to the “half” party, this party can be a “hinge” party or a “wing” party. A “hinge” party is playing a critical role between two major party, whereas a “wing” party is often cooperate with one major party. Hence, Alan Siaroff’s (2003) explained that the National should be treated as a “wing” party because the continuous cooperation with the Liberal. According to the statistical analysis of the seats shared by the Coalition partners from 1922-2013 (Linda,C, and Geoff, C, 2015), in the House of Representatives, it is clear that approximately 30% the Coalition’s seats were shared by the Nationals, especially from 1922 -1987, although the percentage decreased from 1990 to 2013, it can be seem that the Liberal was highly relied upon the Nationals in order to won as a majority, because the Nationals helped the Coalition won over 50% of the seats for 18 times in 23 times elections, another 5 times were already succeeded by the Liberal themselves, but the Coalition won around 60% to 70% of seats when combine with the Nationals. Furthermore, this phenomenon also can be identified in the election of Senate, the Nationals was provided an essential support from 1925 to 1975 significantly, except the four times elections in 1925 to1934, which the Liberal won over 50% of