Introduction
The federal elections of Australia were held on Saturday 21st august 2010 for the 43rd parliament of Australia. Labor party and the coalition of liberals/national each won 72 seats, thus each falling below the 76 majority required for election victory.
This resulted in a hung parliament for the first time since the 1940’s election when these two parties started dominating Australia politics.
Three independent M.P’s and national party of Western Australia M.P declared support for the labor party meaning labor party formed a minority government (Radio Australia 1). This essay looks at how the 2010 Australian federal elections have demonstrated that the two party systems are no longer relevant in the society.
Definition
A political party is an organization of people who share the same ideas of governance and whose members are committed to party goals. They also get candidates elected to office and have laws passed to aid in party management.
There are three party systems which end up making one party state, two party states and multiparty states. Australia is a two party state system as two parties have been exchanging power since 1949. They are the liberal and labor parties though there are minority parties as well (George Standards Organization 1).
Democracy is a political system operating under the principles of constitutionalism, representative government, majority rule, civilian rule and minority rights (Miami Dade College 1).
Two party systems is an electoral arrangement in which two or more parties compete for the support of the electorate and control of the government. Each party has a chance of winning the election. Minority parties in a two party system do not have a chance of winning the election.
A two party contest is affected by realignments and to some extend the minority parties affect the two major parties by leading to a scenario as was witnessed in Australia (PSCI 1).
Political institutions are concerned with the preservation of social order within a specified authority. Examples of political institutions include political parties, trade unions, lobby groups and special interest groups. These groups constitute and define the layers of the political process together with their interdependences (University of Munchen 1).
History
The two party systems started back in 1891 in Australia with the rise of the labor party as a political party in 1909 after the protectionist and free traders joined hands to form the party. In 1946, the modern liberal party was formed by Sir Robert Menzies.
From then it has been about two political parties competing for public votes during elections over the years. The labor party is oldest party in Australia today and is a social democratic party that believes in government as a positive force in the community that is free to intervene in the operation of the economy to improve outcomes.
The labor party also believes that all members of society should have access to quality and affordable housing as well as education and houses (Australia History 1).
The liberal party believe advocates for sustainable equality, affirmative action, social and cultural rights, believes in government’s interference in individual’s lives to ensure justice is achieved. They favor interventionist, regulated market economic policies (Australia Politics 1).
Irrelevance of two party systems to our society today
The two parties have divided the Australian society into two fragments. The two parties have left the society with the choice of embracing either of the ideologies of the parties making it a bit unfair as there are no varieties of ideologies apart from the two ideologies from the labor and liberal parties.
From 1949 to date, the two major political parties have being playing an endless game of tug-of-war. The major reason for the constant switching back and forth between these two parties appears to be that the country has different needs at different times and voters tend to alternate these two parties according to their needs (Social Welfare 1).
The switching of needs is not considered a good idea as those ideas which will act as the opportunity cost will still be needed to be implemented in the society.
It has been argued out that the ideologies presented by both parties are significant for the growth of the Australian society and thus the two party systems which dictates that one system has to be adopted does not actually enhance justice by the fact that it denies the society one of the choices that they need (Conservative 1).
Liberals believe in sustainable equality, affirmative action, social and cultural rights; they also believe in government’s interference in individual’s lives to ensure justice is achieved. They favor interventionist and regulated market economic policies (Liberal Party of Australia 1).
The labor party believes in formal equality and that everyone should be treated equally under the law and government. They also believe in laissez –faire market economic policies and individuals controlling their own lives (Martin 1).
Concerning the politics in Australia, it has been argued that:
There can be no argument about the ubiquity, pervasiveness and centrality of party in Australia. The forms, processes and content of politics– executive, parliament, pressure groups, bureaucracy, issues and policymaking – are imbued with the influence of party, party rhetoric, party policy, and party doctrine.
Government is party government. Elections are essentially party contests and the mechanics of electoral systems are determined by party policies and party advantages. Legislatures are party chambers. Legislators are overwhelmingly party members. The majority of electors follow their party identification. Politics in Australia, almost entirely, are party politics. (Marsh 1)
The two party systems were based on electoral and organizational foundations. It is where activists and interest groups were brought together through party forums. Activists and special interest groups were allowed into party conferences and committees to influence formation of strategic political agenda.
Actually the parties through the party brands gave enough cues for the formation of opinion by most electors on most issues. This led to strategic policy developments which were internalized within the two major parties.
Today, these developments that greatly shaped the strong foundational features of the bi-party system dominance have been undermined and in some instances left out completely (Rush 1).
The Australian society is growing in diversity shown by the proliferation of interest groups and social movements. These new groups of social movements show citizen identities’ in a new diversity not experienced before.
These groups are not equal in terms of size, political skills, budgets, organizational sophistication and campaigning capacities. These groups are durable and they represent and sustain an interest for a long time seeking to persuade the undecided.
These groups of organizations fill the void between the two political parties and the community. Most of these new groups advocate either for new issues or are defenders of traditional approaches like the anti-abortion and anti-euthanasia groups.
Hence, party activists nowadays don’t have strong allegiance to one or other party and the way issues are introduced in the national stage has shifted. Today party forums are no longer the principal ground for activists. Party’s internal process no longer provides the means for acceptability of proposals or for seeding opinion formation (Marsh 1).
The two party systems tend to distort national capabilities to mostly inform the public on long term issues. There are three different restraints that work towards derailing an informed discussion on long term issues.
They arise from the dynamics of the electoral contest between the two parties, second is the way the formal system distributes responsibilities of dealing with long term issues and lastly information available to guide public opinion about policy needs and priorities (Marsh 1).
The two party systems has brought in one major deficiency in the form of fake enmity where the government declares a contentious issue to be white and public opinion is mostly divided or uncertain; the likely outcome is that the opposition will declare it to be black.
As in early times, if the opposition was the government today, they would have supported a similar approach (March 1).
What happens is that when public opinion is divided, the opposition tends to see this as a chance to gain from the public by going the popular way by championing contrasting views even if what they are championing for is not all that good for the public; all they care for is political impact (Australia Politics 1).
Today there is an “overlap in and convergence between the agendas of political parties and the initiative in promoting agendas is shared with other organizations. Issues only come to the arena after the government has decided what to do which encourages posturing and attention to electoral advantage” (Australia Politics 1).
This leads to the two major political parties creating differences even when they do not exist hence these two major parties make issues that they know will shift debate away from matters that lack national importance (Australia Politics 1).
The two party competition systems has also led to the inability to have public conversation and debates about long term issues mostly caused by organizational features of the formal making structure (Theodore and Romance 20).
This is caused by an executive overload where a small number of people determine what issues will have standing on the formal political agenda. The leaders involved in setting the agenda include the prime minister, senior ministers and heads of major coordinating departments.
Their work involves day to day running of the country and ministerial work plus running the departments and yet they control the recognition and management of strategic issues which later translates to a weak capacity of the system to process issues mostly in a strategic phase (March 1).
The second deficiency of the two party systems lies in lack of access for interests groups and social movements to engage the attention of the formal system.
These groups do have access and means to bring out and argue their issues but they face two problems (Disch 23). The first problem arises when they are arguing their case one-on-one basis and second is when such access is highly imbalanced.
A good illustration is where regular access is given to the chief executive officers of Australian banks having access to the federal treasurer; this access is not granted to consumer organizations or the unions. The other problem arises where groups advocating a particular course of action have no venue where their views can be tested against those of others.
This leads to sustained lobbying campaigns to develop public pressure as their views are not heard by the major parties (Marsh 1).
When there is a disconnect between the two political parties, a challenge arises in the form of focusing on specific party disagreements which leads to lack of focus on important national issues and long term issues: “the corrupt farce that is our two-party system should be dismantled; parties give us temptations to attack opponents, become demagogues, and garner followers, distracting us from seeking the true good of the country” (Conservative 1).
The two-party setup in Australia has divided the nation among two lines. Having names and labels for different political persuasions can be helpful, but they have too often led to pigeonholing and name-calling which hampers a free exchange of ideas.
“Liberal and labor, conservative and liberal, right and left” (Conservative 1) have degenerated into terms used to ostracize and vilify the opposition and to stifle discussion of topics deemed politically incorrect.
Conclusion
The two parties system is comprised and does not offer the best choice for the public. It has been seen that this system offers a nation two choices to choose from. In such kind of a situation, the public has to forgo one of the options which might not necessarily be wrong.
There is a need for the system to be changed as the two parties system does not seem to fully address the issues affecting a nation. The issue of the party having equally votes after elections have been carried out also matters and such a tie is not likely to happen in case of a single party system or a multi-party system.
Works Cited
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