Australia With Weak Appointed Senate

What if the Australian Senate rather than being an elected, almost co-equal chamber with the House of Representatives, was instead a weak, appointed chamber.

I am thinking here not of the House of Lords, which being an hereditary chamber in a unitary state is not an appropriate comparison to Aust. I instead am thinking of the Canadian Senate which is appointed by State Govts with a bias toward smaller states, but not all equal numbers (Ontario and Quebec still get more than other provinces).

I would assume that at the start of Federation this second chamber would have fairly equal powers to the Lower House, but over time would have its powers reduced (no democratic legitimacy etc). Today in this ATL it might have the power to block supply bills for 28 days and all other bills for only a year or so.

How would Australian political history be different? Obviously no Dismissal in 75, but are there any other major differences that would occur.
 
To put it simply, no strong Senate, no Federation. The smaller states will refuse to join as they will rightly fear that NSW & VIC will completely dominate the nation through strength of numbers in the House.

Having said that, if the populations of all the states was roughly equal, then your scenario here could well work.
 
Maybe if NSW and Victoria split up and formed smaller states?


That proviso is actually written into the Constitution, & there was a movement to have the New England region of NSW split away to form a new state, but it failed miserably. Whether that could change, along with a similar movement in VIC, is possible, but unlikely.

Besides that still won't shift the focus from the south-eastern region of Australia where something like 70% of the overall national population lives. If anything, if these two new states gain the same number of Senators as NSW & VIC (as well as everywhere else), that'll mean the power of the smaller states in the Senate is more or less cancelled out by those two new states in the south-eastern corner.
 
To put it simply, no strong Senate, no Federation. The smaller states will refuse to join as they will rightly fear that NSW & VIC will completely dominate the nation through strength of numbers in the House.

Having said that, if the populations of all the states was roughly equal, then your scenario here could well work.


True to some extent. I still think that NSW and VIC could have talked the other states around if they decided to play hardball about it. If necessary NSW Vic and Tasmania could federate and leave it open for other states to join later. I say Tas as I was reading about the conventions held leading up to Federation and it seemed that strangely given their small size Tas was less concerned about equal representation than the other small states.

If the 3 states had federated, I can see SA fairly quickly entering (on the terms already settled between the original states). Qld may join too. I think the 'difficult' one will be Western Australia. Under the conditions Ive laid out I can see it remaining independent until the learning experience of the Japanese WW2 threat changes its mind.

On the other hand it is quite possible that another solution could be figured out: malapportionment in the lower house. At present the 'tolerance' for electoral districts is 10% either way, but before the 70's it was 20%. I can see the small states tolerating a weak upper house, if their is significant malapportionment in the lower house.
 
I instead am thinking of the Canadian Senate which is appointed by State Govts with a bias toward smaller states, but not all equal numbers (Ontario and Quebec still get more than other provinces).

The Canadian Senate is appointed by the Prime Minister, not the Provinces[1]. The bias that exists in the Senate is mostly one of formation—Nova Scotia & New Brunswick each have 10 Senators but far more important B.C. & Alberta get only 8 each.

It is, theoretically, apportioned on a regional basis with the Maritimes, Ontario, Quebec, and the West each getting 24 Senators. However Newfoundland was given 6 Senators when they joined without reducing the Maritimes total (so the Atlantic region now has 30) which shot any claim to it being regionally based to hell.


[1] In Canada & (most of) Europe subfederal bodies are provinces, in the United States & Australia subfederal bodies are states.
 
The bias that exists in the Senate is mostly one of formation—Nova Scotia & New Brunswick each have 10 Senators but far more important B.C. & Alberta get only 8 each.

It is, theoretically, apportioned on a regional basis with the Maritimes, Ontario, Quebec, and the West each getting 24 Senators. However Newfoundland was given 6 Senators when they joined without reducing the Maritimes total (so the Atlantic region now has 30) which shot any claim to it being regionally based to hell.


The regional bias is only one of the many faults with it. It is, to paraphrase the OP, ineffective. It's traditionally a rubber stamp, with appointees-for-life doing nothing but mumble. There have been some waves of interference on the part of the senate in the policies of the governing party in the House, but they're unusual.

Manning's call for a triple-E senate (elected - not patronage appointees by the PM, equal - regional equality as outlined earlier, and effective - actually performing a useful role) was interesting, but I'd like to think it'll eventually just be abolished.

If the OP's scenario were adopted and the territories of modern Australia were still incorporated, you'd see a stronger sense of power being centralized in the most populous regions. The only way to counter this without reforming the senate would be to disproportionately award lower-house seats to lower-density regions.
 
True to some extent. I still think that NSW and VIC could have talked the other states around if they decided to play hardball about it. If necessary NSW Vic and Tasmania could federate and leave it open for other states to join later. I say Tas as I was reading about the conventions held leading up to Federation and it seemed that strangely given their small size Tas was less concerned about equal representation than the other small states.


Well WA & QLD would have never agreed to it. In fact, & do note, that there are special provisions for QLD in the Senate: see the Constitution Section 7. So I can't see QLD changing their minds, whilst WA simply didn't want to join period. So I doubt either colony would change their minds either, except for WA being forced to join the Federation by Britain.

Meanwhile SA were radical fundamentialists of democracy, during the latter 1800s, so they certainly won't go for an appointed Senate, in the first place, whilst demanding equal representation there through elections.

TAS, though, was willing to go along with any plan for federation as they had serious financial woes & needed to link up with someone in order to not go bankrupt.

NSW, however, wasn't overly keen on Federation, regardless what Parkes declared, although it is true that having such a federation would open markets for their products, which was being constantly frustrated by the likes of VIC.

So, in other words, there's a lot of competing interests going on, six basically, & thus there's a lot of PODs required all over the place in order to have a Canadian style Senate instead of the one we've got.


If the 3 states had federated, I can see SA fairly quickly entering (on the terms already settled between the original states). Qld may join too. I think the 'difficult' one will be Western Australia. Under the conditions Ive laid out I can see it remaining independent until the learning experience of the Japanese WW2 threat changes its mind.


If only three states federated it's going to be difficult for them to survive in the long term. In the OTL, after the failure of 1890, there were indeed moves by VIC, TAS, & SA to get together, until they realised that NSW membership was essential if such a federation was to succeed. Well NSW came with major demands, which the other three colonies weren't willing to budge on at first. This later changed, obviously, & we got what we got as a result. It's probably fair to say, though, that Australia was created in New South Wales' image moreso than anything else. Having said that, the structure of the Senate was the only way to get the smaller states included. That was something which they wouldn't compromise on, besides which NSW overly didn't care about the issue anyway as they got everything which they deemed important.


On the other hand it is quite possible that another solution could be figured out: malapportionment in the lower house. At present the 'tolerance' for electoral districts is 10% either way, but before the 70's it was 20%. I can see the small states tolerating a weak upper house, if their is significant malapportionment in the lower house.


NSW would never go along with this. I'd dare say VIC wouldn't either, nor ironically SA & TAS as they'd both view it as undemocratic. QLD, on the other hand, would love the idea... ;)

As I said in an earlier posting, I think the best way is simply have most of the colonies enjoy similar sized populations. Thus none would dominate meaning the Senate doesn't need to be the "State's House".
 
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