Hello and welcome to Auspol Explained. I'm David and I'll be helping you understand everything you need to know about Australian politics. For any blind people listening in I'm Caucasian I have medium length reddish brownish curly hair and a short beard and mustache. This will help you visualize me as well as describe me to Crimestoppers. Welcome to my channel! In today's video we're going to be discussing "how does the Australian government work?" Like, what are the moving parts? What are the key roles? Why is there a green and a white piece of paper during elections. If you don't know anything about Australian politics this is gonna be incredibly helpful to you. Let's begin! So the different key political positions in Australia are as follows: the Queen or Monarch, the Governor-General, the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, Ministers and Shadow Ministers, Members, Senators and the Crossbench. So let's start with the top down. We all know who the Queen is right? God bless Lizzy. For the sake of future proofing this video we're going to refer to that position simply as the Monarch. The Monarch, on the advice of the Prime Minister, appoints the Governor-General. See, because Australia is still part of the Commonwealth our head of state is anyone who is in charge of the monarchy. Currently that is Queen Elizabeth who is the Monarch of Australia and England and a bunch of other places and has been since 1952. This is because we were historically colonized by the British which is its whole bag of apples. Hypothetically speaking the Monarch does actually still have the legal ability to interfere with what laws do and don't get passed in Australia, but also... the Monarch doesn't do that. That's also a lot of work and England a long time ago decided screw it let Australia and the other Commonwealth countries has just run themselves. And that's where the Governor-General comes in! The Governor-General is the Monarch's representative and is the final step in making sure things pass into law in a process called "Royal Assent". This is basically a fancy way of saying "hey (click) I give my stamp of approval that's a law now!" The Governor-General also has a bunch of other roles including issuing dates for elections - on the advice of the Prime Minister - and appointing ministers - also on the advice of the Prime Minister. When a new Prime Minister is elected they go to the Governor-General to be officially sworn in to being P.M. The Governor- General actually has a lot of powers but I will be expanding upon that in a whole other video so please do subscribe to learn about that later. And this brings us to... the Prime Minister! We've all heard of that role. The Prime Minister is the head of a party or a coalition of parties that has a majority of seats in the House of Representatives. A coalition by the way is a formal grouping of two or more parties. For example the Liberal Party and the National Party have a coalition called The Coalition and they are best friends and they vote together on bills and stuff. It's comprised of the Liberal Party, the National Party, and the Queensland branch which formally merged into the Liberal National Party so it's the Liberal, National, Liberal National... ...Party. If you hear the terms "coalition" they're most likely referring to them. Saying the "two main parties" when it's like Labor and then three others is technically wrong but functionally correct... sort of. As the population changes so do the amount of seats in the House of Representatives. So there are currently a hundred and fifty-one seats meaning that to form a majority government a party needs seventy six seats minimum. However a government does not need a majority in the Senate and actually quite often doesn't. We'll get back to that in a moment. The Deputy Prime Minister fills in for the Prime Minister whenever they are away or otherwise incapacitated. This is called being the Acting Prime Minister. Insert joke here about theatre... I can't think of one. If the Deputy Prime Minister is also busy another senior Minister can fill in for the role. For example one time former Liberal deputy leader Julie Bishop filled in as Acting Prime Minister while Malcolm Turnbull was away. The Prime Minister is not the same as a President. In places like the U.S. the President is elected in their own election. Prime Ministers on the other hand are leaders of a party. S party chooses its leader and therefore can actually dismiss its leader from the position of Prime Minister without an election. An example of this is when Kevin Rudd was replaced by Julia Gillard as leader of the Labor Party and therefore as Prime Minister and then the same in reverse ...and then Tony Abbot won an election but then before his term was up... Malcolm Turnbull became Prime Minister by like the whole leadership spill thing and then again with Scott Morrison. Remember that? Remember the past 12 years where no Prime Minister has actually successfully managed to complete a full term? Australian politics what can you say? So like I said: the party chooses its leader. The Prime Minister therefore goes to election like the rest of the members and has to win in their own electorate in their own right. Hypothetically speaking a party can go to an election, win, but their party leader, and therefore the former Prime Minister, could lose their seat. This... is hypothetical. It doesn't ever happen. Though John Howard did lose his seat in 2007 but also the Liberals lost their majority as well. Usually the party leader is chosen from a safe electorate with a wide margin so the chances of them getting voted out is very very slim. We have many political parties in Australia but the main "two" are the Liberal Party, which is right-wing, and the Labor Party, which is a bit more centre. We also have the smaller party the Nationals which forms, like I said, a formal coalition with the Liberal Party because without that the Liberal Party would almost never be able to form enough seats to get a majority. The National Party is also right-wing but is more focused on trying to get seats in the country. Sometimes these parties are in complete disagreement which is called being "partisan", and other times they are in complete agreement which is called being "bipartisan." The leader of whichever party has the second most amount of seats is the leader of the Opposition. Currently, as I'm filming this video, Scott Morrison is the Liberal Prime Minister which means that Labor leader Anthony Albanese is also sometimes called the Leader of the Opposition. When Julia Gillard, Labor Prime Minister, was in power in 2010 Tony Abbott as the leader of the Liberal Party was also known as the Leader of the Opposition. It goes back and forth! The government also appoints ministers. These are things like the Minister for Defense, Minister for Health, or Minister for Foreign Affairs. The amount of ministers and their titles vary over time and so the Minister for Defence was once called the Minister for Air. Fun fact for you. These ministers focus on the topic of their ministries which is also called their portfolio. So for example the Minister of Health focuses on formulating policy that is related to say, hospitals. Ministers are referred to collectively as either the front bench or cabinet. Prime Minister's and opposition leaders select their cabinet and can rearrange them basically whenever. When they get elected, after a scandal, when they've just survived a leadership spill, or just for fun. Sometimes it's to give their government a different image to their predecessors or to promote someone who is more qualified to a new position. Anyone who isn't given a special position is called the back bench - which is basically most of the government. They're still important though! Getting laws to be passed is sometimes a numbers game and so in special circumstances every single back-bencher has to be in the chamber to vote to make sure something passes or doesn't pass. This can be of the utmost importance whenever a government has a slim majority of just one or two seats. Now the opposition party has their own ministers called Shadow ministers. Oooh! how dark and moody! Hi, I'm the Shadow Minister for Defense - sounds so much cooler. It just does. They helped formulate their party's policies and are a good example of what you could get if you voted the other party into power in the next election. Hypothetically speaking any party can become government. Hypothetically. Currently the only parties that can get sufficient numbers in the House of Representatives are the Labor Party and the Coalition. In the past we have had plenty of different parties produce Prime Ministers like the Protectionist, Free Trade, Commonwealth Liberal, National Labor, Nationalist, United Australia, and Country Party. There was no I was going to remember that all off by heart. In the future we may actually see a different party form a majority government in the House of Representatives. Though this would require a large shift in voter attitudes and a large growing popularity of a minor party - so don't expect that in the next few elections. Fortunately though, if you do vote for a minor party they have a far greater success of getting into the Senate. We will touch on that in just a moment. So let's address what happens if there is no majority. It happens, and it's called a "hung parliament." When it happens a party trying to become a government needs to settle up to some minor parties and independents and go "hey... want to give me "confidence and supply"? ....please?" and they hopefully go "sure! Let's form a coalition." Or they go naaah. At which point the Governor-General most likely be like "hey... we ca- we don't have a government so (clicks) it's a new election for you all." In 2010 Julia Gillard Labor Prime Minister actually had a hung parliament. She had to saddle up to a couple of independents and one Greens MP Adam Bandt to form a coalition. Despite this she actually managed to get a lot of legislation passed. In the early years of Australia we actually had quite a few parties and it took us a while to get a majority of just one. In 1906 there was this weird three-way split where the Protectionist party had 21 seats, the Anti-Socialists had 24, and the Labor Party had 26. This had to be resolved by 2/3rds of them banding together. Well what are other parties doing if they're not in the House of Representatives? Well! We are finally getting to the Senate! Like I said: small parties can actually get a boost in the Senate compared to the House of Representatives and to learn why we need to discuss elections. Oh yes! I love a good strong election! Federal elections in Australia are not on a fixed date. State and local elections on the other hand are so pay attention to that. Federal elections have a time in which they must absolutely be called by but often are called earlier by a prime minister - as approved by the Governor-General. Voting in federal elections is compulsory and if you don't you can be fined so please vote. Elections are handled by the Australian Electoral Commission which you can visit their website by going to www dot AEC dot gov dot au. The AEC is your friend. It is your number one stop for everything election related and it's even translated to several different languages. Seriously just book mark it. Go to it to register to vote, update your enrollment details if you have moved house recently, go there to ask a question about how to vote outside of your electorate, if you're out of the country, if you're homeless, if you have a disability - anything .Just go see the AEC gov dot au website. You can use it also to find out which electorate you live in. You can even use the AEC to register as an independent candidate in the next election! You can do so much thanks to that AEC. The AEC wants to make voting as accessible as possible because it is compulsory. Even scientists in research stations in Antarctica have to vote. To vote in elections you do have to register with the AEC. You can register as young as age 16 even though the legal voting age is 18. So if you get it done right now you'll be done and ready if an election is called (clicks) tomorrow. So let's get back to the purpose of elections. The House of Representatives and the Senate are what we refer to as the two "houses." No one lives there we just call them houses. The Senate is known as the "upper house" and therefore the House of Representatives is known as the "lower house." We call them this because we borrowed this off the British. Why the British call that I don't know. Please tell me... if you know. Please. Currently there are 76 seats in the Senate and 151 in the House of Representatives, much like generation 1 Pokemon. Is the Prime Minister Mew? This number, much like the amount of Pokemon, has gradually grown over time. During the first federal election of 1901 there were only 75 seats the House of Representatives and 35 seats for the Senate. Electorates are divided into comparable sizes of population - not area - population. So inner city electorates are tiny... Where as country electorates are really chunky and big. Currently Australia's smallest electorate is that of Grayndler which is an inner southern metropolitan area in Sydney and it covers just a small area of 32 square kilometres. 32 square kilometres! You're thinking ah... that's that's more than I care to walk around in one day. And then there is the largest: Durack - which takes up 64% of the landmass of Western Australia. It is over 1.6 million square kilometres. That is approximately the size of Iran or Mongolia. That is an electorate approximately the size of the 17th largest country in the world! Represented by one person. That's because Western Australia is full of desert and therefore the population is very sparse and spread out. For more electorate comparisons: the Northern Territory only has two electorates whereas New South Wales has 47. That's because there are a lot of people in New South Wales whereas in the Northern Territory crocodiles have yet to be given the right to vote. So this is where we get members. Technically anyone in either house is a member of parliament but to further distinguish them there is members and then there are senators. Members campaign in their local area and they need to win over the majority of votes. And because they are campaigning in basically a similar location potentially a very small geographical area there are overlapping interest with the majority of their constituents. For example very wealthy suburbs tend to be safe Liberal seats because Liberals like cutting taxes to the wealthy. Whereas country and rural seats tend to more often vote for the Nationals. Like I said: only one member is elected per electorate. When you go to the polling booth or do a postal vote due to special circumstances there will be two pieces of paper. The House of Representatives is the green one. The candidates will be in a random order and you must fill in every single box with a number from 1 until however many boxes there are. You do this in whichever order you prefer the candidates to be in. The Senate on the other hand is a little bit different. It comes with a white piece of paper which can be quite massive. There are 12 Senate seats for each state and two for the Northern Territory and Australian Capital Territory. This means for the states that you don't need a majority of votes you just need to get a quota. This also means that your voter base doesn't need to be concentrated in just one area. This is what allows minor parties like say the Greens to get more votes in the Senate and actually gain seats. This is why as I film this there are nine Greens in the Senate whereas there is only one in the House of Representatives. So why is the Senate paper so big? Well this is because multiple people from the same party can potentially get a quota so that's why some parties will have three, four, maybe even six candidates. The piece of paper is divided by a line that goes horizontally across the entire thing. Above the line is simply a list of all the parties. Below the line is a list of every single candidate attached to those parties. There are two ways to vote on the Senate paper. The first is called voting above the line where you must mark at least six boxes. You may mark more if you so wish. The next one is called voting below the line. This is where you must number at least 12. You must do one or the other. Above the line you are simply picking the parties and the person who gets elected is based off their preference of who goes down the line in the boxes below. If you want to vote below the line this allows you to have more control over your preferences. This means that you can vote for a specific person in the party ahead of another person in the party or you can simply vote for just one person in that party and then put the rest of your preferences into other candidates of other parties. It is your vote and you have as much control over it as you wish. Keep in mind that sometimes the way to vote changes. Only a few years ago you had to fill in every single box if you wanted to vote below the line in the Senate and sometimes there can be over 70 boxes. The good news is if you do make a mistake before you cast your ballot you can simply ask a volunteer to help give you a replacement ballot and dispose of the original. I know this because I had to do it once I decided to vote below the line, I filled in over 70 boxes, and at the end I realized I had doubled up on a number somewhere along the line and had to redo the whole thing. I mentioned preferences. Australia has a system called preferential voting. This means that you can put your number one vote for party A and then a number to vote for say party B. If the first preference doesn't form a majority then your preference for number two is taken into account and so far down the line until someone is a clear winner. This way even if your first party preference doesn't win it isn't wasted. Your opinion still counts. Preferences can also be incredibly instrumental in determining who wins a seat and when sometimes elections come down to just a few seats that means that preferences can decide who is the next prime minister and who isn't. So please research the parties before you cast your vote because your preferences matter, your vote matters, and knowing who you're voting for is important. Quick note: the term for a member of the House of Representatives is three years whereas the term for a senator is six so the Senate has this thing called a half election where half of it goes up to election at the same time as the House of Representatives. That way the political makeup of our government keeps changing with the times. Technically the Senate and the House of Representatives don't actually need to have coinciding elections they just normally do for convenience. So unless there are special circumstances if you're going to an election you're going to an election for both of them. There is a thing called a double dissolution. This is where every single seat is up for election which means the entire Senate. The way that they then resolve the issue of the Senate half election is half the Senate that got the lowest amount of votes only has three year terms and thus the cycle is reset. So now we have senators and members. What do they do? Well, they introduce bills and then they debate them. Bills can originate in either house unless they are to do with money. Only the House of Representatives can introduce bills to do with money. Once a bill is introduced into the house the house it started in debates it. If a majority of that house votes in agreement of the bill it's then passed on to the other house. So two things can happen. The first is the majority of the new house says "hmm yes I love it. It's perfect... just the way you are" (kiss) and a majority of them are an agreement with it. St which point the Governor General goes "aha! Royal Assent. I approve." and it has become a law. And the monarch of England goes "aah I didn't have to lift a finger. Ah, isn't this nice?" The second option is the other house goes "mmmmmm actually, could you change a few things? cuz mmm we're not super keen on it." St which point it is gone back to the original house to then debate it further. So if one house wants amendments and the other house disagrees the bill then fails. If a bill introduced by the House of Representatives is knocked back by the Senate and is unsuccessful then is reintroduced after at least three more months, and then is knocked back again this is what we call a "trigger" for a double dissolution. The Prime Minister can then choose either whether or not they want to act on it or not and call a double dissolution election. Though the trigger is not automatic and so usually when a bill is knocked back it does not result in a double dissolution election. Often, neither Labor nor the Coalition actually have a majority in the Senate and this is where we get the crossbench! Actually we have the crossbench in the House of Representatives too (clicks) but this is where the crossbench is more important. The crossbench is comprised of minor parties and independents so things like the Greens, One Nation, Centre Alliance, other independents, and basically any other party that might arise. Because of the way the Senate is set up this allows a greater diversity of political representation. Sometimes if a bill doesn't have partisan support Labor or the Coalition, depending on who is in power, must go up to another independent and go "hey... please pass my bill... please?" If a party that's on the crossbench has enough members to be able to whether or not something does or does not pass they have considered to have the balance of power. So hey! Voting for minor parties actually does something and it does have an effect in the Australian political system. The government sometimes has to negotiate with these other minor parties and appeal to their interest to get things passed. Sometimes whether or not something passes comes down just to one person because the rest of the crossbench is divided, splitting the vote 50/50. So this is why knowing about your minor parties is actually very important and please do your research before going into an election. And there you have it! it is the rundown of the basics of the Australian federal government. Tada! Now this is just the basics. There is a lot to Australian politics and so I will be making many many more videos some of which are expanding on the topics discussed here and some about completely different things. So please subscribe, please share this video so other people can learn, and please comment down below to tell me what you would like to learn about next! Also, there is a link to my Patreon in the description so you can help support me create educational content for everyone who needs it. So thank you very much for watching and I will see you in a fortnight. (clicks)