(287KB)The Westminster system down under
It’s one of the oldest, most widely used systems of government in the world. So, how did it develop, how is it applied in the ACT, and what quirks have we inherited from it?
What is the Westminster system?
The Westminster system is a type of government that began in England during the Middle Ages, named after the palace where the British Parliament meets. It emphasises parliament as the main governing body of an area, instead of an individual.
This comes from England’s and (later, Britain’s) long history of restricting the monarch’s absolute power in favour by collective decision-making. Important documents in this history include:
- Magna Carta (1215), which made monarch responsible to the law and crashed basic legal rights for everyone
- The Petition of Right (1628), which applied new restrictions to the monarch’s power and created even more rights for people, and
- The Bill of Rights (1689), which forced the monarch to sacrifice more power and vest it in parliament, and further expanded people’s civil rights.
What are the system's key features?
Places around the world that use the Westminster system often share many of these features:
- A ceremonial head of state who signs bills into law
- A head of government who is typically the leader of the largest party in parliament
- An executive made up of ministers who must also be members of parliament
- Two houses of parliament, with the lower house able to dismiss a government by passing a no-confidence motion or voting down its budget
- Ceremonial maces or staffs that represents the authority of parliament and are looked after by officials called Serjeants-at-Arms or Ushers
- An official opposition in parliament whose job is to hold government accountable and scrutinise its decisions, and
- A horse shoe or U-shaped debating chamber, with the government and opposition facing one another and a curved crossbench.
Westminster in the ACT
The Australian Capital Territory uses the Westminster system like all other places in Australia. However, only some of its features listed before are present in the ACT.
What we do have
- All ministers in the Executive are also elected members of the Legislative Assembly.
- We have a ceremonial mace, made of boxwood timber and steel with the royal bluebell carved into it. It is carried by the Deputy Clerk, who also serves as the Assembly’s Serjeant-at-Arms.
- Our chamber is laid out in a horseshoe U-shape, with the government and opposition parties facing each other and minor parties and independents sitting on the curved crossbench.
What we don't have
- Our parliament is unicameral and only has one house – the Legislative Assembly. This means the Assembly’s committees do a lot of the scrutiny work that an upper house would normally do. We share being unicameral with the Northern Territory and Queensland parliaments.
- The ACT does not have a head of state that signs bills into law. Instead, the Assembly has a self-certification process called ‘notification’ to authorise a new law. This is unique to the ACT. Every other place in Australia has either an administrator, governor, or governor-general who signs their bills into law.
- Our head of government is not appointed. In the ACT, the Chief Minister is elected by all members of the Legislative Assembly at the first ceremonial sitting after an election. The person elected has always been the leader of the largest party in the Assembly, like in every other part of Australia, but they are elected we have no head of state to appoint them.
The Assembly mace
The mace is a ceremonial club that symbolises parliament and its speaker’s authority. Maces were the weapons carried by royal Serjeants-at-Arms, one of who was assigned to the Speaker of the British House of Commons to protect them from arrest by unhappy monarchs.
During the 17th century, maces became a symbol of parliament, and their designs become more decorative.
The Assembly’s mace is made of locally sourced Yellow Box timber with a stainless-steel spine. The mace body is split into three, representing the Y-shape of central Canberra. It is 95cm long and weight 8.5kg. The territory floral emblem – the royal bluebell – is carved into the timber.
It is a tradition that a parliament cannot buy its own mace, it must be gifted to them. The ACT Legislative Assembly’s mace was a gift from the other (then 9) Australian parliaments, presented to Speaker Wayne Berry on 9 July 2004. Before then, the Assembly operated without a mace.