watch me wallabies feed, Reid

excerpt:
The Christian Science Monitor
Global News Blog

Government shutdown?  Australians might suggest the nuclear option
by John Zubrzycki, Correspondent

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

Some Australians watching the US federal government shutdown unfold will be feeling a sense of deja vu -- that is, those old enough to have lived through the supply crisis of November 1975, when the Australian government also shut down.

At the time, the blocking of the government's supply bills by the opposition-dominated Senate here triggered a chain of events that led to

the greatest crisis in Australia's political history --

the dismissal of Parliament by the Queen's representative.

Late on the morning of Nov. 11, 1975, Australia's Governor General John Kerr, unelected and answerable only to the Crown, fired then-Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, whose government had deferred the passing of two appropriation bills, which effectively left the government out of pocket by about $4 billion a month in adjusted US dollars.

Mr. Kerr then appointed an opposition leader, willing to pass the bills, as prime minister.  But when Mr. Whitlam's members revolted and passed a no-confidence motion in the new prime minister, Kerr wielded the "nuclear option": 

He dismissed both the Senate and the House of Representatives, triggering a double dissolution election.  It all happened in just a few hours.  And there has never been a government shutdown in Australia since.

The controversy over whether the unelected Kerr should have counseled Whitlam before sacking him remains the single most debated political event in Australia.

Elected in a landslide just three years earlier, Whitlam believed he would have the public on his side with a radical solution to replace government expenditure with bank credit.  To keep things running, employees and suppliers of government goods were to be given IOUs guaranteed by banks.

...[David Smith, lecturer in American politics and foreign policy at the United States Studies Centre at Sydney University in Darlington, Australia]:
"If there was a mechanism like double dissolution in America, this budget crisis would be resolved a lot more quickly
because there would be this 'nuclear option'.  If the president could dissolve the legislature and go to an election that's exactly what Obama would be contemplating at this point....

Australians look back at November 1975 as a very traumatic period in Australia's history. 

But it is actually an example of the system working.  There was a crisis and it was resolved

pretty quickly."

With the US having the most rigid fixed-term system in the democratic world, Americans, he says, don't have that luxury.

"In the United States we've seen four of these standoffs in the last three years.  We now have the very serious possibility that the United States will default.  It seems like this will drag on as long as Barack Obama is president and as long as there is a Republican majority in the House of Representatives."

[end Christian Science Monitor article]

a review of the action in the Washington Post; writer -- Max Fisher:

Prime Minister Gough Whitlam rejected the opposition's demands but couldn't bring the parties to a compromise, and the federal budget went unfunded.  Then, on the morning of Nov. 11, Whitlam announced he would hold early elections not for the House but for half of the opposition-controlled Senate (typically, only one half of the Senate goes up for reelection at a time).  Kerr, as the official representative of the queen, who is technically still sovereign over Australia, summoned Whitlam to his office and fired him at 1:15pm.

Fifteen minutes later, Kerr appointed the leader of the opposition Liberal Party, Malcolm Fraser, as Whitlam's replacement.  By 2 p.m., before most even realized what had happened, Fraser got his allies in the previously deadlocked Senate to push through the government spending bill.  Then everything kind of fell into chaos.  When the ruling Labor Party, in the House, learned about Whitlam's firing and Fraser's appointment, its members revolted with a no-confidence vote against Fraser. 

At 4:50 p.m., Kerr dissolved the rest of Parliament, essentially firing everyone, with a formal proclamation that ended with the words "God Save the Queen."

A month later, Australia held national elections to replace the now-dissolved government.  The opposition, led by Fraser, swept to victory in both houses. 

Australia has not had another shutdown since.

[[ My Favorite Sentence: 
Australia. Has. Not. Had. Another. Shutdown. Since.
Instead of throwing tantrums, they do their jobs. ]]

This sort of thing, of course, could never happen in the United States.  The fact that Australia could pull it off is a quirk of its history as a former British colony that, unlike the United States, never fully broke away.

Australia's governor general does not typically fire prime ministers, or do much of anything.  It's a largely ceremonial position....

Australia is now an independent country but still a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, which means it recognizes the British monarchy as technically in charge. 

That monarch still has formal power over Australia's government but almost never actually uses it.

The 1975 crisis was the exception.

The governor general technically acts solely on behalf of the monarch -- the office was established before telephones existed, after all.  This means that, legally speaking, the 1975 Australian government funding crisis ended because Queen Elizabeth II dismissed everyone in the government.  In practice, the governor general did the actual firing.

You might find yourself wishing that the United States could follow Australia's example.... Maybe, if we ask nicely, Britain will take us back?
[end Washington Post excerpt]

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