WHERE IS THE LINE BETWEEN THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY AND THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL IN NSW PARLIAMENT?
In a topic that is bound to be completely boring to 99.9% of readers, I nevertheless do urge you to read on if you have any interest in how the NSW Parliament works – and, importantly, the strange internal conflict that exists right now.
If you are still reading, then you will no doubt have enough interest in politics to understand that in State Parliament, we have two “Houses” of Parliament – the NSW Lower House (Assembly) and the NSW Upper House (Council). Our system of Parliament is based on the Westminster system that comes to us from the Parliament of the United Kingdom (Britain).
In older and original terms, the Lower House (Assembly) is a gathering of locally elected people who are there to represent the voters. This House is referred to as being full of commoners, local elected swill, despicable and uneducated regular people that shouldn’t be involved in decision making because they are not of the right descent/blood.
Meanwhile, in older and more traditional terms, the Upper House (Council) are the people that have been called to do the work of the typically ruling elite. This House is often referred to as “the House of Lords” or ruling class and the “House of Review” that is in place to make sure that the commoners don’t do silly things like represent the grass-roots ideas of the people.
When you go to vote on election day, the small piece of paper is specifically to choose your local representative, your commoner, to go to the Lower House (Legislative Assembly).
The larger piece of paper is to elect the people (generally a Political Party of one type or another) that you want to be in the Upper House (Legislative Council) and in this case you won’t be choosing the certain individuals that you want (unless you vote below the line). Most of the people on this sheet you will have never heard of.
The two Houses of Parliament are very much separate beasts. No person from either House shall enter the floor of the other place unless formally invited and under very strict and limited circumstances. Equally, no elected person from either place can be forced to attend the other House. And further to this, no House has the ability to order or instruct certain papers, documents or actions from one House or the other.
As a simple example, when a new law is being proposed, both Houses debate the issue separately, one after the other in either order, and the law will only pass if both Houses come to the same conclusion – to support the idea of the law being considered. If either House rejects the proposed new law, then it doesn’t become law.
With all of this as background, and if you are still reading, you will be interested to know that over the past 6 months I have seen dispute between the Legislative Assembly (Lower House) and the Legislative Council (Upper House) that I have not seen in my previous 14 years as an MP – and I am fascinated by it all. The traditions being tested are more than 500 years old in the Westminster system, and almost 170 years old right here in NSW.
In simple terms, in recent months in NSW Parliament, the “Lords” have demanded certain things of the “commoners” that the commoners have refused to do. This involves a number of instances, not the least of which includes demanding documents from the Speakers of the House (Assembly) both current and former; as well as demanding that certain Ministers from the Lower House appear before Upper House Inquiries.
Were the reverse at play, it would be equally inappropriate for the Lower House (Assembly) to demand of the Upper House (Council) that the President of the Council (Upper House) be required to provide documents, or that an Upper House (Council) Minister be required to appear before the Lower House (Assembly) Committee.
If you are still reading, you might be asking, what is the point of all these shenanigans? A very fair question in simple terms – but a very big questions in Westminster terms.
Well, of most importance is the fact that the Premier and Police Minister, both from the lower House were sent instruction to appear before an Upper House Inquiry. Both said “no thanks”.
The flow on effect was that the Upper House then insisted that the staff of the Premier and Police Minister appear before their Inquiry – which then posed the question “if the Premier and the Minister cannot be forced to attend, can their staff?”. And this has been the question that has played out very publicly in the media over the past two weeks, and included a threat that the staff in question might be arrested if they did not appear before the Inquiry.
In the end, the staff of the Premier and the Police Minister did appear before the Inquiry and, in my opinion, it was a storm in a teacup. Readers and commentators would be badly mistaken if they were to suggest that this was all about a “cover-up”.
The real question at play in these recent weeks has been about how the Upper House and Lower House maintain their separation. This has now been tested in the form of this one current Inquiry and looks set to be tested in different ways over the coming months. The point, in my mind, is if the two Houses don’t maintain their separation, then why bother having two Houses?