The Pros And Cons Of Representative Democracy

Introduction

In the Australian Westminster style legislative tradition, it is considered an obligation that individual Members of Parliament will vote in accordance with the official stance set by their respective party despite any possible opposition they possess to a particular piece of legislation. Such policies are in place to ensure the internal cohesion of political parties and to allow parliamentary procedures to go ahead with more ease. In the rare circumstances where individual Members of Parliament are permitted to vote to their own opinions this is referred to as a conscience vote. In the past, there have been suggestions made that when it comes to legislation which has significant moral implications or issues that can be classified

How the conscience vote and political parties interact with this notion can be approached from two opposing angles. On one hand, if the people of Australia largely vote for a political party or a prime minister instead of their local Member of Parliament as the system intends it can be argued that allowing individual Members of Parliaments the opportunity to dissent from a party’s official stance is in fact unrepresentative. If voters in an electoral district are considering the election in terms of greater party positions which they are often found to do, justifiably considering the conscience vote is so rare, the views of the individual Member of Parliament are irrelevant. From another perspective however, it could be argued that allowing for a conscience vote more frequently allows for a more representative parliament in that the people are able to have a broader range of views expressed and be represented with more flexibility instead of being limited to the views of the political party. Observations of the voting patterns of conscience votes have suggested that party discipline is far more deceptive than it initially appears as Members of Parliament tend to hold a much broader spectrum of views than may be indicated

This means that the executive branch is not directly elected by the people but rather indirectly through elections to the House of Representatives. In practice, this also results in the House of Representative determining who forms the Federal Executive Council, that Ministers are also required to be Members of Parliament, that Ministers are held accountable to the legislature both individually and collectively as a member of the Federal Executive Council therefore opening up the opportunity for dismissal, that the Prime Minister is the leader of the majority party in the House of Representatives, that the Queen or the Governor-General as her representative can only exercise executive power on the advice of Ministers, and that the Executive remains politically