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The Westminster system, or Westminster model, is a type of parliamentary government that incorporates a series of procedures for operating a legislature, first developed in England. Key aspects of the system include an executive branch made up of members of the legislature, and that is responsible to the legislature; the presence of parliamentary opposition parties; and a ceremonial head of state who is separate from the head of government. The term derives from the Palace of Westminster, which has been the seat of the Westminster Parliament in England and later the United Kingdom since the 13th century. The Westminster system is often contrasted with the presidential system that originated in the United States, or with the semi-presidential system, based on the government of France.
Robert's Rules of Order, often simply referred to as Robert's Rules, is a manual of parliamentary procedure by U.S. Army officer Henry Martyn Robert. "The object of Rules of Order is to assist an assembly to accomplish the work for which it was designed [...] Where there is no law [...] there is the least of real liberty." The term Robert's Rules of Order is also used more generically to refer to any of the more recent editions, by various editors and authors, based on any of Robert's original editions, and the term is used more generically in the United States to refer to parliamentary procedure. It was written primarily to help guide voluntary associations in their operations of governance.
Parliamentary procedure is the accepted rules, ethics, and customs governing meetings of an assembly or organization. Its object is to allow orderly deliberation upon questions of interest to the organization and thus to arrive at the sense or the will of the majority of the assembly upon these questions. Self-governing organizations follow parliamentary procedure to debate and reach group decisions, usually by vote, with the least possible friction.
Royal assent is the method by which a monarch formally approves an act of the legislature, either directly or through an official acting on the monarch's behalf. In some jurisdictions, royal assent is equivalent to promulgation, while in others that is a separate step. Under a modern constitutional monarchy, royal assent is considered little more than a formality. Even in nations such as the United Kingdom, Norway, the Netherlands, Liechtenstein and Monaco which still, in theory, permit their monarch to withhold assent to laws, the monarch almost never does so, except in a dire political emergency or on advice of government. While the power to veto by withholding royal assent was once exercised often by European monarchs, such an occurrence has been very rare since the eighteenth century.
The Senate is the upper house of the bicameral Parliament of Australia, the lower house being the House of Representatives. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Chapter I of the Constitution of Australia. There are a total of 76 senators: 12 are elected from each of the six Australian states regardless of population and 2 from each of the two self-governing internal Australian territories. Senators are popularly elected under the single transferable vote system of proportional representation.
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Parliamentary privilege is a legal immunity enjoyed by members of certain legislatures, in which legislators are granted protection against civil or criminal liability for actions done or statements made in the course of their legislative duties. It is common in countries whose constitutions are based on the Westminster system.
In deliberative bodies, a second to a proposed motion is an indication that there is at least one person besides the mover that is interested in seeing the motion come before the meeting. It does not necessarily indicate that the seconder favors the motion.
A parliamentary authority is a book of rules for conducting business in deliberative assemblies. Several different books have been used by legislative assemblies and by organizations' deliberative bodies.
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A Manual of Parliamentary Practice for the Use of the Senate of the United States, written by Thomas Jefferson in 1801, is the first American book on parliamentary procedure. As Vice President of the United States, Jefferson served as the Senate's presiding officer from 1797 to 1801. Throughout these four years, Jefferson worked on various texts and, in early 1800, started to assemble them into a single manuscript for the Senate's use. In December 1800 he delivered his manuscript to printer Samuel Harrison Smith, who delivered the final product to Jefferson on February 27, 1801. Later, the House of Representatives also adopted the Manual for use in its chamber.
A committee of the whole is a meeting of a legislative or deliberative assembly using procedural rules that are based on those of a committee, except that in this case the committee includes all members of the assembly. As with other (standing) committees, the activities of a committee of the whole are limited to considering and making recommendations on matters that the assembly has referred to it; it cannot take up other matters or vote directly on the assembly's business. The purpose of a committee of the whole is to relax the usual limits on debate, allowing a more open exchange of views without the urgency of a final vote. Debates in a committee of the whole may be recorded but are often excluded from the assembly's minutes. After debating, the committee submits its conclusions to the assembly and business continues according to the normal rules.
The committees of the Australian Senate are committees of Senators, established by the Australian Senate, for purposes determined by that body. Senate committees are part of the operation of the Australian parliament, and have for some decades been involved in maintenance of government accountability to the Australian parliament, particularly through hearings to scrutinise the budget, and through public inquiries on policy questions.
The Clerk of the Australian Senate is the head of the Parliamentary Department of the Senate, which is the parliamentary department supporting the work of the Australian Senate. The Clerk is responsible to the President of the Senate who in turn is responsible for the department to the Senate. The Department of the Senate is not part of the Executive Government of Australia. The current Clerk is Richard Pye. The Deputy Clerk of the Senate is Jackie Morris. Since 1999, the terms of the Clerk of the Senate, as that of the Clerk of the House of Representatives, have been limited to 10 years. The change did not apply to the incumbents.
The history of parliamentary procedure refers to the origins and evolution of parliamentary law used by deliberative assemblies.
This is a list of members of the Australian Senate from 1951 to 1953. The 28 April 1951 election was a double dissolution called by Prime Minister of Australia Robert Menzies in an attempt to gain control of the Senate and to pass the Commonwealth Bank Bill, if necessary at a joint sitting of both houses. All 121 seats in the House of Representatives, and all 60 seats in the Senate were up for election. The incumbent Liberal Party of Australia led by Menzies with coalition partner the Country Party led by Arthur Fadden defeated the Australian Labor Party led by Ben Chifley and gained control of the Senate with 32 seats to Labor's 28.
Harry Evans was the longest-serving Clerk of the Australian Senate, serving from 17 February 1988 to 4 December 2009. He was considered an "ardent and outspoken defender" of the independence and constitutional authority of the Senate.
In the Parliament of Australia, the political parties appoint party whips to ensure party discipline, help manage legislative business and carry out a variety of other functions on behalf of the party leadership. Additional functions of the government party whips is to ensure that a sufficient number of government members and senators are present in the chamber to ensure passage of government legislation and measures and to prevent censure motions succeeding, and to ensure presence of a parliamentary quorum. Their roles in the chamber include tally votes during divisions, and arranging pairs which affects the ability of members and senators to leave parliament during sittings, as well as the entitlement to be absent during divisions.
The House of Representatives Practice is an Australian parliamentary authority published by the Australian House of Representatives. The first edition was published in 1981 edited by John Athol Pettifer CBE, Clerk of the Australian House of Representatives from 1976 to 1982.
References
- ↑ Odgers, James Rowland, ed. (1953). "Australian Senate Practice" (PDF) (First ed.). Retrieved 2024-01-04.
- ↑ Laing, Rosemary, ed. (2016). "Odgers' Australian Senate Practice: as revised by Harry Evans" (PDF) (Fourteenth ed.). Department of the Senate. Retrieved 2024-01-04.
- ↑ https://www.aph.gov.au/binaries/senate/pubs/pops/pop52/20_the_pedigree_of_the_practices.pdf
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