Banks MP David Coleman has called for fixed four-year terms for federal Parliament, as happens with the NSW Parliament.
NSW was the first state in Australia to introduce fixed four-year terms following the 1991 election, and others have since followed.
Mr Coleman said he would like to see a referendum on the issue held in conjunction with the next federal election.
However, he said it would only be worthwhile if both sides of politics supported it.
Mr Coleman proposed the change in an Opinion column in The Sydney Morning Herald:
OPINION COLUMN
We need fixed four-year parliamentary terms for MPs
Politicians come and go. From our different perspectives, we argue for the things we believe in, for as long as we are on the stage.
But it's incumbent on us to not only work within our democratic system, but also to think about the design of the system itself. How could it function better? How can we leave the system stronger than we found it? The health of the system is at least as important as the decisions made within it.
To move to a fixed four-year term, you need to change the constitution through a referendum. The most logical time to put the question is at the next Federal election.
If we were to devise a system today from scratch, we would not say: "let's have an election roughly every two-and-a-half years, at an unknown date, to be determined at the sole discretion of the Prime Minister of the day."
That's how our system currently works. We should change it.
Moving to a fixed four-year parliamentary term would bring substantial benefits to the nation.
This is not a new idea. Four-year terms were argued for prior to Federation, parliamentary committees have repeatedly supported them, and a (flawed) referendum was held on this issue in 1988.
But it hasn't happened. A few points on why it should:
Short parliamentary terms make it more difficult to get things done. A longer term would mean more capacity to implement policy – particularly complex reforms. Business groups like the Australian Institute of Company Directors have been making this point for a long time;
Uncertainty around election times reduces business investment and consumer confidence. This is compounded by the phony war prior to election campaigns, where media commentary speculates about when the election might be, leading to needless uncertainty in the community;
It would be fair and transparent. A known election date means that any participant in the election – or anyone whose activities are affected by the election – would know where they stand years in advance
One of our challenges as a nation is to keep finding structural reforms that enable our economy to grow. This change would be one of those reforms. In the long run, economic growth is driven by productivity improvements. And productivity growth basically means doing things better than we do them now. A fixed four-year term would both reduce the amount of time spent in election periods, and completely eliminate the uncertain prelude that we see every two-and-a-half years or so. More business investment would occur, and governments would get more done.
There are two main issues that have to be addressed. First, the Senate. If we move to fixed four-year terms for the House of Representatives, we would need to change the Senate terms as well. At present, Senators are elected for six years – roughly coinciding with every second election for the House of Representatives. So the key question is – if elections for the House are held every four years, for what period are Senators elected? The most obvious solution is to elect Senators for eight years, as occurs in the NSW Upper House.
The other issue is: in a fixed-term system, what happens if something goes very wrong during the four-year period? The answer to this is relatively simple in my view. If there is a successful no-confidence motion in the government in the House of Representatives, then the Governor-General may call an election. That would be the only circumstance in which a fixed four-year term did not apply. As long as there is a functioning government, there is no election other than at the end of the fixed four-year term.
To move to a fixed four-year term, you need to change the constitution through a referendum. That's the part of the conversation where people roll out statistics about how hard it is for a referendum to succeed, because you need a majority of the people in the majority of the states to support it. This means that in practice you would need both sides of politics to support a referendum question before putting it – there is not much point otherwise.
Getting everyone to agree is never easy, and this provides a convenient excuse to say that the process of change is all too hard. But it isn't – this is an important and achievable goal.
The issues are well understood and have been debated for years, with wide support across the political spectrum. The benefits are very clear. We should resolve the terms of a referendum question, and put it to the people. In my view, the most logical time to put the question is at the next Federal election.
This issue is one of the key pieces of unfinished business in our democracy. If we make the change to fixed four-year terms, we will be passing on a system that is stronger than we found it.
