Constitutional Change and Bicameralism in Australia: the Perversity of ‘Reform’

It is desirable for a constitution, as a power-limiting device, to possess significant rigidity or, in other words, to be entrenched. In the Australian states, with the exception of Queensland, the upper houses of parliament have an increasingly important role to play in providing that rigidity. The democratisation of state upper houses and the adoption of electoral systems which ensure incongruent partisan representation between houses in Australia’s bicameral parliaments mean that upper houses have the political capacity to ensure that important legislation, including proposals for constitutional change, is properly debated in parliament and, to an extent, in the wider community. In this context, it seems perverse that much so called ‘reform ’ of upper houses in Australia continues to focus on various means of subordinating these chambers to the will of the lower house majority. This article argues that reform should be directed at enhancing, rather than weakening, the role of Australia’s unique upper houses. This article1examines the relationship between bicameralism and constitutional change in Australia from two quite different perspectives. The first section considers the role of upper houses, with particular reference to the Australian states, in the process of constitutional change. Then, in the second and third sections, alternative agendas for the reform of Australian bicameralism are compared and an argument is made about their relative worth for improving parliamentary democracy. I want to suggest that there are important connections between the two different topics: if the role discussed in the first section is valued, along with more widely acknowledged roles of upper houses, certain sorts of reforms are indicated and certain others, including those which have been promoted in recent years by the current Commonwealth government, are clearly undesirable