Australia’s curious coalition

Abstract

While there exists a large and expanding comparative literature on coalition formation and government, it either ignores or seriously distorts the Australian experience, despite coalitions having been in power nationally for 60 of the past 88 years. Most authors have been content to follow the lead of Giovanni Sartori’s contention that in Australia there exists not a coalition but a coalescence because ‘the permanent alliance between the Liberal and Country (National) Party is such that the two parties do not compete, in the constituencies, against each other’.1 Both contentions are erroneous, but have proved influential. While it is true that the Australian variant does not closely resemble the coalition models of Europe and elsewhere, and sometimes gives the appearance of a single party, it is, nonetheless, a coalition and deserves to be analysed as such. This article locates Australian coalitionism within the broader comparative literature by focusing on the following: coalition formation and termination; ministerial allocation; coalition agreements; policy similarities and differences and the impact of coalition on policy-making; the power of a coalition Prime Minister or opposition leader; the tension between a coalition and a strong Westminster-style cabinet system; and the impact of Australia’s federalized party organization on the national coalition. The key argument of the article is that Australia exhibits a tight and closed form of coalition.