Power to the people ... and the prime minister

The Americanisation of the Australian parliamentary system continues.

The move by Prime Minister Scott Morrison to head off a problem created entirely by the Liberal Party (and previously the Labor Party) by increasing the PM’s power may deliver short-term gains but will surely create long-term issues.

Morrison said reducing the ability of the Liberal party room to change its leader was a direct response to calls from the public.

“It is willingly and enthusiastically putting this constraint to return the power of these decisions about who is prime minister in this country to the Australian people,” he said.

Of course, that is not true and never has been in a parliamentary democracy like Australia. Every three years, voters select a local MP who, along with senators, then decide who will become the prime minister.

That’s the way it was until 2010 when Labor lost its collective mind, going down the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd path.

The Liberals, seemingly having read a history of this period and deciding it was a manual for governing, did the same thing.

Labor’s response was to mix the US and British systems in a way to safeguard the leader. A 75 per cent majority in the party room to force a prime ministerial challenge and then a broader vote that includes the rank and file of the ALP.

Morrison has gone to the American impeachment position. The US Senate requires a two-thirds majority to “convict” a member of the executive or judiciary.

Short term, Morrison’s move assures “soft” voters that the leadership Muppet Show won’t continue under him. The Victorian election was the wake-up call within the party that the leadership shenanigans had to be lanced one way or the other.

Longer term, however, it increases the power of a Liberal PM who already has the right to appoint ministers. Rather than bring potential critics into the ministerial tent, there is now an incentive to ignore them.

Protected from an insurgency, even if it includes one-third of the party, a Liberal PM can march forward.

More broadly, both major parties have admitted the public has a direct say in their leadership selections.

To follow this to its logical end, why should the party determine its leader at all? Why not go the full presidential system where the PM is elected directly by the general public?