Paul Strangio | Labor and Reform of the Victorian Legislative Council, 1950–2003 | Labour History, 86

Labor and Reform of the Victorian Legislative Council, 1950–2003

Paul Strangio^*

In early 2003, the Bracks Victorian Labor Government enacted legislation ushering in arguably the most extensive changes to the State's parliamentary system since the achievement of responsible government in the 1850s. The legislation's chief purpose was reform of Victorian Labor's historical nemesis, the Legislative Council. While the Labor Parties fought to subdue Upper Houses in each of the States last century, that struggle proved especially onerous and protracted in Victoria. Focusing predominantly on the period bookmarked by the two key milestones of Upper House reform in Victoria, 1950 and 2003, this article is an account of Labor's battle with the Legislative Council. It explores what animated and sustained Labor's struggle, the barriers that long frustrated its effective prosecution, the gradual evolution of Labor's objective from that of abolition to reform of the Upper House, and the circumstances that culminated in the 2003 reform achievement. The article also highlights the paradoxes that attended the struggle, including at the moment of its success.

Introduction

From the earliest years of the State Labor parties, Legislative Councils assumed, as Fin Crisp put it, a 'brooding central place ... in the minds of Labour men'.¹ Within a short time of establishment each party adopted the objective of either eliminating or reforming the Upper House, while the federal party followed suit in 1918 by adding abolition of the Legislative Councils to its fighting platform. In doing so, Labor acknowledged the formidable institutional barrier the Councils represented to the success of the labour-in-politics project. Faithful to their role as guardians of property interests, and carrying on from their routine impediment of progressive legislation in the pre-Labor era, the Upper Houses had quickly flexed their muscles against the advance of the working-class parties. Wherever Labor tasted government during its formative decades the story was similar: ministries were harried and many of their legislative initiatives summarily rejected by the Councils.²

Labor's preoccupation with the Upper Houses persisted for much of the twentieth century. The exception was Queensland, where the party precociously, and uniquely, exorcised that demon by abolishing the Council in 1922.³ For the other State branches, taming the Upper Houses was to be a painstaking and piecemeal process. Measured by the benchmarks of universal suffrage, equal apportionment and proportional representation, the latter paving the way for the dilution of major party control, not until the 1970s did Labor governments in South Australia and New South Wales complete major democratic reform of Upper Houses. Western Australia followed in the 1980s, although there the changes revised rather than erased malapportionment.⁴ Leaving aside Tasmania and its distinctive bicameral arrangements,⁵ Victoria trailed behind. Fundamental reform in that State was delayed until early 2003 when the Bracks Labor Government effected wholesale changes to the Upper House.

Viewed from a historical perspective, the fact that Victoria's Upper House succumbed last was hardly a surprise. Universally obstructive though the Legislative Councils were, from colonial times Victoria's had been recognised as the most intractable. A reputation forged during its titanic struggles with the Assembly of the 1860s and 1870s, the Victorian Upper House's disdain for the popular will was exemplified by its record of defeating nearly 10 per cent of Bills received from the Assembly in the pre-federation era.⁶ Visitors to the Australian colonies remarked on its status as an unmatched citadel of privilege. (Sir) Charles Wentworth Dilke thought it 'a conservative bastion without parallel in the Empire',⁷ while in 1898 Beatrice Webb recorded in her Australian diary that it qualified as 'perhaps the most reactionary in the British Empire'.⁸ The Council's notoriety survived Victoria's transition from colony to State, F.W. Eggleston describing it in 1931 as 'probably the most unassailable second chamber in the world'.⁹

This article examines the Victorian Labor Party's role as an agent of democratisation of the Upper House in Victoria. In particular, it locates in historical context the Bracks Government's recent reform achievement. Belying those changes speedy and untrammelled passage through the Victorian Parliament, it shows that the reform process, primarily originating in the Cain Government era of the 1980s, also boasted a more enduring lineage. The article's chief focus is the mid-twentieth century onwards, thus taking up from where Geoffrey Serle left off in a 1954 Historical Studiesarticle that surveyed the Victorian Upper House's history before the abolition of its property franchise in October 1950.¹⁰ As such, this article bridges the two great watersheds of Upper House reform in Victoria of 1950 and 2003.

A 'baneful influence': the Legislative Council Before the 1950 Reform

The history chronicled by Serle in his 1954 article suggested that the role performed by the Legislative Council in Victorian politics during its first century was exactly as the framers of Victoria's Constitution had intended it — a restraint on the democratic urges of the Legislative Assembly. The designing of the Upper House for this purpose received explicit statement in the report of the Select Committee that drafted Victoria's 1855 Constitution Act: '[the Legislative Council] ... should represent the Education, Wealth, and more especially the settled Interests of the Country ... that portion of the community naturally indisposed to rash and hasty measures'.¹¹ In practice this translated into the creation of an elective rather than nominee Council (the latter would be too easily swamped by the government of the day), hefty property qualifications for both candidates and electors, and terms for councillors double in length and non-coterminous to those of Assembly members. The Upper House's status as an anti-democratic bulwark was further guaranteed by it being granted virtual co-equal powers with the Assembly — it could reject, but neither initiate nor amend, money Bills — and, perhaps most effectively, the absence of a mechanism for breaking deadlocks between the two houses, thus rendering the Council indissoluble.¹²

The configuration of an immensely powerful and conservative Upper House, dominated by pastoral, mercantile and banking interests, and a lower house of progressive-democratic temper broadly representative of farming-selector, mining, manufacturing and artisan interests, set the scene for the constitutional battles that convulsed Victoria in the 1860s and 1870s.¹³ As Serle observed, these crises, and further episodes of intense conflict between the two houses in the early decades of the twentieth century, had broadly similar outcomes. In each case, the Council 'grudgingly lessened its exclusiveness' by permitting a lowering of the property qualifications for members and voters, but emerged with its powers otherwise largely intact.¹⁴ On the last of these occasions, 1936–37, in which the struggle revolved around an attempt by the minority Country Party Government of Albert Dunstan, supported by Labor, to establish a mechanism for resolving deadlocks between the houses, the Council's 'compromise' was the enacting of a procedure so skewed in its favour that it remained forever unexercised.¹⁵

While in the nineteenth century the push to tame the Legislative Council emanated from a broad 'progressive' alliance of radicals, liberals and democrats, by the twentieth century that mantle passed to the Labor Party. Consistent with other State Labor Party branches, abolition of the Legislative Council was an early article of faith for Victorian Labor. The Upper House's recalcitrance during the 1880s and 1890s by delaying, or emasculating, coveted reforms such as the legalisation of trade unions and workers' compensation and factory legislation provided context to the August 1896 decision of the newly created United Labor Party (the third try at an independent Labor political organisation in Victoria) to include abolition of the Council in its political programme. Along with other militant policies, that commitment was jettisoned before the 1897 elections and, when Victorian Labor finally achieved organisational permanency in 1901 under the title, the Political Labor Council (PLC), its platform featured the more ersatz objective of 'Reform of the State Constitution'.¹⁶ Incensed, however, by the Council's frustration of improvements to factory legislation and measures to regulate non-white labour, the PLC rapidly moved to eliminate any ambiguity concerning its attitude to the Upper House. In 1904, Tocsin, the PLC's official organ, asserted that '"Upper House Reform" should be the first plank of the Labour platform; it should be kept steadily in view, and to the attainment of that end all other purposes should be made subservient'.¹⁷ By 1905, the same year the abolition policy reappeared on Victorian Labor's platform — this time on a more permanent footing —Tocsin summed up the party's grievance against the Upper House:

The number of Bills or proposals defeated is no indication of the Council's baneful influence, as the certainty of rejection in that Chamber prevents much good from being attempted. Until, therefore, it be either abolished or democratised, representative government is a misnomer in Victoria.¹⁸

The adoption of the abolition objective was one thing: it was quite another to carry it out. Unlike in Queensland, where the Theodore Government fulfilled that objective in 1922, and even New South Wales, where Premier Holman's reluctance to do so helped fuel a party split during World War I,¹⁹ in Victoria the political and electoral realities dictated that abolition was an unrealistic prospect. Cruelly penalised by the electoral system's extreme pro-rural malapportionment — the negative effects of which were magnified by the party's lack of a substantial support base outside Melbourne — in the first half of the twentieth century Victorian Labor demonstrated a chronic inability to win a majority in the Legislative Assembly, let alone control the Council, which it required to legislate the Upper House's demise.²⁰ Instead, its best hope was a war of attrition against the Upper House, and even then it relied on temporary alliances, particularly with the Country Party, to progress that campaign.

Casting the Upper House to oblivion was an abiding objective of State Labor Parties for much of the nineteenth century. Only in Queensland was it realised.
Source: Worker, 18 November 1915

The 1950 Reform

As had been the case with the 1937 passage of a deadlock breaking mechanism, the combination of a minority Country Party government, sustained in office by Labor, brought about the abolition of the Legislative Council's property qualifications for both electors and members in October 1950. Formed in June 1950, the McDonald Country Party Government proved the most durable of the seven administrations that presided over Spring Street in as many years immediately following World War II when, as A.F. Davies observed, 'changes of alliance rang like chimes'.²¹ The tail end of the pre-modern era of Victorian politics that privileged deal-makers rather than enlightened policy-makers, Labor agreed to make McDonald Premier subject to 15 conditions, number one being Council reform.²²

In prioritising an assault on the Council in 1950, Labor was doing more than keeping faith with a longstanding plank of the party platform; it was also squaring several decades of ill-treatment at the hands of the Upper House. The party's only substantive periods of administration up until that time (the Hogan ministries of May 1927 — November 1928 and December 1929 — May 1932, and the Cain Snr ministry of November 1945 – November 1947) had all met with disproportionately high levels of Upper House obstruction. Basing his figures on the three decades before 1950, Serle calculated that during the six scattered years of Labor incumbency nearly twice as many government Bills were rejected by the Council than during the 24 years of non-Labor government.²³

A more immediate and deeper cause of Labor resentment towards the Upper House in 1950 was its ruthless destruction three years earlier of the minority Cain Snr ministry by refusing supply. The fifth major crisis over supply in Victorian history, but first time in the twentieth century that the Council had denied supply, its pretext for, what the Age called 'this flagrant contradiction of all the established canons of political morality', was that the electors deserved a say on the Chifley federal Labor Government's bank nationalisation policy, despite this being clearly a non-State issue.²⁴ Half a century later, as the Bracks Government pursued the Council, the non-Labor side of politics alleged that retribution for 1947 continued to motivate the ALP.²⁵ If this was an exaggeration, the Upper House's 'assassination of the [Cain] ministry'²⁶ was undoubtedly a source of enduring Labor grievance in Victoria, comparable in its context to Governor Game's dismissal of Premier Lang in New South Wales and, federally, the Senate's ambush of the Whitlam Government. Certainly Cain's confidence as the crisis unfolded that the public would back Labor on such a 'basic principle' that governments were made and unmade in the Lower House, and his strategy to turn the ensuing election into a plebiscite on the Upper House's action, anticipated the tactics employed by Whitlam three decades later. It came down to 'a case of the Legislative Council versus the people', the deposed Premier insisted.²⁷ Unfortunately, for Cain, the electorate saw things differently and, like 1975, lent legitimacy to the Opposition's behaviour by rewarding it with a sweeping victory.²⁸

Still seething from these events, in 1950 Labor not only insisted that eradication of the Council's property franchise be the first quid pro quo for putting the Country Party in office but that the McDonald Government make settlement without delay. The resultant Bill, introduced in August 1950, could still have been sabotaged by the Opposition Liberal and Country Party (LCP)²⁹ in the Upper House but, divided between its progressive and conservative wings, the LCP could provide only erratic and transient resistance. During the mid-year horse-trading over which party would form government, the LCP's parliamentary leadership team, Tom Hollway and Trevor Oldham, had committed the party to supporting adult suffrage for the Upper House. However, led by the septuagenarian Sir Frank Clarke, the architect of the Council's 1947 revolt against the Labor government, and living testament to the longevity of Victoria's nineteenth century propertied Establishment,³⁰ party conservatives persisted in opposing a wholesale franchise extension. The dissension in the parliamentary LCP flared in August when, in an effort to forestall the McDonald Government's reform Bill, one of its Upper House members unsuccessfully attempted to introduce a counter Bill proposing a limited widening of the franchise. A humiliated Hollway admitted that the move had not been discussed in the LCP party room, and complained that the behaviour of Upper House LCP members on franchise reform was 'a source of constant bewilderment'.³¹

Faced with internal discord, in late August Hollway moved an amendment to the McDonald Government Bill, or what he more accurately called 'a Labor Bill ... the price to be paid for that party's support'. The amendment, while 'accepting the principle of adult suffrage', nonetheless sought to derail the Bill's passage. Hollway criticised its failure to address the malapportionment in the electoral system, arguing that universal franchise would magnify the anomalies between metropolitan and country Upper House provinces. His key objection, however, was that, unless accompanied by a move to proportional representation, the reform would leave the Upper House's voting system indistinguishable from that of the Assembly. This would reduce the Council to 'a reflection of the lower Chamber', rendering it 'redundant'. Accordingly, Hollway warned, the Bill represented a preliminary to 'the ultimate abolition of the Legislative Council, which is part of the policy of the Labor Party'. A charge not disavowed by John Cain Snr, he nevertheless admitted that his party 'can see no way of abolishing the Upper House'.³²

Whatever the sincerity of Hollway's proposal for proportional representation —Cain retorted that neither the LCP nor Country Party Legislative Councillors would have a bar of the idea³³— he had spotlighted the question that hovered over the Council for the next 50 years: given the duplication in voting arrangements, and therefore substantial replication in the representative composition, of the two houses what was the continued rationale for bicameralism? The Age also took up the theme in evaluating the McDonald Government reform Bill. While considering 'any reform' welcome, 'however strange the origin or sponsorship', the challenge remained it argued 'to ensure some distinctive qualities, observing the democratic principle of universal voting, yet steering clear of electoral origins bound to result in an almost exact reproduction of the Assembly'. 'From this standpoint', the Age concluded, 'the Government proposal is not very helpful'.³⁴

The McDonald Government Bill went through the Upper House on 3 October without division, after the LCP opposition evaporated — a development that remained unexplained, but seemed bound up with the ongoing party disunity. The 'product of decades of agitation and resistance', universal franchise had arrived, the Age observed, with 'no cheers, little argument and no lamentations'.³⁵ Despite the muted response, and the reform's imperfections, the Bill's passage undoubtedly represented a milestone in the Council's democratisation. It enfranchised more than 800,000 Victorians, nearly tripling the number eligible to vote for the Council, as well as giving Victoria the distinction of being the first Australian State to have an Upper House elected by universal suffrage. Further, as Serle wrote a few years later, the reform, although leaving the Council's powers 'unchanged', formally ended its century-long 'function as the legislative guardian of the "rights of property"'.³⁶ In that sense, it also marked the beginning of a 50-year evolution towards a renewed rationale and legitimacy.

A 'constitutional ice-age', the Liberal Ascendancy, 1955–82

Perhaps nothing better exemplified the caprice of mid-twentieth century Victorian politics than the circumstances surrounding the McDonald Government's demise. In October 1952 it fell victim to the Upper House's undiminished powers when its erstwhile reform partner, the ALP, having withdrawn its backing from the Country Party because of inaction on electoral redistribution — another condition of the June 1950 agreement — sided with a group of LCP breakaways (headed by Hollway) to block supply.³⁷ More perversity was piled on the situation by Labor's rationalisation of a practice it had characterised five years earlier as constitutional vandalism. According to the party's Upper House leader, P.L. Coleman, it accepted 'the view of the people' as expressed at the 1947 election that the Council was within its rights in withholding supply. Moreover, despite no election having occurred since the 1950 franchise change, he insisted that passage of the reform had invested the Upper House with a democratic legitimacy it lacked when it cut down the Cain ministry.³⁸

The McDonald Government's defeat, and the fragmentation of the non-Labor side of politics, eventuated in the election in December 1952 of Victoria's first majority ALP government; indeed, the first majority government of any persuasion for three decades. Wrecked by the 1954–55 Split, the Cain Snr Government of 1952–55 is nevertheless regarded as marking a transition in Victorian politics between the eras of minority and majority government, the shift from 'volatility to stability'.³⁹ As late as the 1970s, however, some elements of the old order lingered. Most notable was the continuing enmity between the non-Labor parties, and the related postponement in the consolidation of an orthodox Labor versus non-Labor binary party system. It was the hostility between the LCP (it reverted to the name Liberal Party in the mid-1960s) and Country Party that periodically thrust the Legislative Council into the limelight during the first half of the 27-year Liberal ascendancy that followed 1955. Up until 1970, when the Liberal Party began 12 years of uninterrupted Upper House control, it had to contend with a Council in which the Country Party generally held the balance of power. Not averse to exploiting this strategic position, the Country Party joined forces with Labor to frustrate parts of the Bolte Government's legislative program and to occasionally threaten supply. While never extreme at its peak in the mid-1960s this obstruction caused Bolte to threaten, though not exact, revenge by whittling down the Council's powers.⁴⁰

The hollowness of Bolte's threat was symptomatic of a pattern of inertia towards constitutional change during the Liberal's near three-decade incumbency. Dubbing the period 'a constitutional ice age', Brian Costar identifies 1964 legislation to facilitate conjoint elections between the Lower and Upper Houses as the only significant parliamentary reform of the Bolte premiership.⁴¹ This is not to suggest the Council remained in suspended animation throughout this era: change occurred. In 1950 Victoria's landed and business aristocracy monopolised the red upholstered benches of the Upper House. One indication of this was that 12, or more than a third, of the 34 MLCs were, or in due course would be, knighted. Thirty years on not only had the knights been displaced, but the educational and occupational backgrounds of the councillors had diversified greatly to be nearer to, though still not, representative of the wider society.⁴² This changing social composition also contributed to the demise of the notion that it was a non-partisan chamber, a pretence defended jealously by the old guard non-Labor MLCs. Following the introduction of universal suffrage, the previous practice of members sitting in the chamber 'mixed up like chocolates in a box' was abandoned for one in which were they arranged according to party allegiance. By 1959, when the Council debated a proposal for its abolition, both sides of the chamber acknowledged that the Upper House was in the thrall of strong party discipline.⁴³

The 1959 debate was the first of three occasions (the others were 1976 and 1979) during the Liberal hegemony that the ALP's Upper House leader initiated a private member's Bill for the Council's abolition; naturally, all were defeated on party lines. The mover of the first two of these Bills was the redoubtable Jack Galbally, who held the Upper House leadership for 24 years from 1955 — all the while juggling it with his practice as a barrister, and later Queen's Counsel. Characteristically, Galbally mustered plenty of passion in arguing the brief for abolition. 'Empires have crumbled; monarchs have been dethroned', he thundered in 1959, 'but none of these events have disturbed the Legislative Council'; while in 1976 he declared that to suggest that the Council was anything other than 'a wasteful duplication masquerading as a House of review' was to 'strain at a gnat and swallow a camel'.⁴⁴

Rhetoric aside, Labor's abolition threats against the Council in this era were as hollow as they had ever been, perhaps more so. Under an electoral system that persisted in weighting non-metropolitan votes, and with the ALP's representation still unproductively concentrated in Melbourne's western and northern suburbs, the party was no closer to the glorious day when it could legislate the Council into oblivion. Moreover, during the years in which the Liberal government lacked an Upper House majority, the pursuit of abolition appeared counterproductive, given that the Council provided a means by which Labor could constrain Bolte. Indeed, the year before Galbally's 1959 abolition Bill, the ALP leader, Ernie Shepherd, had fought an election for the Council in which he stressed the importance of a non-government controlled Upper House as a prerequisite to effective political opposition in Victoria.⁴⁵ On top of this was Galbally's record of crusading activism in the Upper House, which for much of Bolte's reign earned him the reputation of being de facto Opposition leader. Highlighted by his prolific introduction of private members' Bills, including 21 for the abolition of capital punishment, Galbally's example probably helped plant the seed that Labor ought to consider a more creative fate for the Council other than its eradication.⁴⁶

By the end of the 1970s the Victorian ALP also had the precedent established by the Dunstan South Australian and Wran New South Wales Labor Governments, both of which had opted to reform, rather than abolish, the State Upper House through the introduction of proportional representation.⁴⁷ Perhaps inevitably thus Victorian Labor began to shift tack on its approach to the Council in the second half of the 1970s. According to a 1990 account by David White, then a senior Minister in the Cain Jnr Labor Government, one of the earliest to push the cause of proportional representation was Jack Tripovich, the former State party Secretary and deputy leader in the Upper House between 1970 and 1976.⁴⁸ The first concrete change to the party platform on the Upper House occurred at the November 1978 State Conference. While the abolition objective was reaffirmed, the amended platform stated that this aim ought not 'be interpreted in such a way as to prevent steps being taken to reform it'. Two reforms were specified, neither of them proportional representation; instead, they were the removal of the Council's power to block supply and a time limit on its capacity to delay other Bills.⁴⁹ Indeed, as reflected by the discussion in the party's official organ, Labor Star, in the decade preceding the 1982 election of the Cain Jnr Government, polarised views existed about proportional representation. Opponents feared it might fragment Left politics.⁵⁰

As Labor hesitated, the Liberal government, led by Rupert Hamer since Bolte's 1972 retirement, briefly stole a march in respect to reforming the Upper House. At the May 1979 State election Premier Hamer announced he would examine the possibility of proportional representation for the Council.⁵¹ While nothing became of this proposal, the following year a report prepared for the ALP State Conference, and endorsed by the party's 13 Upper House members, called for electoral reform of the Council. Unexceptionally enough, the report argued, if Labor was serious about abolition, it must first alter a voting system, which provided an insuperable barrier to that ambition. The report acknowledged this recommendation presented a 'paradox for abolitionists' insofar that 'reform proposals are likely to rejuvenate the potential life of the Council'.⁵²

The Labor Decade and Reform of the Legislative Council, 1982–92

When Labor finally broke the Liberal's 27-year stranglehold on power at the April 1982 elections, the party's policy on the Upper House remained in an evolutionary state between abolition and reform. It continued to be committed to abolition in the long term, but its immediate goals were the phasing out of ministers from the Council, the strengthening of the Upper House committee system, and the elimination of the chamber's power to block supply. The latter issue generated special attention during the campaign, largely because the Liberal Premier, Lindsay Thompson, 'repeatedly equivocated' when asked to confirm that his party would not use its Upper House numbers to deny supply in the event of a Labor government. Thompson's tactic allowed the Labor leader John Cain Jnr to raise the bogey of Upper House obstruction; he promised his first priority in office would be legislation to remove the Council's power over supply.⁵³

The wrangle over supply persisted in the weeks immediately following Labor's election. Following a 12-year hiatus, the National (nee Country) Party had regained the balance of power in the Upper House and its leader, Peter Ross-Edwards, promptly warned that, while his party made 'no threats at this juncture', he doubted the government would last its three-year term. Labor's response was to threaten a referendum on the Council's future.⁵⁴ Meanwhile, the Liberal Party struck a more conciliatory note; its Upper House leader, Alan Hunt, stating he found 'it hard to imagine' circumstances in which the party would cooperate in blocking supply.⁵⁵

True to its word, within two months of election, the Cain Government introduced a Bill to remove the Upper House's power over supply, thus designed, the Premier explained, to 'end forever the threat of a popularly elected Government ... being forced out of office by the malice or caprice of the Legislative Council'. The reform proposed that, if after the expiration of a month, the Council had not passed a Supply Bill then that Bill could nevertheless be presented for Royal Assent — a situation that had prevailed in New South Wales since 1933.⁵⁶ In the second reading speech, Cain surveyed the history of the Council, highlighting the several occasions on which it had interfered with supply. He included 1952 in that record of infamy, noting that while 'the power exists all parties have been tempted, and in some cases, succumbed to the option of ejecting a popularly elected government'. Similarly, when in the ensuing debate, the Opposition highlighted that Cain's father had been complicit in the 1952 blocking of supply, Cain interjected: 'I don't condone it'.⁵⁷

The Liberal and National parties united in opposing the Labor Bill, alleging that its intent was to 'emasculate the Legislative Council' as a precursor to abolition.⁵⁸ Mirroring, however, the different tactics adopted by the non-Labor parties to the question of guaranteeing supply, their approaches to the Bill varied. Support within the Liberal Party for moderate Council reform saw it initiate an amendment proposing the Upper House retain the power to reject supply, but that a double dissolution ensue in the event of the power being exercised. In foreshadowing the amendment, the Liberal's deputy Upper House leader, Haddon Storey, acknowledged that the existing arrangements were 'undemocratic' by giving the Council license to reject supply with 'impunity'. By contrast, the National Party, although ultimately voting for the Liberal amendment, did so grudgingly.⁵⁹

When the Council eventually considered the Opposition amendment in May 1983, Labor acknowledged that the Liberal Party had 'moved some distance' on Upper House reform, but still rejected the compromise. As a consequence, following the Council's adoption of the Liberal proposal on party lines, the Cain Government allowed the amended Bill to lapse.⁶⁰ In any event, by then behind the scenes negotiations were underway between the party leaders that culminated in the passage of legislation in September 1984, which, as Costar writes, effected 'the most radical alteration to the relations between Victoria's two houses of parliament' up until that time. In sum, the legislation provided a maximum four-year term for the Legislative Assembly, the first three being fixed; and, for the first time, linked Upper and Lower House terms, with half the councillors retiring at each Assembly election. Crucially, such were the conditions established for dissolving the Lower House short of three years that the Council was deprived of the ability to force an early election by blocking supply. According to Costar, the Opposition parties had a twofold rationale in concurring to these changes:

progressive Liberals shared Labor's belief that the Council's powers were excessive and indefensible, while others were alert to the electoral prediction that Labor would achieve an absolute majority in the Council in 1985 [the due date for the next election]. A powerful Upper House controlled by conservatives was acceptable, but an unreformed Council dominated by the ALP was unprecedented and unconscionable.⁶¹

Forecasts of Labor enjoying full control of the parliament after the next election were calculated on the basis of a November 1983 electoral redistribution that followed watershed changes to the electoral system negotiated through the parliament during the Cain Government's first 18 months.⁶² Ending the historical practice of discounting city votes, these reforms still meant the ALP had to overcome the handicap of vote wastage in its traditional electoral strongholds. Nonetheless, with the party's task of winning a Council majority now formidable rather than Herculean, the new electoral arrangements brought the question of abolition out of the realm of fantasy. Paradoxically, as they did, tensions over the policy surfaced within the government. In late 1983 a committee of ten Labor MPs was created to consider abolition; press reports indicated it had been set up to resolve government divisions over the wisdom of pursuing the policy.⁶³ By early 1984 it became clear that this cleavage was essentially factional. In short, there was a stand off between the Victorian ALP's two dominant factions, the Socialist Left and Labor Unity, with the former apprehensive about abolition. Purportedly the more radical grouping, the Socialist Left's concerns owed little to philosophy. Compared to its rival Labor Unity, the Socialist Left had a disproportionate number of MPs and ministers in the Upper House, meaning that abolition not only had the potential to thin its leadership ranks, but adversely alter the government's factional power balance. Labor Unity, on the other hand, continued to press for abolition. A paper prepared by that faction's executive, and circulated to party branches, condemned the Left's backsliding:

Although an abolition policy would be expected to attract universal support in the ALP, a bitter division is unfortunately apparent ... It is disappointing that serious debate over a matter of high political principle has been debased to the level of factional intrigue. Cruel irony indeed that the manoeuvres of the Socialist Left grouping ... have cast them as soulless and heartless pragmatists ... ALP loyalists liken the Socialist Left's 'pragmatic' approach to St Augustine's classic plea, 'God make me chaste, but not quite yet'.⁶⁴

Against this backdrop, public utterances by the Premier John Cain Jnr during the second half of 1984 indicated a gradual softening of the government's views on the Council's future. Despite pledging at the party's June State Conference that his government would proceed with abolition during 'the lifetime of the next Parliament', in July Cain told journalists that any decision to execute the policy was 'for the next Parliament' and remained the 'prerogative' of the parliamentary party.⁶⁵ Soon after Caucus backed a suggestion by the Premier for a series of meetings between Labor's parliamentary leaders and organisational officials to discuss 'difficulties associated with the abolition of the Upper House'.⁶⁶ Then, in November, in the clearest sign yet of the policy's shelving, Cain announced abolition might be deferred to the end of the decade. In doing so, he expressed concern that a preemptive strike against the Council might 'disrupt the good management of this State'.⁶⁷

Several factors were relevant to this retreat. First, it culminated a change that had been gathering momentum in the Victorian ALP since the 1970s and, as noted above, represented no more than a falling into line with the position adopted by other State branches. Indeed, the fact that Victorian party had remained fixed on abolition for so long attested to (paraphrasing Crisp) the 'brooding central place' the Council occupied in its consciousness. In turn, this general attitude shift towards Upper Houses by Labor while, on the one hand, a pragmatic response to decades of fruitless pursuit of abolition reflected also a positive transformation in thinking about bicameralism (led by the Senate's revival) within Australia's political system. Amid growing social diversity and corresponding pressure on the traditional party system, Upper Houses elected by proportional representation were regarded increasingly as an outlet for political pluralism, together with being an important countervailing force to executive dominance of the legislature. In short, the function of Upper Houses was being reconceptualised; the nineteenth-century view of them as a necessary check on the popular will gradually superseded by one in which they were posited as a instrument for the invigoration of parliamentary democracy.⁶⁸ The relatively benign performance of the Upper House during the Cain Government's first term also perhaps encouraged Labor to reassess the Council's future. Despite the National's early bluster, less than one per cent of government Bills had been defeated and only two Bills abandoned because they were destined for a similar fate.⁶⁹

Furthermore, in 1984 the Cain Government faced the practical reality of factional division over abolition, and the associated risk of a damaging power struggle in the circumstance of seats having to be found in the Assembly for MLCs, particularly ministers, displaced by abolition. The government worried too that abolition might cost it support in the forthcoming election, with the Liberal Party flagging its intention to make the issue a key fighting ground in the campaign. Finally, as emerged later, Labor's decision to abandon abolition was influenced by a pre-election preference deal between it and the Australian Democrats. On the expectation that Democrat preferences would boost its chances of winning Upper House control, the ALP promised to introduce proportional representation, which would then open up the possibility of the minor party gaining a foothold in the Council.⁷⁰

Whatever the rationale, the irony for Victorian Labor was unmistakeable — poised to realise an objective cherished for nearly 80 years, it now sought to walk away from the policy. Moreover, suspicion lingered that John Cain, steeped in the history of the Council's perfidy, remained reluctant to do so.⁷¹ Walk away Cain and Labor did. In January 1985, at the start of the campaign for an election called for 3 March, the Premier announced that Labor had set aside its abolition plans for a reform package headed by proportional representation, the removal of the Council's power to block supply, a reduction of the term of councillors to four years and an upgrading of the Upper House committee system. Styling the policy back down as a response to public concerns, Cain struggled to stifle his personal disappointment: 'I make no secret it was our wish to abolish the Upper House, but occasionally you have to set aside goals for the greater good'. Criticised in some quarters for unilaterally remaking party policy, it later surfaced that Cain had only acted following a cross-factional agreement for the change.⁷²

If calculated to shore up its prospect of gaining the numbers in the Council, Labor's policy volte-face fell agonisingly short in achieving the desired effect. A tied vote in the province of Nunawading, initially resolved in the ALP's favour, delivered the Cain Government a fleeting four week Upper House majority, which it then lost at a by-election ordered by the Court of Disputed Returns.⁷³ Consequently, Labor found itself in the familiar position of being seemingly impotent to carry through its designs for the Council, irrespective that those designs were now about reform rather than abolition. Meanwhile, the government had to persuade the party rank and file to accept the dumping of a central plank of Labor's platform. When a rift over the decision opened up at a meeting of the Socialist Left faction in late March, the issue seemed destined to cause fireworks at the next State Conference. As it turned out, however, the April State Conference was dominated by a vitriolic dispute over the readmission of four right-wing unions previously associated with the Democratic Labor Party, completely overshadowing debate on the Council. When Conference did consider the issue it passed a resolution supporting 'the expressed view of the Premier ... on the question of the retention and reform of the Upper House' and authorised the establishment of a working party to examine the specifics of a new reform policy.⁷⁴

More than two years elapsed before Labor's Upper House reform plans were ready for formal party endorsement — a delay partly explained by the necessity of satisfying the undertakings to the Democrats and mollifying those in the ALP who considered the Council's continued existence anathema. The new policy, adopted at the August 1987 State Conference, had a bet each way. Abolition was preserved as Labor's ultimate goal, but 'pending' its achievement the Upper House was to be reformed through proportional representation and the reduction of Upper House terms from to eight to four years, concurrent with the Assembly's term. If much of this had been prefigured in Cain's January 1985 announcement, the reform plan now boasted a sharper edge. Other elements included ministers no longer sitting in the Council; supply Bills bypassing the Council altogether; and a deadlock breaking procedure involving the provision for a joint sitting of Parliament if the Upper House either rejected or unreasonably amended or delayed a government Bill.⁷⁵

In September, the Cain Government presented a Council reform Bill to the Parliament congruent with this policy blueprint.⁷⁶ It was the first of a hat trick of Labor reform packages over the next three years that were voted down in the Upper House by the Liberal and National parties. Debate on the first Bill had provided Labor with a faint hope that a result other than this seemingly perpetual cycle of obstruction might be possible. That optimism did not rely on the National Party. Consistently intransigent on the issue, the Nationals warned that proportional representation and an associated shift from single member to multi-member electorates would weaken the link between MLCs and their constituents, thereby adversely impacting on the representation of rural and regional interests. The Liberal Party, although equally unequivocal in its intention to throw the Bill out, followed a different line of attack. It alleged that the Bill had been 'designed to fail' and represented 'a transparent device' to enable the Premier to claim he had fulfilled his part of the 1985 deal with the Democrats. Strangely, given that accusation, Liberal members also portrayed the Bill as a product of Cain's 'obsession' with the Legislative Council. It was Alan Hunt, the Liberal's former Upper House leader, who appeared to signal a way forward for Labor by inviting the government to bring forward a Bill 'relating only to proportional representation'.⁷⁷

In 1988 Labor did just that — still to no avail. On this occasion, the Bill's defeat only became certain on the eve of its first reading in May. Despite the Opposition leader, Jeff Kennett, and party moderates like Hunt, advocating support for proportional representation, albeit in a different form to that proposed by the government, the parliamentary Liberal Party resolved to reject outright Labor's legislation. Interpreted as a victory for Liberal conservatives and the National Party, the decision, while providing the government with short-term political capital, left the ALP at a familiar dead end.⁷⁸ There was a depressingly similar outcome to the Labor government's final legislative tilt at Council reform of late 1990, the difference being that this time the Bill's fate was sealed well before it limped through a debate only distinguished by its brevity.⁷⁹ Realistically, by that stage, with the government in disarray as a result of a series of financial crises⁸⁰ and factional discord that had precipitated Cain's resignation as Premier in August,⁸¹ the Liberal Party was no longer the least disposed towards compromise on the Council. Indeed, the reverse was true: the Opposition sporadically threatening to use it Upper House numbers to block supply during the ALP's final term.⁸² While those threats never translated into practice, they at once demonstrated the continuing grounds for Council reform and the limits of progress to that end during Labor's decade in office.

The Bracks Government and Reform of the Legislative Council, 1999–2003

When the Liberal-National coalition, led by Jeff Kennett, swept the ALP from office in March 1992, Victoria remained stranded as the only bicameral parliament in Australia in which neither chamber was elected by proportional representation. Victoria's status as the nation's bicameral 'tortoise', as one ALP speaker put it during debate on the doomed 1990 reform Bill, followed changes to the Western Australian Legislative Council introduced by the Burke Labor Government in 1987.⁸³

The Kennett Government had neither the inclination nor necessity to interfere with this state of affairs during its seven and a half year rule. Possessing commanding majorities in both houses of parliament, the coalition had all the power it required to be, as constitutional academic John Waugh writes, 'politically revolutionary and constitutionally conservative'.⁸⁴ Certainly the government remained utterly unmoved by Labor's complaints that the Upper House had been reduced to a rubber stamp for the executive. This was despite the damning evidence that of 700 Bills brought in to the Council from the Assembly during the Kennett era none were defeated, or successfully amended by the Opposition.⁸⁵

Ironically, as retrospectively identified, the absence of a meaningful Upper House brake was among the factors that allowed the Kennett Government to overreach itself, thereby contributing to its unexpected defeat at the elections of September 1999.⁸⁶ So began a series of events culminating in the Council's 2003 reform. On the back of a Labor Party campaign that capitalised on community concerns about the Premier's unaccountability, neither side emerged from the 1999 poll with a clear majority.⁸⁷ Instead, the balance of power rested with three independents who presented the major parties with a charter of demands 'for stable, open and accountable government' as a preliminary to determining which side they would support. This time the gods favoured Labor: one of the charter's key planks was Upper House reform, including proportional representation. Predictably, the ALP leader, Steve Bracks, readily acceded to this proposal and the charter generally, whereas the coalition found agreement problematic. Hence, when Kennett baulked at the specifics of the independents' demands on Council reform and another condition of the charter, the path was cleared for the formation of a minority Labor government.⁸⁸

Serendipitously, the issue of Upper House reform had helped put the ALP back into office, but still the party faced the perennial stumbling block of the conservative parties having the Council numbers to stymie change. Indeed, the Bracks Government's first term contained little to suggest anything other than a continuation of the party's Sisyphean labour on Upper House reform. At the term's end in November 2002, the government had nothing to show from three separate legislative reform packages (initiated November 1999, May – June 2000 and September 2002). This lack of progress was despite the latter two packages being significantly more conservative than the first Bill, which had been withdrawn when it became clear it did not enjoy the support of the independents.⁸⁹ Whereas the 1999 Bill had duplicated the proportional representation model contained in the Cain Government's final reform Bill by proposing a system of five provinces each returning seven members requiring a quota of 12.5 per cent for election, the 2000 and 2002 packages opted for a model of eight provinces each returning five members thereby increasing the quota for election to 16.7 per cent. Similarly, while the original Bill, like the Cain Government's 1987 Bill, provided that the supply Bills bypass the Upper House altogether, the 2000 and 2002 Bills took a less draconian approach by proposing that the Council be given a month to consider a supply Bill, upon expiration of which the Bill would be automatically presented for Royal Assent.⁹⁰

If the Bracks Government's first term triple failure appeared to replicate the dismal record of its Labor predecessor between 1987 and 1990, the reality was even worse. Two of the packages had not got beyond the Assembly for want of full support from the independents, while the Liberal Party, giving every impression of being unreconciled to its 1999 defeat, took up where it had left off in 1990 by intractably opposing reform. It attacked the Bills on several, mostly tired, grounds, including that reform was a precursor to abolition and proportional representation amounted to a diminution of non-metropolitan interests. To these, it added the objections that the Bracks Government lacked a mandate for its proposed changes and was, in any case, dancing to John Cain Jnr's tune. According to the Shadow Attorney-General, Robert Dean, Cain had 'tapped' the new government 'on the shoulder and said: "Your first order priority is to do something I have been wanting to do for years and could not"'.⁹¹ Meanwhile, Labor resorted to the equally well-rehearsed strategy of threatening a plebiscite on the Council's future, together with appointing a Constitution Commission to inquire into, and lend legitimacy, to its quest for Upper House reform.⁹² Neither tactic had any ostensible effect on the Opposition parties.

The events of 1999–2002 turned out to be the last hurrah of conservative resistance on the Upper House. In a result nearly as confounding to pundits as 1999, in November 2002 the ALP was returned not only with its greatest ever margin in the Assembly, but with a history-making majority in the Upper House.⁹³ An outcome possible only because of the Cain Government's first term electoral reforms, it in one stroke broke the century-long impasse to Labor's crusade against the Council. Giving lie to the conservative parties' scare mongering of 1999–2002 that abolition remained the ALP's true ambition, unfettered legislative power did not induce a rush of blood within the Bracks Government to carry out the threat of previous Labor generations. His leitmotif moderation, the Premier even parried those in the party who wished to see his government revert to the harder-edged reform position of 1999 and so visit a more exacting revenge on the Council. Instead, he stuck to his election campaign pledge to reintroduce legislation reforming the Upper House 'in line with' the defeated September 2002 Bill.⁹⁴ Accordingly, the reform package introduced to the Parliament by Bracks in February 2003 retained the eight province/five member proportional representation model, despite concerns that the high election quota this imposed compromised the principle of proportionality and undermined the prospects for a diversely constituted Council by making election difficult for independents and minor parties.⁹⁵ Even so, the Premier was justified in his claim that the Bill, which among other things stripped the Council's power to block, though not scrutinise, supply, introduced a dispute resolution procedure for deadlocked Bills between the Assembly and Council, and halved councillors' terms with concurrent fixed four year terms for both houses, represented 'the most comprehensive reform of Victoria's parliamentary system since it was established in 1856'.⁹⁶

Fittingly, the Liberal and National parties opposed to the death; they sourly complained that the election result, by delivering an Upper House majority to the Bracks Government, proved the Council's democratic credentials and therefore exposed the flawed rationale for reform.⁹⁷ Reduced to the condition of impotency so long the ALP's lot, this time the non-Labor parties could do nothing to impede the reform Bill's passage through both houses during February – March 2003.

Conclusion

Watching from the public gallery, John Cain witnessed the Bracks Government's reform Bill pass through the Upper House on the evening of 27 March 2003.⁹⁸ As this article demonstrates, his presence richly symbolised the cumulative struggle which had brought Labor to that 'historical moment'.⁹⁹ Not only had the template for the Bracks Government's legislation been forged during the Cain Labor era of the 1980s, but his government's one vote one value electoral reform had been a fundamental prerequisite for its achievement. In turn, Cain provided a tangible link to the previous great watershed of Council reform, 1950, when his father, John Cain Snr, had a prominent hand in the introduction of universal suffrage for Upper House elections.

While the 1950 reform had coincided with a minority Country Party administration, this article unambiguously confirms Labor's primacy as an agent of movement in democratising the Upper House. Conversely, it shows the conservative parties rarely departed from a well-thumbed script of opposing reform and that their trump card in resisting change was the Council itself. The corollary is that the advancement of the reform agenda remained contingent upon the ALP either holding a sufficiently powerful negotiating hand to extract concessions from the non-Labor parties on Upper House changes, as in the 1930s, 1950 and 1980s, or commanding both houses of the legislature. As the least electorally successful of the State Labor parties, the latter eluded the Victorian ALP throughout the twentieth century, thereby making all but inevitable the comparatively belated completion of major Upper House reform in Victoria.

The article also highlights a dual paradox of Victorian Labor's 100 year struggle with the Legislative Council. Inclined by decades of accumulated grievance, none greater than 1947, the party stayed wedded to a policy of abolition, despite its implausibility, and long after the 1950 franchise reform provided a starting point for reconceptualising the Upper House as something other than a bulwark of property interests. Yet, when eventually the ALP did reluctantly relinquish the sacred cow of abolition, replacing it with the objective of further democratisation, the party had never been closer to obtaining the power to eliminate the Upper House. Similarly, having waited a century for a majority in the Council, by introducing proportional representation upon finally claiming that prize in 2002, Labor has, in all probability, diminished its chances of exercising future control over the Upper House.¹⁰⁰ Tamed though it might be, the Council has not perhaps exhausted its capacity to confound its historical adversary.

Endnotes

^* I wish to thank the anonymous referees and Associate-Professor Brian Costar for their helpful suggestions and encouragement.

^1. L.F. Crisp, The Australian Federal Labour Party, 1901–1951, Longmans, Melbourne, 1955, p. 234.

^2.Ibid., p. 265. Peter Loveday, 'New South Wales', pp. 29, 80–86; D.J. Murphy, 'Queensland', pp. 146, 161, 177 and 194; Brian Dickey, 'South Australia', pp. 243, 247, 255, 258–259, 266 and 279; H.J. Gibbney, "Western Australia', pp. 357–358 and 365; and R.P. Davis, 'Tasmania', pp. 397, 400 and 422–428; all in D.J. Murphy (ed.), Labor in Politics: the State Labor Parties in Australia, 1880–1920, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1975.

^3. See D.J. Murphy, 'Abolition of the Legislative Council' in D.J. Murphy, R.B. Joyce and Colin A. Hughes, Labor in Power: the Labor Party and Governments in Queensland, 1915–57, Queensland University Press, St. Lucia, 1980. A less celebratory account of the abolition is presented in Justin Harding, 'Ideology or Expediency? The Abolition of the Queensland Legislative Council 1915–22', Labour History, no. 79, November 2000, pp. 162–178.

^4. For a brief overview of the milestones to reforming the Upper Houses in each of the States, see Bruce Stone, 'Bicameralism and Democracy: the Transformation of Australian State Upper Houses', Australian Journal of Political Science, vol. 37, no. 2, pp. 274–278.

^5. See Aynsley Kellow, 'Tasmania' in Jeremy Moon and Campbell Sharman (eds), Australian Politics and Government: the Commonwealth, the States and the Territories, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 2003, p. 138.

^6. Raymond Wright, A People's Counsel: a History of the Parliament of Victoria, 1856–1990, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1990, 74–90; Geoffrey Serle, 'The Victorian Legislative Council, 1856–1950', Historical Studies, Australia and New Zealand, vol. 6, no. 22, May 1954, p. 193.

^7. S.M. Ingham, 'Political Parties in the Victorian Legislative Assembly, 1880–1900', Historical Studies, Australia and New Zealand, vol. 4, no. 15, November 1950, p. 242.

^8. A.G. Austin (ed.), The Webbs' Australian Diary 1898, Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons Ltd, Melbourne, 1965, p. 66 (entry 20 October 1898).

^9. E.H. Sugden and F.W. Eggleston, George Swinburne: a Biography, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1931, p. 106.

^10. Serle, 'The Victorian Legislative Council', pp. 186–203.

^11. Quoted in John Waugh, 'Framing the First Victorian Constitution, 1853–5', Monash University Law Review, vol. 23, no. 2, 1997, p. 344.

^12.Ibid., pp. 342–350; Wright, A People's Counsel, pp. 17–18.

^13. Geoffrey Serle, The Golden Age: a History of the Colony of Victoria, 1851–1861, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1977 (1963), pp. 318–319; Geoffrey Serle, The Rush to be Rich: a History of the Colony of Victoria, 1883–1889, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1971, pp. 8–9.

^14. Serle, 'The Victorian Legislative Council', p. 188.

^15. For an exhaustive account of that struggle see J.B. Paul, The Premiership of Sir Albert Dunstan, MA thesis, Department of Political Science, University of Melbourne, 1960, ch. 4. See also Brian Costar, 'Constitutional Change' in Mark Considine and Brian Costar (eds), Trials in Power: Cain, Kirner and Victoria, 1982–1992, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1992, p. 205.

^16. Frank Bongiorno, The People's Party: Victorian Labor and the Radical Tradition, 1875–1914, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1996, pp. 42–44; Tocsin, 23 July 1903. Also see Serle, 'The Victorian Legislative Council', pp.194–8.

^17.Tocsin, 1 December 1904.

^18.Ibid., 14 December 1905. The first reference to the abolition policy in the PLC's platform found by the author was ibid., 7 September 1905.

^19. Graham Freudenberg, Cause for Power: the Official History of the New South Wales Branch of the Australian Labor Party, Pluto Press in association with the New South Wales Branch of the Australian Labor Party, Sydney, 1991, pp. 87, 99–107.

^20. The origins of Victorian Labor's predominantly urban character are discussed in Bongiorno, The People's Party, ch. 3. For figures on Labor's vote and seat share in the Legislative Assembly during the twentieth century, see Nicholas Economou, Brian Costar and Paul Strangio, 'Victoria' in Moon and Sharman, Australian Politics and Government, pp. 158 and 164. Also see A.F. Davies, 'The Government of Victoria' in S.R. Davis, The Government of the Australian States, Longmans, London, 1960, pp. 222–223.

^21. Davies, 'The Government of Victoria', p. 224.

^22. The conditions were listed in a letter by the State Secretary of the Victorian ALP, dated 22 June 1950, cited in the Legislative Assembly. See Victorian Parliamentary Debates (hereafter VPD), vol. 232, Legislative Assembly (hereafter LA), 23 August 1950, pp. 429–430.

^23. Serle, 'The Victorian Legislative Council', pp. 199–200.

^24.Age, 8 October 1947; Wright, A People's Counsel, pp. 182–184. Also see John Waugh, 'Blocking Supply in Victoria', Public Law Review, vol. 13, December 2002, pp. 241–245. Waugh points out that the Council has actually 'rejected or laid aside' supply Bills on nine occasions, including three separate rejections during the 1947 crisis.

^25. See, for example, VPD, vol. 448, LC, 4 October 2000, p. 393.

^26. Quoted in Wright, A People's Counsel, p. 183.

^27.VPD, vol. 225, LA, 7 October 1947, p. 341; Labor Call, 9 October 1947.

^28. Wright, A People's Counsel, pp. 183–184.

^29. The Liberal Party had renamed itself the Liberal and Country Party in March 1949, following its unsuccessful attempts to absorb the Country Party and the defection of some Country Party members to its ranks.

^30. See R.J. Southey's portrait of Clarke in Bede Nairn and Geoffrey Serle (eds), Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol. 8, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1981, pp. 16–18.

^31.Age, 9 and 10 August 1950; Argus, 9 August 1950; VPD, vol. 232, LA, 23 August 1950, p. 422.

^32.VPD, vol. 232, LA, 23 August 1950, pp. 415–426 and 448.

^33.Ibid., p. 449.

^34.Age, 11 August 1950. Also see Zelman Cowen, 'Historical Survey of the Constitution' in One Hundred Years of Responsible Government in Victoria, 1856–1956, Government Printer, Melbourne, 1956, p. 149.

^35.Age, 4 and 5 October 1950.

^36. Stone, 'Bicameralism and Democracy', pp. 274–276; Serle, 'The Victorian Legislative Council', p. 186.

^37. Wright, A People's Counsel, pp. 188–189.

^38.VPD, vol. 240, LC, 21 October 1952, p. 2634.

^39. Tony Hannan, 'Electoral and Parliamentary Patterns in Victorian Politics, 1945–76' in P.R. Hay, Ian Ward and John Warhurst (eds), Anatomy of an Election, Hill of Content, Melbourne, 1979, pp. 7–8; Economou, Costar and Strangio, 'Victoria', pp. 165–166.

^40. Wright, A People's Counsel, p. 211; Hannan, 'Electoral and Parliamentary Patterns', pp. 12–13. Also see Brian Costar, 'National-Liberal Party Relations in Victoria' in P.R. Hay, J. Halligan, J. Warhurst and B. Costar (eds), Essays on Victorian Politics, Warrnambool Institute Press, Warrnambool, 1985.

^41. Costar, 'Constitutional Change', p. 201. Also see Colin A. Hughes and B.D. Graham, A Handbook of Australian Government and Politics 1890–1964, Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1968, p. 466.

^42. This observation is based on a comparison of the 38th (June 1950 – October 1952) and 48th Parliaments (May 1979 – February 1982), the latter the last before the election of the Cain Jnr Labor Government. Details of the MLCs educational and occupational backgrounds were found in Geoff Browne, Biographical Register of the Victorian Parliament 1900–84, Victorian Government Printing Office on behalf of the Parliament of Victoria, Melbourne, 1985. Notably, the 48th Parliament featured the first women MLCs, Hilda Baylor (Liberal) and Joan Coxsedge (ALP).

^43.VPD, vol. 326, LC, 26 May 1976, p. 1233; ibid., vol. 257, LC, 8 April 1959, 2921; ibid., 22 April 1959, p. 3243. Also see Wright, A People's Counsel, p. 160.

^44.VPD, vol. 257, LC, 8 April 1959, p. 2914; ibid., vol. 326, LC, 28 April 1976, pp. 252–253. Also see the Age, 20 November 1971 and 28 July 1979.

^45.Age, 10 and 19 June 1958.

^46. Ian Ward (with Graham Hudson), 'Electoral Reform' in Hay et al., Essays on Victorian Politics, pp. 14–20; Hannan, 'Electoral and Parliamentary Patterns', pp. 8–15; Wright, A People's Counsel, p. 201; Brian Costar, 'Political Chronicle: Victoria', Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol. 21, no. 3, 1975, p. 97.

^47. Stone, 'Bicameralism and Democracy', pp. 276–277. Also see Freudenberg, Cause for Power, pp. 237 and 252–253.

^48.VPD, vol. 397, LC, 3 April 1990, p. 503.

^49.Labor Star, 11 December 1978.

^50. For a sample of these conflicting views see ibid., 18 July 1974, 20 June 1979 and 13 August 1981.

^51. Ward, 'Electoral Reform', p. 22. Also see the Age, 13 May 1980.

^52.Age, 13 May 1980.

^53. Ward, 'Electoral Reform', pp. 13–14 and 20–22. Also see Paul Rodan, 'The Liberals in Opposition' in Brian J. Costar and Colin A. Hughes, Labor to Office: the Victorian State Election 1982, Drummond, Melbourne, 1983, pp. 254–255.

^54.Age, 17 April 1982.

^55.Ibid., 27 April 1982.

^56.VPD, vol. 364, LA, 27 May 1982, pp. 434–435. See also Ken Turner, House of Review? The New South Wales Legislative Council, 1934–68, Sydney University Press, Sydney, 1969, pp. 26–28.

^57.VPD, vol. 364, LA, 27 May 1982, p. 435; ibid., vol. 365, LA, 1 July 1982, pp. 2496 and 2501.

^58.Ibid., vol. 365, LA, 1 July 1982, p. 2494.

^59.Ibid., vol. 369, LC, 3 May 1983, pp. 2096–2101; ibid., vol. 370, LC, 26 May 1983, p. 2472.

^60.Ibid., vol. 370, LC, 26 May 1983, pp. 2467–2469;Age, 27 May 1983. Also see Costar, 'Constitutional Change', p. 204.

^61. Costar, 'Constitutional Change', pp. 204–206. Costar's contention that the 1984 legislation stripped the Council of the power to force an early election during the fixed three-year portion of the Assembly term is further discussed in Stone, 'Bicameralism and Democracy', pp. 274–275; and Waugh, 'Blocking Supply in Victoria', pp. 243–244.

^62.Age, 26 October and 7 December 1983. Also see Ward, 'Electoral Reform', pp. 20–23.

^63.Age, 25 October 1983.

^64.Ibid., 7 March 1984.

^65.Ibid., 31 July 1984.

^66.Ibid., 8 August 1984.

^67.Ibid., 21 November 1984.

^68. Stone, 'Bicameralism and Democracy', pp. 267–268.

^69. Ken Coghill, 'In Government But Not in Power: Victorian Labor 1982–92', Legislative Studies, vol. 11, no. 2, Autumn 1997, pp. 75–87. Coghill shows that the level of Upper House obstruction accelerated following the government's re-election in 1985.

^70.Age, 11 August 1984; Bulletin, 12 May 1987.

^71.Age, 31 July 1984.

^72.Ibid., 29 January and 25 March 1985.

^73. Paul Rodan, 'Political Chronicle – Victoria', Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol. 31, no. 3, 1985, p. 514;ibid., vol. 32, no. 2, 1986, pp. 275–277.

^74.Age, 25 March 1985; Labor Star, May 1985.

^75.Age, 15 August 1986, 1 May 1987 and 24 August 1987.

^76.VPD, vol. 388, LA, 17 September 1987, pp. 1112–1114.

^77.Ibid., vol. 389, LA, 27 October 1987, pp. 1686–1688 and 1751; ibid., vol. 389, LC, 12 November 1987, p. 1549; ibid., vol. 389, LC, 13 November 1987, p. 1586.

^78.Age, 3 and 4 August 1988. Also see VPD, vol. 391, LA, 2 August 1988, pp. 44–46, 55–57 and 221–223.

^79. Debate on the Bill involved a total of only seven speakers in the Assembly, and five in the Council. See VPD, vol. 400, LA, 1 November 1990, pp. 1759–1764; ibid., 13 November 1990, pp. 1830–1842; ibid., vol. 400, LC, 14 November 1990, pp. 1311–1327.

^80. For a discussion of these problems see Kenneth Davidson, 'The Victorian Economy and the Policy of the Cain/Kirner Government' in Considine and Costar (eds), Trials in Power; and Hugo Armstrong, 'The Tricontinental Affair', ibid.

^81. For a detailed account of the factional intrigues, see David Feeney, Children of the Intervention: Political Construction and Deconstruction: The Victorian Branch of the Victorian Labor Party 1955–1996, Master of Public Policy thesis, Monash University, 1997, ch. 4.

^82. The threat briefly surfaced in early 1989, but was more menacing and sustained in the first half of 1991. Age, 1 February 1989 and Ardel Shamsullah, 'Political Chronicle – Victoria', Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol. 37, no. 1, 1991, pp. 479–482.

^83.VPD, vol. 400, LA, 13 November 1990, p. 1840. See also Jeremy Moon and Campbell Sharman, 'Western Australia' in Moon and Sharman (eds), Australian Politics and Government, p. 186.

^84. John Waugh, 'The Kennett Government and the Constitution: No Change?' in Brian Costar and Nicholas Economou (eds), The Kennett Revolution: Victorian Politics in the 1990s, UNSW Press, Sydney, 1999, p. 63.

^85.Minutes of the Proceedings of the Legislative Council of Victoria, Sessions 1992–94, 1994–96, 1996–98 and 1998–99. See also VPD, 55th Parliament (1st Session), Book 2, LA, 18 March 2003, p. 309.

^86. See, for example, the Age's editorial, 17 August 2000.

^87. For details of the September 1999 State election and its aftermath see Nick Economou, 'Political Chronicle – Victoria', Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol. 46, no. 2, June 2000, pp. 226–237; and Dennis Woodward and Brian Costar, 'The Victorian Election of 18 September 1999: Another Case of Electoral Volatility?', Australian Journal of Political Science, vol. 35, no. 1, pp. 125–133.

^88. Independents' Charter Victoria, http://www2.ozland.net.au/savage/IndependentsChrtr.htm ; ALP Response to the Independents' Charter Victoria 1999, http://www.australianpolitics.com/states/vic/alp-response-charter.shtml ; The Coalition's Response to the Independents' Charter, http://www.australianpolitics.com/states/vic/coalition-response-charter.shtml . Also see the Age, 8 and 19 October 1999.

^89.Age, 26 February and 30 May 2000; and VPD, vol. 447, 1 June 2000, p. 2105; ibid., p. 2163.

^90. For the second reading speeches on the Bracks Government's first term reform Bills see VPD, vol. 444, LA, 25 November 1999, pp. 609–611; ibid., vol. 447, LA, 1 June 2000, pp. 2161–2164; ibid., vol. 456, LA, 12 September 2002, pp. 146–147.

^91.Ibid., vol. 448, LA, 17 August 2000, p. 162. Also see ibid., vol. 448, LC, 4 October 2000, pp. 386–389.

^92.Age, 16 August and 26 October 2000. Established by the Bracks Government in March 2001, the three-person Constitution Commission Victoria reported in June 2002. See Constitution Commission Victoria, A House for our Future: A Report, Constitution Commission Victoria, Melbourne, 2002.

^93. See Brian Costar and James Campbell, 'Realigning Victoria: the State Election of 30 November 2002', Australian Journal of Political Science, vol. 38, no. 2, July 2003, pp. 313–323.

^94. Victorian Labor Party, 'Democracy and Accountability: Labor's plans for integrity in public office', November 2002, http://www.vic.alp.org.au/dl/democracy_accountability.pdf.

^95. See the author's analysis, 'The Upper House is Tamed at Last', Age, 31 March 2003.

^96. See Premier Bracks' second reading speech on the Bill, VPD, 55th Parliament (1st Session), Book 1, LA, 27 February 2003, pp. 160–163. For a more detailed outline of the Bill's provisions, see Greg Gardiner and Brian Costar 'A Bicameral Watershed: Parliamentary Reform in Victoria', The Parliamentarian, no. 4, 2003, pp. 389–392.

^97.VPD, 55th Parliament (1st Session), Book 2, LA, 18 March 2003, p. 270; ibid., 55th Parliament (1st Session), Book 4, LC, 25 March 2003, p. 432.

^98. His presence was acknowledged by the Chair. Ibid., 55th Parliament (1st Session), Book 4, LC, 27 March 2003, p. 648.

^99.Ibid., p. 600.

^100. This is based on Brian Costar and Greg Gardiner, From Breaking Governments to a Brake on Government? A New Bicameralism in Victoria, 2003, unpublished paper.

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