Key Points
- Anthony Albanese has refused to rule out a double dissolution after the Senate blocked Labor’s housing bill.
- Nearly all non-government senators voted against the government’s housing policy motion.
- In a double dissolution, all 76 Senate seats are up for grabs, unlike in standard elections when only half are.
Heated debate raged in Canberra this week after the government’s Help to Buy housing bill was voted down in the Senate.
All non-government senators — except for independents Jacqui Lambie and David Pocock, voted against the government’s housing policy motion — and their combined 38 votes were no match for the government’s 21.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has over Labor’s stalled housing scheme, .
“We’ll wait and see,” Albanese said after being asked about the possibility of a double dissolution.
“I’ll tell you one way to avoid a (double dissolution) is for the Coalition and the Greens to vote for legislation that they support.”
Greens leader Adam Bandt denied his party was “bulldozing” progress and said it would continue to fight “for renters and distressed mortgage holders”.
The Coalition has consistently opposed Labor’s bill, saying its preference is for first-home buyers to own 100 per cent of their homes.
What is a double dissolution election?
Usually, when Australians go to the polls, they vote for all House of Representatives seats and half the Senate seats.
Luke Beck, professor of constitutional law at Monash University, told SBS News that, unlike “a regular election, where only half of the senators are up for re-election, if the double dissolution trigger is pulled, all of the senators are up for re-election”.
For the government to call a double dissolution, a bill must fail to pass parliament twice, with at least three months between the attempts.
Beck said the mechanism “provides the procedure for resolving a deadlock between the houses”.
“The idea is that, after that election, the composition of the Senate might be different, and the new Senate might then choose to pass the bill,” he said.
“If that doesn’t happen, then you can have a special joint sitting of the Senate and the House of Representatives together to vote on whether or not to pass the bill.”
How have previous double dissolutions played out?
There have been seven double dissolution elections in Australia, and in two the governments that called them were defeated.
“It doesn’t always pay off. It also doesn’t always result in the legislation that’s used to trigger the double dissolution from coming into effect, Ben Raue, an independent election analyst who runs the website The Tally Room, told SBS News.
We’ve only had that happen on a couple of occasions,” he said.
Australia’s first double dissolution election happened in 1914 when Joseph Cook’s Commonwealth Liberal Party lost it to Andrew Fisher’s Australian Labor Party.
In 1983, Malcolm Fraser suffered a defeat to Bob Hawke in his attempt to establish a union watchdog.
Then-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull said in 2016 that his government had “a clear mandate to proceed with our election commitment” after winning a double dissolution. Credit: AAP / Lukas Coch
The most recent double dissolution election took place in 2016 due to a deadlock on three bills.
His government was re-elected, and the bills were passed with amendments. But as a result of the re-election, the crossbench grew larger.
“One Nation did very well in 2016 when they won four senators in three states. They probably would’ve only won one seat if it was a half-Senate election,” Raue said.
“It does allow in more voices and generally reduces the representation of the major parties.”
How likely is a double dissolution now?
While Labor has threatened to call Australia’s eighth double dissolution election, the government doesn’t yet have the trigger required to request the governor-general dissolve both houses of parliament.
Given the three-month-window-requirement for a double dissolution trigger, Albanese would have to recall parliament over the summer for a second vote to occur.
What’s more, a double dissolution can’t be called in the final six months of the parliamentary term, which means the prime minister would have to “set it up and then call it” by 25 January 2025 to make the “constitutional timeline,” Beck said.
In a post to X (formerly Twitter), Greens leader Adam Bandt said such a move would be “a betrayal of every renter and first-home buyer”.
Some experts believe the government wouldn’t be favoured by the outcome of a double dissolution.
“Albanese’s problem is that he’s not able to negotiate and get what he wants through the parliament with those other progressive senators,” Raue said.
“I don’t think there’s an advantage,” said Raue, who predicts a double dissolution would result in a “more progressive Senate”.
