Parliament

(parliamentarian, parliamentarians, parliamentary, parliaments)

In a formal sense, parliament is the arm of government that debates and makes law, distinguished from the executive that implements the law and the judiciary that interprets the law and judges actions against its requirements (see separation of powers). Parliament is a group of people who meet in a particular place called a parliament house and who are recognised as having the authority to make laws according to a particular set of rules and procedures. In Australia, political commentators and the wider public view parliament ambiguously. It is often seen as the centre-point of Australian politics, a centrality that is reflected in the common description of Australia as a ‘parliamentary democracy’. At the same time, many Australians disparage parliament as a useless ‘talking shop’ dominated by party politics, or a ‘rubber stamp’ for the policies of the executive.

The form that parliaments take and the way that parliamentarians are given authority to make laws both vary considerably across political systems. Australian parliaments, for example, are not sovereign in the way that the British parliament is, since their powers are restricted by constitutional provisions and their legislation may be found to be invalid by the judiciary.

Australians commonly assume that a parliament must be democratic, in the sense that parliamentarians are directly elected by the people and represent them in parliamentary decision-making. This assumption is quite a recent one.