Queensland’s quandary
To reintroduce a Legislative Council?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/qre.23431Keywords:
Legislative Council, upper house, parliament, Queensland government, Annastacia PalaszczukAbstract
Just as Queensland commemorated the centenary anniversary of the abolition of the state’s Legislative Council, the Labor government under Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, a ‘strong’ leader during the contemporaneous COVID-19 pandemic, found itself embroiled in the most serious integrity quagmire of its seven-year history. Given Queensland’s long history of ‘strong’ – even autocratic – political leadership and compromised government integrity, this article posits three arguments: that the abolition of the Legislative Council and a century of political excess in Queensland since 1922 are broadly related; that legislation in Queensland remains largely ‘executive-made’ and not ‘parliament-made’ law; and that the presence of a democratically elected Legislative Council after 1922 would have mitigated if not prevented much of Queensland’s political excess over the past one hundred years. The article also offers a model for a reintroduced Legislative Council that, given electoral distaste for ‘more politicians’, is unlikely to be approved at referendum.
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