Explicating the Australian Senate

This article is a revised version of a paper outlining the role and performance of the Australian Senate originally prepared for the seminar in March 2002 on House of Lords Reform organised by the Constitution Unit, University College London and the Centre for Legislative Studies, University of Hull. For the most part, the article follows the original conference form of brief answers to questions identified by the conference organisers. The article argues that the Senate provides an important working model of an elective upper house in a Westminster-derived parliamentary system. It does not pretend to be a comprehensive account of the Australian Senate. Rather, the main aim is to examine the Senate's evolving place in the Australian system of responsible parliamentary government.