The Senate president, Scott Ryan, has lamented the lost art of compromise in Australian politics, pointing out that meeting in the middle on contentious policy does not equate to “abandoning the base”.

With the Liberal party still processing the corrosive civil war of the past fortnight, Ryan used a speech in Melbourne on Wednesday night to argue the greatest successes of Australian politics had come from “compromise and negotiation” and the use of parliamentary process to resolve competing points of view.

In an implicit rebuke to the death match character of politics that fuelled Malcolm Turnbull’s demise as prime minister, the Victorian Liberal warned Australian voters not to reward politicians projecting uncompromising stances to the community.

“The idea that compromise is wrong, that negotiation to achieve one objective and move onto another, represents a lost political opportunity for a contest or selling out is not one that has been rewarded in Australia,” the Senate president said.

Ryan invoked a number of examples from the Howard era to illustrate his point – the passage of the GST and labour market deregulation with the support of the Australian Democrats in the Senate, and the passage of gun controls that were contentious with the Coalition’s rural supporters.

“Who would think that the country would be better off if John Howard and Peter Costello had not negotiated successful passage of the GST following the 1998 election? Or that we would be better off still arguing about it?”

“Peter Reith’s reforms to workplace relations, the product of compromise with the Democrats, no natural fans of labour market deregulation and now sadly wound back, were a driving force in our economic boom that saw record low unemployment, productivity growth and substantial real income growth for the first time in more than a decade”.

Ryan noted that Howard and the then National party leader Tim Fischer “bore an enormous political cost among many of their traditional supporters when instituting national gun laws”.

“But they weren’t relentlessly attacked as abandoning the base simply by virtue of challenging supporters, even on such a difficult issue”.

The Senate president argued the tonal shift in Australian politics has been accompanied by a change in the dynamic of the chamber he currently presides over.

He said the Senate, following the demise of the Democrats, the rise of the Greens and the proliferation of micro-party crossbenchers, had “partially evolved from a place of process seeking to negotiate the passage of legislation, to ... a stage for expressing alternative views, and even occasionally seeking attention”.

He said the Australian Senate was drifting in the direction of the American system which manifests “entrenched positions, or explicit unrelated trade-offs” when legislation moves through the chamber. Ryan said recent debates, including firearms registration, euthanasia and funding of apprenticeships were all discussed in a context of “trade-offs for support on unrelated legislation”.

“This change has brought the role and function of the Senate into question from governments of both parties.”

He said voters were tired of grandstanding and gridlock. “Governments need to be able to legislate the agenda they take to elections, otherwise we will see frustration at democracy increase.

“Democracy needs elections to work, people need to see their vote matters and does change things, in order to avoid the frustration we see in other democracies.”

Ryan floated a couple of potential reforms to disrupt the current dynamic. He noted the Salisbury convention that has been in the place in the United Kingdom since the late 1940s – a convention that explicitly states that the House of Lords will not block a policy that is explicitly part of a party’s election manifesto.

He said if that practice were to be adopted by the Australian parliament, it would require major party agreement and the application of “uniquely Australian characteristics”, such as strictures on the timing of election announcements and “full publication of policy details and explicit costings by the independent Parliamentary Budget Office to ensure the details were clear and not subject to obfuscation”.

Ryan said adopting the convention would require senators to acknowledge the difference between supporting a program of an elected government, and acquiescing to it.

He says the convention would also be helpful in crystallising choices for voters at election time. Voters would know “that casting a ballot will have a specific consequence in these matters”.

He says the routine application of sunset clauses could be another positive change. “These would ensure that issues are debated again at a future time, and overcome the fear that a new status quo is established that is very difficult to unwind no matter an electoral outcome.”