Ever since 1929 there have been calls for four-year parliamentary terms. And with our recent revolving door of prime ministers it might be time to revisit the plan and consider the flow-on benefits it could have, writes Mike Steketee.

Eager to hit the ground running and concerned more with politics than good policy, the new minister announces new projects that are barely thought bubbles.

A solar-powered train? What a great idea.

This week's episode of Utopia on the ABC may have been a send-up, but it captured one of the problems of modern government - short-term thinking, even if masked as long-term vision.

Increasing the time between elections to four or five years would help. Even the present three-year term is a misnomer, given that the average time between federal elections in Australia since federation has been about two-and-a-half years. That gives a government time to do some governing in the first year before it starts thinking about how to win another election in the next 18 months.

There is no better example than the Abbott government, which came to power with a big majority, introduced a tough budget meant to bring down the deficit and which, by the time of its second budget, was running scared and reversed course. Admittedly this is an extreme case, given how comprehensively its first budget misconceived the politics by breaking multiple election promises, imposing the harshest cuts on those least well-off and offending every fundamental notion of fairness.

But an extra year or 18 months would have enabled a more considered approach, rather than one that has put the long-term task of budget repair further behind. As well, it would have given Tony Abbott more breathing space before the nervous nellies in the party room started getting desperate about holding on to their seats. Arguably in Abbott's case it would only have postponed the inevitable but the same may not have been true of the coup against Kevin Rudd.

In federal politics, four-year terms of parliament have always been the bridesmaid but never the bride. Recent prime ministers and opposition leaders have supported them. Most voters are more than happy to have less politics and fewer elections. But the idea has never quite made it to the political altar.

It is a metaphor for the difficulty of implementing reform in modern politics. But success on this front also would make it easier to achieve other change.

Australia is one of just seven countries listed by the Inter-Parliamentary Union that has a three-year term of parliament, putting us in the company of New Zealand, Mexico, the Philippines, El Salvador, Qatar and Nauru. By contrast 91 have four-year terms and 129 five years. The latter include countries with which we often like to compare ourselves, like Canada and the UK, which recently also implemented a fixed term.

In Australia, every state and territory parliament has managed to introduce four-year terms except Queensland and there Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has asked a parliamentary committee for a report on the issue and the Opposition already has drawn up a draft bill to implement a fixed four-year parliament.

Does a four-year term guarantee better government? No. It didn't stop NSW, the first to introduce the change in Australia in 1981, from setting the gold standard in leadership instability and providing some of the worst government we have seen at the tail end of the Labor era. On the other hand, it arguably has helped give Mike Baird the courage to implement unpopular reforms like electricity privatisation.

At the federal level, we don't have much to lose, given that, with a revolving door of prime ministers, a towering budget deficit and a struggling economy, we are taking on some of the characteristics of a banana republic.

A longer time between elections at least creates the opportunity for an improvement. Governments can concentrate on governing, even if that seems a novel idea in an era of unstable leadership, wall-to-wall opinion polls, 24/7 social media and an addiction to pandering to populist sentiment.

Even better are elections held every four years on a fixed date, providing greater stability and certainty and taking away the advantage of the governing party in determining the timing of the election. That would increase the average time between elections by 18 months and would save money, with the last federal election costing $198 million to stage.

NSW introduced four-year fixed parliaments in 1995, with exceptions only if the government loses control of the lower house or if the governor judges it is acting illegally. There are variations on the theme in Victoria and South Australia, where elections can be called after three years but not before, unless a government loses a majority in the lower house.

Calls for a four-year term federally were made as long ago as 1929, when it was recommended by a royal commission into the constitution. Similar proposals by a constitutional convention in 1983 and a constitutional commission in 1988 led to its being put in a referendum by the Hawke government in '88.

Despite widespread support for the principle, it was defeated because it included provisions for a reduction in the Senate term from eight years to four years and for simultaneous elections of both houses - both changes the opposition campaigned against. Since then, federal parliamentary committees have recommended four-year terms on at least two occasions and Kevin Rudd as opposition leader promised a referendum on fixed four-year terms.

The issue is not without its complications. It requires a change to the constitution, which means a referendum in which a majority of voters nationally, as well as in four of the six states, have to vote in favour for it to be carried.

No referendum put to voters since 1977 has passed. The very minimum requirement for success is for both major parties to support a proposal. But it should be possible to achieve that, given Labor's backing and an assumption that Malcolm Turnbull would support it, as have previous Liberal leaders.

But from there it gets harder. Unless Senate elections are held at the same time as those for the lower house, we could end up with more elections rather than fewer. At the moment, Senate terms are for six years, with half the Senate up for election every three years, unless the government opts for a double dissolution, which sees the whole Senate facing the people.

To maintain the link between both houses, the Senate term could be extended to eight years, as was done with the Legislative Council in NSW. But many would regard eight years as too long to wait to pass judgment on their senators, particularly some of those elected with not much more than a handful of votes through preference deals.

Labor's policy is for "simultaneous, fixed four-year terms for the House of Representatives and the Senate". While House and Senate elections generally have been held together, there have been exceptions.

But Labor's approach threatens bipartisan support: the Coalition parties opposed the 1988 referendum on the basis that it reduced the power of the Senate. In a report by a joint parliamentary committee in 2005, both major parties recommended a referendum on four-year terms but not that they be fixed and they left open the length of the Senate term.

That avoided the issue of the Senate's powers. One reason Labor likes a fixed term is that, on the assumption that the only reason a government could be forced to an early election is through a motion of no confidence being carried in the lower house, it would negate the power of the Senate to block the budget - the issue that prompted Governor-General John Kerr to sack the Whitlam government in 1975.

Given that any referendum proposal would first have to be approved by parliament, including a Senate in which the Government does not have the numbers, the path of least resistance could be four year terms for the House and eight years for the Senate. Perhaps that would even help satisfy a craving for more stable government.

Mike Steketee is a freelance journalist. He was formerly a columnist and national affairs editor for The Australian.