Malcolm Turnbull got fewer bills passed than each of the previous three governments

The Turnbull government had a lower rate of passing legislation that most other modern governments, including the Abbott, Gillard and Rudd governments.

The past 10 years of Australian politics have been characterised by chaos and internal division, featuring hung parliaments, leadership spills and governments with a minority in the Senate.

Most recently, the former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull had to engage in messy negotiations over legislation not just with crossbenchers, but with his own party room.

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Because of this I’ve updated my analysis calculating the rate of acts passed per day by governments. This analysis makes an attempt to look at the ability of a government to pass legislation, and the volume. This is a quantity over quality approach, and obviously not all governments will try to pass as many bills as another. Some will prefer a “small government” approach, for example (but even removing “red tape” mostly requires legislating).

It is of particular relevance, however, to minority governments, or governments that have a minority in the upper house – basically if you can’t negotiate with crossbenchers or the opposition then you won’t get as much legislation through.

It is otherwise difficult to count the number of bills lost to failed negotiations, as the outcome can differ depending on the circumstances (for example, a bill may not actually be voted down explicitly, or may never even be introduced without crossbench support).

For this analysis I took all of the Commonwealth of Australia Numbered Acts and assigned them to a prime minister, political party and parliament based on the date it was passed through the Senate.

From this dataset, I counted the total acts for each prime minister, party, and parliament. Then, I determined the number of days in office for each prime minister, and the number of days each parliament and party governed. Using these figures you can calculate a rate of acts per day, which accounts for different lengths of prime ministers’ or governments’ terms.

Here are the updated results grouped by prime minister:



Here’s the same rate per day versus the first year each person became prime minister:



The general trend has been toward an increasing rate of legislation over time.

Julia Gillard’s government still has the highest rate. Turnbull’s tenure rates just above the Gorton government of 1968 to 1971.

So, what about the Morrison government, with 2019 reportedly the shortest pre-April parliamentary sitting schedule this century?

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It really depends on what happens following the next federal budget. There are currently 123 government bills before the Senate and House of Representatives, as well as whatever else is added following the budget in April. If a decent amount of these are passed, then the Morrison government’s rate could end up slightly above Turnbull’s rate. Otherwise, if only the bare minimum of budget-related bills are passed the rate will be lower, continuing the downward trend of the past three governments.

Notes

In the two previous editions of this analysis, I used the date of assent – this one now uses the date legislation was passed through the Senate as the cut-off for assigning legislation to a government.

You can read the previous articles about the Gillard government here, and the Abbott government here.

There is also a similar analysis done by Sally Young, an associate professor of political science, who updated my figures in August for the Abbott government.