TCE Legal Studies Practice Questions

Responsible government is the Westminster convention that the executive (the Prime Minister or Premier and Cabinet) must retain the confidence of, and answer to, the elected lower house of parliament. It works through several linked mechanisms.

• Formation from the majority party. The Governor-General (or Governor) commissions as Prime Minister (or Premier) the person able to command a majority in the lower house, usually the leader of the party or coalition with the most seats. Ministers are drawn from within parliament, so the people who exercise executive power are themselves elected members answerable to the chamber that can remove them.
• Confidence and loss of office. By convention, if the government loses a vote of no confidence, or loses supply (the appropriation bills that fund government), it must resign or advise a general election. This ties the executive's continuation in office directly to ongoing parliamentary support, rather than to a fixed term the executive controls alone.
• Ministerial responsibility. Individual ministers must answer in parliament for the conduct of their portfolio and its department, including through Question Time, and by convention should resign for serious personal or departmental failure. Collectively, Cabinet must present a united position and defend its decisions to parliament, and can be brought down as a whole by a loss of confidence.
• Scrutiny mechanisms. Parliament holds the executive to account day to day through Question Time, parliamentary committees that can call ministers and public servants to give evidence, and debate on legislation and the budget the executive must bring before parliament to be funded and enacted.

Together these mechanisms mean the executive cannot govern independently of parliament: it is formed from parliament, requires parliament's ongoing confidence to survive, and is continually required to explain and defend its actions to parliament, which is the core meaning of "responsible" government.

Indicative mark allocation (ATARMAxxing scheme, not a TASC mark scheme; TASC rates this course by criteria only): 2 marks for identifying that the executive is drawn from and answerable to the lower house; 2 marks for explaining the confidence/supply mechanism; 2 marks for explaining ministerial responsibility and parliamentary scrutiny (Question Time, committees).