Special Minister of State Don Farrell has tasked the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters with looking at, among other things, adopting a four-year parliamentary term.

The argument is sometimes made that three-year terms make serious reform hard because there is little time to implement it.

But governments that are serious about reform don’t even need the full three years. Gough Whitlam’s first term was only about 18 months, and Bob Hawke’s first term was just a little longer. They are remembered as great reformers because they had the heart and courage to make reform happen in the time available. 

A three-year term has at least two benefits over a four-year term: it means parliamentarians face the people they represent more often, and it keeps Senate terms at six years instead of a more unwieldy eight years.

In addition, moving to a four-year term would require a constitutional amendment, and by extension a referendum.

By contrast, politicians could commit to seeing out the full three-year term without any constitutional change. 

In all states and territories bar Tasmania, elections happen on scheduled days known as soon as the previous election has been held. This allows for forward planning and removes the political advantage for a government to surprise the opposition by going to an early election.

Back in 2016, senior journalist Michelle Grattan identified “fixed” three-year terms as a good compromise between our current three-year terms (which often ended up as two-and-a-half-year terms due to early elections) and four-year terms.

Labor’s first term went by with the government failing to deliver truth in political advertising laws, the second tranche of whistleblower law reform or increasing the number of senators for the territories. Why spend its second term discussing something the Prime Minister has already said won’t happen, when it hasn’t gotten through the to-do list from last term?