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In Canada the Party Whip is the member of a political party in the Canadian House of Commons, the Canadian Senate or a provincial legislature charged with ensuring party discipline among members of the caucus. In the House of Commons, the whip's office prepares and distributes vote sheets identifying the party position on each bill or motion. [7]
Until 1994, a party's more senior whip held the title "Whip", while the more junior whip was styled "Deputy Whip". In 1994, those titles became "Chief Whip" and "Whip", respectively. The current Chief Government Whip in the House of Representatives is Joanne Ryan of the Australian Labor Party, in office since 31 May 2022. [1]
Labor elected its whip that day, and the Liberals appointed an additional whip on 2 June 1994, with the new whip responsible for business in the second chamber. [43] That arrangement persists today. Labor and the Liberals each have a chief whip and two whips in the House of Representatives and a chief whip and a two deputy whips in the Senate.
The Chief Whip is a political leader whose task is to enforce the whipping system, which aims to ensure that legislators who are members of a political party attend and vote on legislation as the party leadership prescribes.
A party whip works to ensure that the number of party members in the legislature or at committee meetings is adequate to win a vote if one is called. When a vote is called in the legislature, division bells ring until the whips for each party are satisfied that there are sufficient members of their own party present for the vote to proceed.
In the United Kingdom and Canada, crossing the floor means leaving one's party entirely and joining another caucus. For example, leaving an opposition party to support the government (or vice versa), leaving or being expelled from the party one ran with at election and sitting as a clear [note 1] independent, or even leaving one opposition party to join another.
Party discipline is important for all systems of government that allow parties to hold political power, as it can often be a determining factor in both the practical functionality of the government, as well as the efficient function of legitimate political process. [6] Parliamentary groups can have discipline analogous to party discipline.
In New Zealand, the concept of a whip was inherited from British parliamentary politics. [2] All political parties that have four or more members in Parliament have at least one party whip. Parties with 25 to 44 members are allowed two whips (one senior and one junior), and parties with 45 or more members are entitled to three whips (one senior ...