Who got makes money bills and who got voted out in the US mid-terms? The one and the same - the Legislative.
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Mid-term elections as a check and balance on the Executive are impossible in Australia due to the Feds and States being Westminster systems. This means the Executive is embedded in the Legislative as the Prime Minister or Premier led Executive Cabinet, not to mention the Executive functions of the Governor-General/Governors and Monarch. Would Australia benefit by having a Presidential system at the federal level? We are certainly mature enough and there have been some Australian governments that could have done with a party-machine based check and balance on their behaviour in parliament.
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I like the idea of the executive cabinet coming from elected parliamentarians. This allows the people to keep the truly repugnant out of, not only parliament, but also cabinet. Yet in these days of ever-increasing social democracy an officious administrator is needed over a politician to keep the reigns on all the spending and ensure that the intended outcomes are met. Neither of these issues addresses the problem of how to structure the executive so that there is strong separation of powers between the arms of government.
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