> "I've read a few places in Australia if your Parliament deadlocks, it is dissolved and that actually happened once?" This is a trait that applies to (nearly?

> "I've read a few places in Australia if your Parliament deadlocks, it is dissolved and that actually happened once?" This is a trait that applies to (nearly?) all countries that follow the Westminster system, which is to say Britain and many of its former colonies, including Australia. The basic concept is that if a vote of non-confidence is passed, then the ruling government must dissolve and elections must be called. The trick here is that all appropriations bills are automatically considered to also be confidence votes. I'm not sure about Australia, but in Canada it goes one step further: any bill, introduced by the ruling party, that represents their core party agenda, is also automatically a confidence vote. So, for example, if a party wins an election on a platform of banning gay marriage, and the subsequent bill fails to pass, the government is dissolved. This can have some positive effects - it tends to make party platforms more moderate and the legislation itself less extreme. This only works in multi-party systems though, since in a two-party system the majority will simply never lose a confidence vote.