Page 2073 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 28 May 1991
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SUPPLY BILL 1991-92
Debate resumed from 2 May 1991, on motion by Mr Duby:
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
MS FOLLETT (Leader of the Opposition) (8.26): Mr Speaker, the Labor Party supports the passage of the Supply Bill. In speaking about the Bill this evening, I would like to make some brief comments about the politics of supply Bills and also about the financial management of this Government, particularly as it relates to the Supply Bill that is currently before us.
The Supply Bill is a standard financial measure which provides money for government services in the period from the start of a financial year until the main Appropriation Bill, which implements the budget, is passed. Supply Bills, of course, have a vexed recent history. I think very few of us could forget the disgraceful performance by the Senate in the Federal Parliament in refusing to vote on the Whitlam Government's supply Bills in 1975. The conservative side of politics has continued to use supply as a political weapon whenever it believes that opportunism and dispensing with principle and convention may be rewarded by the seizure of power.
There have been two very recent examples of this kind of use of a supply Bill as a political weapon. The most recent, of course, are in Western Australia and in Victoria. In Western Australia last year, members of the Liberal Party conducted a great deal of sabre rattling and threats against the Government of Dr Lawrence. Their threats, of course, were not to allow supply. In the event they did not have the stomach to follow through with their threat, and they were made to look extraordinarily foolish. We have a similar situation in Victoria. In that State, of course, given that the ambition of Mr Kennett knows absolutely no bounds, it is quite impossible to tell what might happen. Mr Kennett's outrageous threat to discriminate against government members shows again that his own lust for power is unlikely to be stopped by mere principles like the passage of supply.
Mr Speaker, the Labor Party in this Assembly supports the right of a government to have supply because of the very fact that supply itself is non-controversial. Supply Bills do not carry any real policy implications. They are not an expression of the government's agenda which can be rejected or amended by a parliament. To create the confusion and the potential crisis which would result from rejecting or deferring supply is not acceptable. Playing games with the payroll for government employees is not acceptable, particularly when, in the case of our own government employees, they already have to bear the burden of serving
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