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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 9 Hansard (23 November) . . Page.. 2581 ..

to increase appropriation or taxes, ..." is, in regard to appropriation, expressed in and given effect by section 56 of the Constitution. House of Representatives Practice paraphrases it as follows:

. The Executive Government is charged with the management of revenue and with payments for the public service.

. It is a long established and strictly observed rule which expresses a principle of the highest constitutional importance that no public charge can be incurred except on the initiative of the Executive Government.

. The Executive Government demands money, the House grants it, but the House does not vote money unless required by the Government, and does not impose taxes unless needed for the public service as declared by Ministers of the Crown.

10. The rule is an old one that goes back at least to a standing order of 1713 which declared a permanent prohibition of private Members' financial initiatives. In The Politics of Financial Control Reid comments that when the rule was written into the Australian Constitution the architects, mostly practising politicians from the colonial Parliaments, were suspicious of Executive strength in the new federal body. They liberalised the rule even further than it had been liberalised in the British North America Act. In line with the Westminster standing order (as distinct from Westminster practice of the day), they omitted reference to taxation, so as to leave scope for private Members to introduce proposals on the tariff. And, accordingly, section 56 of the Constitution provided simply that expenditure proposals 'shall not pass' without a recommendation from the Governor-General. He added that it was interesting that in subsequent years, both in Canada and Australia, the respective Houses, under the influence of powerful Executives, had adopted all the restrictive interpretations of the rule - and more - that have been made at Westminster.

11. Quick and Garran state, in relation to section 56 "The constitutional principle, which vests in the Crown the sole responsibility over national expenditure, is a most important one, and it greatly enhances the power and influence of the Executive.". They quote (at page 681) Hearn's Government of England:

It is accordingly a fundamental rule of the House of Commons that the House will not entertain any petition or any notice for a grant of money, or which involves the expenditure of any money, unless it be communicated by the Crown. We are so accustomed to the general practice, and the deviations from it have been so inconsiderable, that its importance is scarcely appreciated. Those, however, who have had the experience of the results which followed from its absence, of the scramble among the members of the Legislature to obtain a share of the public money for their respective constituencies, of the 'log-rolling,' and of the predominance of local interests to the entire neglect of the public interest, have not hesitated to declare that 'good government is not attainable while the unrestricted powers of voting public money and of managing the local expenditure of

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