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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 2 Hansard (11 March) . . Page.. 635 ..
MS CARNELL
(continuing):right to have their budget. Those opposite have argued the whole way through this debate that it is the Government's responsibility to bring down a budget and to stand by their budget, but in the last four years they have opposed every budget. Mr Speaker, that is just not logical.
The budget certainly is an extremely important part, in fact, probably the most important part, of any government's role, but we will have minority governments in this place, certainly more often than not, and maybe always. That means that our capacity to maintain anything like stable government will be based upon guaranteeing the government in power their budget. Certainly, there are no problems whatsoever for oppositions, if they happen to have the numbers, to run no-confidence motions in the government; but not to give the government their budget, by the very nature of that, will either produce chronically unstable government or, alternatively, budgets that never make some of the decisions that need to be made in this place. This is something that this Assembly has to come to grips with.
Do we really want to make sure on our tenth anniversary of self-government that we step forward into another century, into the next 10 years of self-government, with an Assembly that is stable and that represents the community? We do not want to end up with the sort of instability or lack of hard decision-making that the approach that is being taken at this stage will inevitably produce; that is, oppositions, this Opposition, opposing budgets every time, regardless, while at the same time arguing, as they have for the last day-and-a-half, that the Government has absolute total responsibility for their budget. How logical is that, Mr Speaker? It is not very logical, I would have to say.
I urge all members of this Assembly to go back and have a look at this debate and accept that, yes, it is the role of the government of the day to bring down their budget. Certainly, the role of the Opposition is to pick holes in that, to scrutinise that budget; but at the end of the day, Mr Speaker, if it is the role of the Government to bring down the budget, then it is essential, for stable government, for this Assembly to also pass those budgets, or, alternatively, to bring down the Government. Now, there is another way to do that. You can do that by a no-confidence motion. That is the way it should be done.
Mr Berry: No, it can be done either way.
MS CARNELL: Yes, it can be done either way. It should happen via a no-confidence motion.
Mr Berry: Either way is acceptable.
MR SPEAKER: Order! Please, Mr Berry.
MS CARNELL
: Not via a budget. If the rules are that the opposition will always oppose a budget, always, regardless, then I suppose the budget is being used as a no-confidence motion every year. That is a stupid scenario and it is one that will undermine this place in the future. It will cause ongoing problems. It will mean that whoever is standing in this spot will obviously have to rely on the crossbenches and do whatever it takes to bring the crossbenches on board with any budget. I am quite happy
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