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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (10 July) . . Page.. 2376 ..

MR HUMPHRIES: Oh, there is a difference between what Mr Connolly was saying then and what you are saying now! The fact is that the situation was very similar. At the time there was a threat.

Mr Berry: We are talking about line by line compared with the whole budget.

MR SPEAKER: Order, please. You will all have a chance to participate. Let Mr Humphries speak, please.

MR HUMPHRIES: At the time-in 1995-there was a threat to the government's budget. We were told that the budget could be rejected. We said, "We might have to consider resigning over this issue if you are going to reject our budget. It is our first budget since coming to office. We can hardly walk away from our first budget." The Labor Party sprang to life and said, "No, that is not the case. You do not have to resign if your budget is rejected or amended. You have to come back and negotiate." That is what you said.

Mr Hargreaves: A line item of the budget.

MR HUMPHRIES: Oh, a line item!

Mr Hargreaves: Not the whole budget.

MR HUMPHRIES: I see. So what Mr Connolly was saying did not apply if the whole budget was rejected, but did apply if only a line was rejected. Sorry, Mr Hargreaves, it does not work that way. You cannot weasel out of this one, Mr Hargreaves. You know that Mr Connolly was saying that the process here is different from the one in other parliaments, that the rejection of a budget does not lead automatically to a government's resignation. Governments might choose to resign if they feel that the matter is one of confidence, but even with your own words you admit that this was not a matter of confidence.

Let us go back and peruse the Hansard. In the course of the budget debate, not once did the people opposite say to the government, "If the budget is rejected tonight or a line in the budget is rejected, you should resign." Not once did you say that in the course of that debate. Go ahead and look at what the budget debate actually consisted of. If you thought that we should have resigned when the budget was rejected, why did you not say so? Did you forget to say so? Did you think it was not important? Did you think it would be just taken as read?

Mr Stanhope: You said that you would stand or fall on it. You changed your mind pretty quickly.

MR HUMPHRIES: The fact is that you did not think it was going to happen.

Mr Stanhope: What does "stand or fall" mean?

MR HUMPHRIES: The fact is that you did not know. Your own spokesman made it perfectly clear five years ago-

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