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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (10 July) . . Page.. 2383 ..
MR HUMPHRIES: You could not. You tell us that you were going to pass the budget by splitting the two appropriations, a brilliant idea! "We are going to split the two appropriations, having one for the SIP and one for the budget." We tried that. It was not going to work.
Mr Stanhope: When did you try that?
MR HUMPHRIES: In discussions with Independents.
Mr Stanhope: Did they knock that back?
MR HUMPHRIES: Yes. Of course, why would they not? It was a patently facile way of being able to pass the budget. If we could have done that, why would we not have done it? Do you think that it did not occur to us to do that? Again I ask the question: how was the opposition going to pass the budget? It could not have passed the budget, Mr Speaker.
The government had a choice. It was the choice offered by Labor or it was the choice offered by the crossbenchers. We took the obvious choice, a choice which any government, I think, would have taken in the same circumstances. I have no doubt about that. The same choice would have been taken by any government in the same circumstances.
I remind the Labor Party that it was faced with a somewhat analogous position in 1993. It did not choose to resign when its budget was rejected because an amendment was made which it found unacceptable; it chose to soldier on. It chose to accept that it had to make a compromise. This party has done the same thing, this government has done the same thing. If those opposite do not like it, they should not have begun a tradition in this place, as they put it, a tradition rejected by every other parliament in this country, of blocking supply.
Mr Quinlan: Rubbish!
MR HUMPHRIES: You talk rubbish about it working only in the upper house, that supply can be blocked only in the upper house. That is garbage. You blocked supply-full stop, end of story-and you complain about the results. Sorry, look in a mirror and see why you are in the position that you are in today.
That so much of the standing and temporary orders be suspended as would prevent the consideration of all stages of the Supervised Injecting Place Trial Amendment Bill 2000 forthwith.
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