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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (10 July) . . Page.. 2404 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

occurred and we would have a supervised injecting room. I voted against the Appropriation Bill when it was last debated, and I stand by that action for all the reasons I put at the time. I will not go back over all those reasons now.

But some of the arguments that have been put, particularly those by members who have been claiming that we are going to lose lives if the supervised injecting place is not put in place, a claim which I believe has truth in it, are emotive to the extent that lives have been lost for other reasons, other system failures in this government. I could name a couple in mental health and in disabilities. That is one of things I need to remind members of. I have very strong reasons on behalf of the Greens for opposing the budget of this government and the priorities it sets. It is my entitlement to do that as a member of this Assembly.

The Greens have always assessed every issue that comes up in this Assembly on its merits and have voted accordingly. We have also attempted to pursue our own policy agenda through putting up various private members bills, motions and amendments. This approach necessitates the need occasionally to negotiate with other members to achieve outcomes that may not be perfect but at least go some way to meeting our objectives. We assessed the merits of the Appropriation Bill in the same way as we assess other bills before the Assembly. Unfortunately, the Appropriation Bill is an all-or-nothing bill. There is no scope for non-government members to attempt to amend it. Thus we are annually presented with the dilemma of weighing up the good and bad parts of the budget and deciding whether overall we can support it or not.

It is public knowledge that we have not supported previous Liberal budgets, but this has been done not because we just want to be oppositional but because we genuinely do not like the policies of this Liberal government and have had no role in putting together these budgets or, for that matter, establishing this government.

The Greens respect the Westminster system of governance. However, we have been prepared to explore alternative approaches such as the draft budget. We are not the British parliament or the federal parliament. We are not even a state parliament. We have a unique parliamentary system for a unique territory. Mr Humphries was incorrect when he said today that the Greens expected Mrs Carnell to resign. In fact, I made it quite clear in the very first statements that I made after the events after the budget went down that Mrs Carnell had choices. We have been saying that consistently since we have been in this house.

The Greens do not believe that the failure of an Appropriation Bill to pass is automatically a vote of no confidence in the government-Mr Kaine also made that point quite clearly-just as the failure or amendment of any other government bill is not a vote of no confidence. Obviously, however, it could be grounds for moving a separate motion of no confidence in the Chief Minister.

In the situation before us, the rejection of the Appropriation Bill was clearly not a sign that a majority of members had lost confidence in the Chief Minister. Unfortunately, the vote on the Appropriation Bill became bound up in the issue of the supervised injection place rather than an assessment of the government's budget as a whole.

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