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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (10 July) . . Page.. 2415 ..
MR STEFANIAK: You bet we voted. We did not oppose your budget, Mr Berry. I remind you of a amendment I moved to the budget in 1991 to express displeasure with the very serious cuts you were making to the Australian Federal Police force and indicate what programs could not occur because of that. But that did not affect your budget bottom line. It did not affect the passage of the budget. I think I indicated at that time that you would live or die by your decisions in the budget, but you were entitled to make those decisions as the government.
Mr Speaker, I think you moved an amendment in 1993. Again, it did not threaten the government. It might have gone a little bit further, but it did not threaten the government's budget. The government's budget got though. Federally and in virtually all states-someone might correct me-Labor Party oppositions do not vote against a government's budget. It is a fundamental tenet of political stability that you people have.
There are other ways of opposing a government. We have seen them in this place. We have seen no-confidence motions succeed-one in Rosemary Follett in 1989 and one in Trevor Kaine in June 1991. We saw one against Mr Berry as a minister in early 1994. Minority governments can change as a result of them. We have seen oppositions make substantive points. I was not here for very long in the Second Assembly, but obviously the Liberal opposition made some very telling points against the Follett Labor government. It won the election. It got a lot more votes than Labor and became the government in 1995. It did that without voting down a government's budget.
There are always going to be issues an opposition can run on and embarrass the government on. They do not even have to be real issues. Mr Berry, the amazing coverage you have had on some of the most nonsensical issues I have seen-the futsal slab, the lakeside arena, for example-is a testament of that. I will give you credit for that, Mr Berry. You picked an absolute non-issue-I think you conceded in estimates that if it had been a car park you would not have worried-and turned it into something that has probably been a very good issue for you because it has been in the media for many months, if not years. You have made political mileage out of it. Things like that are always going to crop up and be there for an opposition.
If an opposition dissatisfied with a minority government can cobble together the numbers to succeed in a motion of no confidence in the Chief Minister of the time, then they will succeed in changing the government. There are many proper ways, using precedent of procedure and tradition, to overturn a government and, if need be, to toss out a government without voting against its budget. For Labor to madly blame everyone else for where we are today is ridiculous. You have only yourselves to blame. In the interests of stability in this territory, I hope you have learnt your lesson. I doubt it, though.
MR BERRY
(3.28): I just cannot believe that the Independents in this place are not going to express a view in this important debate; it is just appalling. Mr Speaker, I will start on the issue of commitment. Six months ago or so we had a commitment from government members-in particular, the Chief Minister, the Minister for Health and Community Care and the Minister for Urban Services-to a trial on a drug injecting room. At the time the Labor Party, though we had sympathies for what was being
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