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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (10 July) . . Page.. 2423 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

While the people opposite are saying that they would have got the budget through, they have not exactly explained how. I think that, before we accept this broad and strange to believe assertion, it would be good to be offered some evidence, some indication of what your tactic would have been. Do not tell us about splitting the budget; that was not going to work. We looked at that issue, we explored that issue, and it was not going to work; so where was the formula? It did not exist, Mr Speaker.

Mr Kaine described the bill before the house today as an expedient to keep the government in office. I have to confess that there is a kernel of truth in that. There is not a principle at work here that says that suddenly, miraculously, the SIP is of such a problematic nature that it needs to be put back for 18 months. No-one has pretended that that is the case at all in this debate. It is about allowing the government to do the other good things in our $1.8 billion budget without the encumbrance of not being able to get through the stage of passing the budget which the $800,000 SIP represents. Yes, it is about concentrating on the bigger picture rather than the smaller picture.

I have to ask this question: given that we have seen no evidence of how Labor would deal with this matter any differently, are we expected to believe that Labor, had it fallen into office over this crisis, would somehow have taken a different approach at the end of the day?

Mr Quinlan: Two bills.

MR HUMPHRIES: It would not have worked, Mr Quinlan. We tried that. It would not have worked, even if we had Mr Quinlan's two bills before the house, if the Independents said, "Sorry, while you have a SIP bill on the table, we are not going to pass your budget bill."

Mr Quinlan: So, what is next after that?

MR HUMPHRIES: My question exactly, Mr Quinlan. If the Labor government comes in in the middle of a crisis, forms a government, finds itself in exactly the same position as the Liberal government, cannot pass its budget because of the SIP, what does it do? Does it say, "We will hand the reins of government back to the Liberal Party"? Of course not. Do you think that we were born yesterday?

What Mr Quinlan would do over this issue, through you, Mr Speaker, is he would accept the reality and he-

Mr Quinlan: There is your problem. It is a problem for both of us-you joining us.

MR HUMPHRIES: I will come back to that in a minute, Mr Quinlan. What would happen, of course, is that those people opposite would do a deal as well. They would compromise on this issue because it is not worth losing government over. Do not tell us in this place that you are so principled that you would lose office over a SIP if that was the issue facing you in government. Do not give us that rubbish because we would not believe it, neither would anybody else in this community.

Should the government have resigned, which is the assertion commonly made? Mr Speaker, this is what Crispin Hull of the Canberra Times had to say about that issue:

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