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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (10 July) . . Page.. 2430 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

When the term "block" is used, people should understand the parallels with 1975 and they should understand that refusal to pass-to block-is different from rejection of the budget. The Senate refused to bring on the debate. This place did no such thing.

Mr Speaker, the government may stand up and say that effectively it is not the same and it may have a point in saying it; but, for heaven's sake, let us at least use the appropriate terminology and when we make a comparison, let us make an honest and realistic comparison, rather than the attempt that has been made over the past two weeks to compare the current situation with the situation in 1975 as they are distinctly different.

MR STANHOPE: (Leader of the Opposition) (4.25): Mr Speaker, I have to say that, if there is one capacity that best characterises the performance of this government over the last five or six years, it is its ability to put a spin on any circumstance. It is a positive spin when dealing with anything the government is involved in and a very negative spin when it is dealing with its opponents. Of course, there has been a lot of both over the last 10 days.

The government was, as my colleague has just indicated, very quick to draw parallels between the ACT budget being voted down and the constitutional crisis that the nation faced in 1975. We have heard much discussion about that today. The connection is specious, to say the least. We have had our own constitutional crisis, according to the Chief Minister. Mr Speaker, that contention is simply overblown rhetoric.

The differences between what happened in this house and what happened federally in 1975 are stark. In 1975 the Senate, a house of review, refused to pass the Whitlam government's budget that had already passed the House of Representatives. The Senate is a house of review, with no part in making or breaking governments. This Assembly, like the House of Representatives, is the house of government.

In each of those houses the opposition is entitled to test the standing of the government by moving against the appropriation bills; it is entitled to test the standing of the government. That is what Labor has traditionally done here and what Labor in opposition has done in the House of Representatives, by moving amendments to the motion for the second reading of the federal budget. That is what Labor does in the House of Representatives.

There was no constitutional crisis because the government's budget was voted down. There were always procedures and conventions available to resolve the impasse. Labor, in fact, offered a resolution. The crisis we had over the past 10 days was a political crisis generated by the government's failure to recognise the strength of Mr Osborne's resolve.

The crisis was generated by the government's unwillingness to believe that he would have as great a disrespect for the conventions of the parliament as it does itself. It was exacerbated by an extraordinary lack of leadership on behalf of the Chief Minister and a willingness that we have seen before to abandon the conventions and procedures that have guided Western parliamentary democracies so well for so long.

The health minister has spoken often and loftily about his "higher order of principle". As recently as last Tuesday, 4 July, he climbed the stairway again when speaking to Keri Phillips. Mr Moore said that he applied his higher order to guide him in implementing

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