Bills

Constitution (Appropriation and Supply) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 9 February 2016.)

Mr KNOLL (Schubert) (12:01): I rise today to follow on from the member for Bragg's contribution, which finished right on the stroke of the end of yesterday's sitting. I want to start off with a quote, as we are dealing with the Constitution (Appropriation and Supply) Amendment Bill. I am not one for looking at Catholic or religious history, but I stumbled across this quote, which I feel is quite appropriate. It is a quote from Lord Acton I. He made this statement in April 1887 and it goes as such:

I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way against holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.

Essentially, Lord Acton was responding to a papal doctrine of infallibility at the First Vatican Council. I am going to say it was Pope Pius IX—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The 9^th?

Mr KNOLL: IX is nine, isn't it? There was a doctrine of papal infallibility put forward that basically said, 'This bloke is above the law, this bloke is above rebuke, and essentially he can do no wrong. He should not be questioned.' It is amazing that this bill before us today gave me impetus to seek out this quote, because I see so many parallels between what Lord Acton was fighting against then to what this bill has before us today. I know that may sound a little bit extreme and hyperbolised, but I do think that it is extremely valid.

Essentially, what the government is seeking to do here is create a sense that they are infallible, to basically recognise into law the fact that that pesky chamber known as the Legislative Council should not get in the way or should not even have any opportunity to get in the way of what the government is seeking to do when it comes to spending taxpayers' money. I find that notion absolutely reprehensible. The fact that we are even debating it here in this chamber today I find absolutely disgusting, and I think, if the people of South Australia were to really engage with and understand this concept, they would find it dangerous. They would find this concept extremely dangerous.

I think this bill comes as a result of recent history. I think that, with the past 14 years of Labor government and the past 14 years of a consistent government where you have had both the Attorney-General and the Premier in government since 2002—and certainly at least the Premier a minister since 2002—you find that, after a certain period of time in power, people find opposition to their whims and wishes become more and more irritating to them. So, it only seems quite fitting at this point, after having won their fourth election, that Labor decide, 'Well, we must be gods. We must be infallible; therefore, any risk even to the fallibility of our decision-making should be put aside.'

The provision as it currently stands in the Constitution Act is a key check and balance against the tyranny of unfettered power. It is essential to the separation of powers, and it is essential to our democracy. What is seeking to be changed in this bill is the fundamental balance between the executive and the parliament. We have a sovereign head of state, and she is a great lady whom I admire very much. Her representative in South Australia, Governor Hieu Van Le, again is a man who I think we all in this chamber respect immensely. Certainly, every interaction I have had with him has been one where I have come away impressed and humbled by the wisdom and the generosity of spirit of the man.

We in this chamber and those in the other chamber are elected to represent the people of South Australia. We are the supreme lawmaking body of this state—not the executive; the parliament—and the Constitution Act specifically provides for this. That is exactly why I find this bill so disgusting.

The next point I make is that there has never been an instance where the current convention to block a supply bill has been used. Never in South Australia have we seen an instance where opposition and minor parties have banded together to stop the government from putting through a consolidated appropriation bill to take money from the Consolidated Account. Indeed, the government does not even like the fact that even though it has never been done, there is still a risk that it could be done. Can I tell you how important and fundamental that risk is to the check and balance on the unfettered power of the South Australian Labor government.

What scares me is to think of the reverse of that argument: if this bill was to pass into law, what scary propositions have Labor got in their back pocket that they are so desperate to put through the parliament that they do not think they could get consensus for in the upper house? I am scared to think about what sort of crazy ideas and what crazy new taxes they want to think up without taking them to the people of South Australia. Why do they feel that they need to get rid of this provision in the Constitution Act so they can just ram through this thing after a month of it sitting on the Legislative Council Notice Paper?

I would like to point out some inconsistencies in the second reading speech of the Attorney-General which I will be pursuing. He talks about the fact that the current provisions are split into two, where there are appropriation bills that appropriate money for some purpose that has been previously authorised and then bills for purposes other than have been previously authorised.

Essentially, he is saying that some bills just say, 'Hey, we have spent money before and we are going to continue to spend it,' and others say, 'We are going to spend money in a new and different way,' or 'We are going to raise money in a new and different way.' Essentially, those two things are split. The second reading speech goes on to say:

…since at least 1981, the annual Appropriation Bill provides for appropriations both for previously authorised purposes, and for purposes not previously authorised…

That may be true. I would like the Attorney-General to tell us, since 1981, when a consolidated appropriation bill was not put through the house. I mean, if it has not happened in 35-odd years, why is it going to happen now?

The other point I would like to point out is that this straw man in this second reading speech is the weakest of strawmen I have ever seen. There is nothing stopping the government from splitting out appropriation bills into those two categories. There is no reason that we cannot have two appropriation bills—one for previously authorised and one for other than previously authorised—and split those two things out—absolutely nothing. If they did that, all previously authorised expenditure would go through as per the Constitution Act. This straw man that the Attorney has sought to put up bears no scrutiny and is blown down with the weakest of puffs. Indeed, a wheezing chronic asthmatic could blow over this straw man.

This bill is a manifestation of the worst elements of the Attorney's character. The Attorney is a man whom I have come to know quite well, and on certain occasions I see that what he does has merit. He certainly is undeniably the only bloke who actually puts any legislation through this place.

Mr Gardner: That's not usually a good thing.

Mr KNOLL: That's right; the merits of those bills can be debated certainly. The more I see of his character, the more I realise that he is a man who wants total control, who does not like to compromise, who sees his bills as works of art that are butchered by those in the other place, and a man who would seek to have his will presented, prosecuted and enacted unfettered, undeterred and unscrutinised. We on this side of the house will not stand for it; we will not stand for it. This public should be scared of the arrogance of the Attorney-General and the arrogance of this government in seeking to put this bill forward.

This bill certainly has another agenda. As the member for Bragg pointed out in her speech, it has been the Labor Party's wish for a long time to get rid of the upper house. They realise that it is going to be fairly impossible to do it, although the 1922 resolution of the Queensland parliament for their second chamber to sack themselves with a lifetime indexed salary certainly prevailed there, and some, cheekily, in our Legislative Council have remarked that they would be open to a job for life.

The truth is that the government is not going to be able to get rid of the second chamber, so what they are seeking to do is, 'If we can't get rid of it, let's neuter it. Let's make it impotent, let's make it no longer the house of review that it is there for. Let's make it so that it exists, but if it doesn't rubberstamp what we feel like we are just going to bypass it anyway.' That is disgusting and that is reprehensible.

The other point that I would make is that there have been a number of examples where opposition and minor parties have banded together to stop certain taxation measures. In my lifetime in this place, the only one that has come forward is the car park tax, or the transport development levy, because certainly a tax by any other name would smell as sweet, smell so sweet—I have to get my Shakespeare references better. The car park tax was actually not part of the Appropriation Bill; it was part of a statutes amendment budget measures bill. It was separated out into a different bill.

Certainly there is a difference between taxation measures and appropriation measures, but still, what happened with the car park tax is not an instance that this government can point to about why its agenda is being stymied. I do not accept that argument in the first place, because we went to an election; we went to the 2014 election. The government put the transport development levy to the people of South Australia. We as the Liberal Party opposed that measure as being just another blatant tax grab on a certain section of the South Australian economy, and 53 per cent of the people of South Australia preferred our plan to the Labor Party's plan.

Say what you want about winning the election—and we will have that debate in a subsequent bill—but the people of South Australia as a whole voted against a transport development levy. It was a clear point of differentiation between the two major parties, and 45 per cent of the primary vote and 53 per cent of the two-party preferred vote came to the Liberal Party. It was a ringing endorsement of our plan, and one of those measures was to stop any push to introduce a transport development levy.

That is the correct example of a mandate, where a majority of people vote for your plan and your measures. We were right to block the transport development levy, because we had a mandate from the South Australian people to do so. We would have been ignoring their wishes, as opposed to representing their wishes, had we chosen to do anything other than what we did.

Lord Acton certainly understood what we are seeing here in this chamber today, and in the same way that Pope Pius IX was not infallible and that the presumption of wrongdoing should be found against others instead of him, the Attorney-General should realise that he is not infallible and that the Legislative Council does not take his works of art and his masterpieces and butcher them; indeed, what it does is take his otherwise thought-bubble ideas—especially when we look at the Planning, Development and Infrastructure Bill—and seeks to make them into workable solutions.

We need the house of review to be able to do its job. We need the house of review to be more than just a rubber stamp so that it can actually have some influence over policy in South Australia and to make sure that all views in South Australia are represented. We, on this side of the chamber, whether it be today, tomorrow or 10 years from now, will continue to hold true to those values: that the parliament reigns supreme over the executive and that there need to be significant checks and balances so that we can ensure that examples like this disastrous Labor government are held in check and held in balance so that we can try to curb the various excesses that this Labor government wants to press upon the people of South Australia.

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop) (12:16): I will not hold the house very long because I have just been listening to my colleague and he has quite eloquently covered the points that I intended to make. I will just very briefly say that I am not too sure whether the government is serious about these measures that it has brought to the house. I have argued at length in this place, certainly since the last election and probably not quite as vehemently prior to that, that a government in South Australia that falls into government because of an electoral system that perverts the will of the people can hardly cry foul that the parliament stands up for the people. When I say 'the parliament' it consists of two houses.

The government argues—and I have heard the Premier come into this place and say, 'We put our case and our plan for South Australia before the people and you put your plan before the people and, guess what? We are in government.' Guess what, Premier? You are only in government because of an electoral system that perverts the will of the people of South Australia. You would not be in government if we had an electoral system that delivered to the people the power to get rid of a government that they did not want. The people of South Australia have been trying to do that for at least two elections now. They have been trying to get rid of this government.

I would suggest that the Liberal Party and the minor parties and the Independents, particularly in the other place, are carrying out the will of the people of South Australia to a much greater extent than this government. For the government to come to the parliament and suggest that we take away powers from the other house such that it can ride roughshod over the people of South Australia as a result of an electoral system which is at the very best broken, I think is an outrage. I will not go any further but I just wanted to put on the record one of the reasons why the Liberal Party will continue to stand up for the people of South Australia.

Mr KNOLL: Madam Deputy Speaker, I draw your attention to the state of the house.

A quorum having been formed:

The Hon. J.R. RAU (Enfield—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Justice Reform, Minister for Planning, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Child Protection Reform, Minister for the Public Sector, Minister for Consumer and Business Services, Minister for the City of Adelaide) (12:22): I will be fairly brief about this. Thank you to those who participated in the debate. This particular bill seeks to introduce a measure which is a very modest measure in constitutional terms to do with the maintenance of supply for any elected government, and put simply it basically would, if passed by the parliament and accepted ultimately by the people, mean that a constitutional event similar to the one that occurred in our national capital in 1975 would not be an event which could occur here.

Ms Chapman interjecting:

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Well, I actually have not been in this parliament for the last 40 years. Other states have, at various times when they have been having a look at their constitutional arrangements, I believe, dealt with this matter, and since we are opening up the constitution in any event it is a useful piece of housekeeping for us to just tidy up this matter as well. As I said, I thank all those who have participated and I hope that this relatively innocuous and positive piece of constitutional recalibration receives the endorsement of both houses.

The house divided on the second reading:

Ayes 22

Noes 18

Majority 4

Second reading thus carried.