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Legislative Council - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
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Bills

Constitution (Appropriation and Supply) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 9 March 2016.)

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (16:42): I rise to speak to the Constitution (Appropriation and Supply) Amendment Bill and, in doing so, indicate that, whilst it is not formally a cognate debate, I will certainly be addressing my comments as if it was a cognate debate for the companion bill, as I would refer to it, and that is the Referendum (Appropriation and Supply) Bill (No. 108) which relates to the same issue. So, when it comes to agenda item 9, the referendum bill, I will just speak briefly and refer the avid readers of Hansard to the comments on this bill.

This bill is yet another instalment in a long-term plan of attack by the Labor Party in South Australia to abolish or to severely weaken the operation of the Legislative Council. Over many years, we have seen the Labor Party in South Australia up until recent times pledge to a platform and a policy of the abolition of the Legislative Council. For many years that has been frustrated by a combination of not only votes in the state parliament but also, by and large, I suspect, a majority view of the community and the media whenever the issue has come to a head.

That is not to say, however, that over the years, the Labor Party in South Australia has not managed to attract a motley collection of fellow travellers. They are not always the normal suspects and I use the adjective 'motley' advisedly to indicate an unusual combination, as I would see them, of people who at varying times have actually campaigned to either abolish or to severely weaken the operation of the Legislative Council. Clearly the normal fellow travellers—various leftist groups, in particular unions and other senior Labor Party operatives in South Australia and some academics—have been fellow travellers with the Labor Party position of either abolishing or severely weakening the Legislative Council.

In recent years in particular, and by that I mean the last 10 years or so, there has been a number of people who have surprised me by adopting similar positions. A good friend of mine, Mr Rex Jory, is a columnist in the Adelaide Advertiser. I often enjoy reading his columns in The Advertiser, but not his ongoing passion either to abolish or severely weaken the Legislative Council. On a number of occasions now he has written about the need to abolish or severely weaken the Legislative Council. We have seen former senior advisers to the government and business people like Robert Champion de Crespigny and, in the past, various iterations of Business SA—I am not sure what the current iteration of Business SA has been—have supported the policy of the abolition or the severe weakening of the Legislative Council.

If we go back over the long history of the Legislative Council, there would have been, in most of the early history and up until the last 10 years or so, very few prominent business leaders or business groups that would have supported the notion of the abolition of the Legislative Council. It appears to have been more a latter-day thing. We have seen others like Professor Dean Jaensch, who has written on political and electoral issues for many decades and who has also adopted a position over the years of a radical realignment of our parliamentary institutions in South Australia, incorporating either the abolition or severe weakening of the operation of the Legislative Council.

There was also, sadly, particularly given the long history of the Adelaide Advertiser in South Australia, the indignity of seeing it, in the last 10 years, at one stage campaigning for the abolition of the Legislative Council. I recall at the time, in 2010, when the Adelaide Advertiser led with a banner headline, 'Rann to call referendum in 2010: abolish the upper house', an exclusive story given to the then political reporter or editor Greg Kelton. The story led with:

Premier Mike Rann wants Parliament's Upper House abolished and will ask South Australians to bring about the greatest electoral system changes in the state's history…Labor, frustrated by legislative delays and the watering down of new laws in the Legislative Council, will begin moves to get rid of it after the March 18 election that polls suggest it is likely to win.

At that particular time, TheAdvertiser in its editorial titled, 'High time to burn down the house', in the first sentence states: 'The demise of South Australia's Legislative Council cannot come quickly enough.' I am too ashamed of the rest of the editorial to put it on the public record. The title and the first sentence should be enough. I think there are many former owners, operators and editors of The Advertiser who would have turned in their grave to have seen the newspaper—the state's now only newspaper—leading, with the Labor premier of the time, a campaign to burn down the Legislative Council in a political and figurative sense and arguing for the demise and abolition of the Legislative Council.

During this period of the last 10 years or so it was not just left-leaning individuals and groups such as unions and the Labor Party to be fair; there was an odd assortment of others, including academics, the occasional business group and the occasional business leader who, for whatever reason, had been persuaded by the Labor Party rhetoric that the Legislative Council should be abolished. I seek leave to have incorporated in Hansard without my reading it, a purely statistical table which incorporates just two columns: an analysis of the total number of government bills considered by the Legislative Council for each year since 1993 through to 2014; and a second column of government bills negatived or laid aside in the Legislative Council for each year since 1993 to 2014.

Leave granted.

Statistical summary of bills considered by the Legislative Council, 1975-2014

Year Total number of Govt. Bills considered by L.C. Govt. Bills negatived or laid aside in L.C.
2014 *35 1
2012-13 160 7
2010-11 *98 1
2008-09 102 -
2007-08 89 1
2006-07 *109 -
2004-05 110 -
2003-04 84 1
2002-03 96 1
2000-02 *127 1
1999-00 98 1
1998-99 97 1
1997-98 *94 -
1996-97 106 1
1995-96 120 1
1994-95 118 -
1994 59 1
1993 *41 1

*These were periods when an election was held and hence a number of Bills lapsed due to the Prorogation of the Parliament.


The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: I am indebted to the table staff who have calculated these particular columns in the bulletin which is called the Statistical Summary of Bills Considered by the Legislative Council 1975 to 2014. I have just taken a snapshot of the last 20 years from 1993 to 2014. What that shows over that period of 20 years, conveniently, is that 1,743 is the total number of government bills considered by the Legislative Council and of those 19 have been negatived or laid aside in the Legislative Council. That is approximately 1.1 per cent of bills have either been negatived or laid aside in the Legislative Council over a 20-year period. That is approximately one bill per year for each of the last 20 years.

The reason I put that on the public record is that it gives the lie to this long campaign from the Labor Party over the years, and some others who have been seduced by that particular argument, that in some way in South Australia this state has been ground to a standstill, that in some way either key economic decisions or key reforms continue to be significantly opposed, negatived or laid aside. The reality, as we all know, is that just simply is not true and it is not the case.

Whilst, yes, all governments—Labor and Liberal—are frustrated sometimes, I am sure, at the delay of key pieces of legislation through both houses of parliament, and I know the government recently was frustrated at the time taken to debate the planning bill, but that was an extraordinarily complicated piece of legislation. It was one, in my view, which was not filled out in terms of its time by unnecessary filibusters. I think the only example in recent times I can think of what I might term an unnecessary filibuster was the workers compensation legislation.

However, that has not generally been the practice of the Legislative Council. Proper and thorough review through the committee stage—a role, as it should be, of the house of review, the second house of the parliament, the one where the government does not have the majority—of complicated pieces of legislation like the planning legislation is the job that is required of the house of review. It is the job that is required of the two-thirds of members in this chamber who do not happen to be members of the government party.

It is not as if we are in the period of 1979 to 1982, or soon after that, where government and opposition had approximately equal numbers—10 or 11 members each—and there was one sole Independent. We have a situation now where the people of South Australia have, for a long period of time, voted for a not insignificant number of members from minor parties and Independents in this chamber. Whilst it has not always been as many as the seven or so we have now, and might not be as much in the future, it is still significant over the bulk of the last 20 years in terms of the numbers of people whether it is been three, four, five or up to seven or eight on occasions who have come from the non-government or non-major parties in the Legislative Council.

I think in this debate we often hear from the government to 'look at the facts in relation to it.' Well, we say to the government, 'Let's look at the facts in relation to what actually happens,' and in considering a major piece of legislation like this, before anyone is tempted to go down the particular path that the government asks, let's look at the facts and let's look at the record. So, we have seen over the last 10 years the full frontal attack—that is, the abolition tried on a number of occasions—which has failed. What these bills are proposing to do is to wage guerrilla warfare to weaken the powers of the Legislative Council before ultimately trying to destroy it.

So, having failed to abolish or remove the Legislative Council, the proposal is to try to chip away through various proposals—and we will talk about another one. I will be speaking on the other bills tomorrow on the deadlock provisions which, in my view, is in exactly the same vein. There is no issue, there has been no issue; the government is seeking to use these particular bills to reduce the powers of the Legislative Council as part of a long-term goal to either severely weaken or abolish the Legislative Council.

In addressing this bill, together with its companion bill, I want to look at the history of the appropriation and supply bill powers debate between the houses right from the formation of South Australia and our parliamentary institutions. In doing so, I want to refer to the book Responsible government in South Australia from the foundations to Playford, Volume 1, written by Gordon D Combe MC. I quote from the first major references to this issue of resolving the powers over money matters between the House of Assembly and the Legislative Council on appropriation and supply bills on pages 90 and 91 of this history of responsible government in South Australia, as follows:

On first meeting the Council as Premier, Baker declared that the sole policy of his Ministry would be to settle the differences which had arisen between the two Houses as to their respective powers in relation to money bills. The Constitution Act ,1855-56, placed limitations on the power of the Legislative Council to initiate certain financial measures, but no express restrictions were put upon the Council's power to amend them. In the first session of the first Parliament a violent dispute arose between the two Houses on this issue and shook the infant Parliament to its foundations.

The occasion which brought the two Houses into collision was an amendment made by the Council to the Tonnage Duties Repeal Bill, originated in the Assembly. The alteration made affected the principle of the Bill and went so far as to strike out a clause which provided for the repeal of the dues upon shipping.

The House of Assembly's version of the intention of the Constitution was that the Council and the Assembly should, in money matters, stand in the same relation to each other as did the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The Council, on the other hand, vehemently denied this assertion and claimed there was constitutionally no analogy between itself and the House of Lords.

After prolonged discussions in both Houses and a joint conference of representatives from both Houses, a compromise was reached. The Houses evolved a modus vivendi known thereafter as the Compact of 1857. The Compact comprised the three following resolutions passed by the Council which the Assembly agreed to adopt 'for the present':—

'That this Council further declares its opinion that all Bills, the object of which shall be to raise money, whether by way of loan or otherwise, or to warrant the expenditure of any portion of the same, shall be held to be Money Bills.

'That it shall be competent for this Council to suggest any alteration in any such Bill (except that portion of the Appropriation Bill that provides for the ordinary annual expenses of the Government); and in case of such suggestions not being agreed to by the House of Assembly, such Bills may be returned by the House of Assembly to this Council for reconsideration—in which case the Bill shall either be assented to or rejected by this Council, as originally passed by the House of Assembly.

'That this Council, while claiming the full right to deal with the monetary affairs of the Province, does not consider it desirable to enforce its right to deal with the details of the ordinary annual expenses of the Government. That, on the Appropriation Bill, in the usual form, being submitted to this Council, this Council shall, if any clause therein appear objectionable, demand a conference with the House of Assembly, to state the objections of this Council, and receive information'.

E.G. Blackmore, an eminent Australian authority on Parliamentary Practice, considered that the compact was to a certain extent a surrender of its position by the Council, but the difference between an amendment and a suggested amendment was not very great in effect, and the Council retained most of the substance of the function which it had claimed.

The Compact of 1857, though at all times dependent for its existence on the will of either House, succeeded in keeping the peace for 56 years, although each Chamber continued always to hold its original view and at intervals took occasion to forcibly express it. The device of the 'suggested' or 'requested' amendment in Money Bills, which our first Parliamentarians evolved so ingeniously, has had paid to it that sincerest form of compliment which is imitation. It was adopted in Western Australia (1899), in the Commonwealth Act (1900), and in Victoria (1903).

As Combe notes in his book, the Compact of 1857, in essence, kept a type of peaceful co-existence on money bills between the House of Assembly and the Legislative Council for a period of just more than half a century. It was not until the period of 1912-13, with the advent of a very early Labor government (the Verran Labor government), that that peaceful co-existence was threatened. Combe refers to that period as follows:

This request to the Asquith Imperial Government was not revealed to the South Australian Parliament until 3 January 1912, after a political crisis had arisen in consequence of the Legislative Council having refused to pass the Appropriation Bill in the form in which it was transmitted to that Chamber and which the Government tried to enforce. The measure included sums intended to enable the Government to set up brickworks (a first instalment of £10,000) and for the purchase of timber and firewood for resale (to the value of £1,000). The Legislative Council expressed their emphatic disapproval of tacking these new proposals on the Appropriation Bill and 'requiring the Council to pass the Bill willy nilly', believing that 'the proper Parliamentary procedure should be resorted to in the establishment of these industries and that they should not be established by a side wind. The Appropriation Bill should have included nothing but amounts for ordinary current expenditure'. The House of Assembly refused to accept the view of the other House and a subsequent conference between managers from the two Houses proved futile. The trouble, of which the laying aside of the Appropriation Bill was the climax, had been brewing all through the session.

On 23 December 1911, acting on the advice of the Government, the Governor transmitted an urgent cablegram to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, pointing out that financial supply was nigh exhausted and asking for guarantee that relief be granted by Imperial legislation in terms of the Council Veto Bill, directing special attention to the Government's November memorandum and appeal. The plea proved fruitless; for on 26 December 1912, the Secretary of State for Colonies replied that he was unable to comply with the Government's request on the ground that 'interference of Imperial Parliament in internal affairs of a self-governing State would not be justified under any circumstances until every constitutional remedy had been exhausted and then only in response to a request of the overwhelmingly majority of the people, and if necessary to enable Government of the country to be carried on'.

The Verran Government immediately decided to submit to the electors the whole question of the relations of the two Houses of Parliament, a Supply Bill was passed to enable the services of the Government to be carried on until after the election and on the 16 January 1912, the House of Assembly was dissolved. Then followed a brief and spirited election campaign, described at the time as the most important and fiercest political battle ever fought in South Australia. It is reported that in all 41,028 names were added to the Assembly list and 13,863 to that of the Council. Never before had a campaign caused such intense interest among all sections of the community.

At the general elections on 10 February 1912, the Verran government suffered unmistakeable defeat, only 16 Government supporters being returned for the Assembly as against 24 successful Liberal candidates.

The peaceful coexistence on money issues that had existed for more than 50 years had descended into bitter dispute in 1912-13 under the Verran government and, at that particular time, with those particular circumstances and those particular provisions that applied at the time, an election was subsequently fought and lost by the then government of the day.

Combe outlines, as a result of all of that, further negotiations that went on between the two houses and proposed legislative changes, and then summarises as follows:

By the same Act, Parliament defined the powers of the two Houses in money matters by an amendment to the Constitution Act. By this means the principles enunciated in the Compact of 1857 and the general practice that had been built up on the foundations of this voluntary agreement over nearly 60 years were given statutory force. Opportunity was taken to define more precisely the terms used, resort being had for this purpose to the language employed in the Imperial Parliament Act, 1911, the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act and the South African Act. It was further provided that appropriation would be provided for by two separate Bills whenever the Government desired to authorize expenditure of revenue on any purpose not previously authorized by Parliament. The provision relating to Money Bills enacted in 1913 have been retained intact until this day.

Combe summarises that, as a result of the clash and the conflict of 1912 and 1913, there were then subsequent amendments to the Constitution Act in 1913 which, in Combe's view, have remained intact until this day, which is the legislation that we are now considering.

The next issue that arises in relation to any consideration of the powers of the Legislative Council arises in 1925. In 1925 the Legislative Council, bearing in mind there had been these changes in 1913, suggested amendments to two expenditure lines in the Appropriation Bill. The Legislative Council moved to reduce the Treasury line by £1 for the State Government Insurance Office, and the Electoral Expenditure line by £575, as a protest against keeping of Legislative Council roles by the Commonwealth.

The Hansard of the time of the Legislative Council records the Hon. Sir David Gordon moving in the following terms:

That it be a suggestion to the House of Assembly that on page 2, line 54, clause 2 the line 'The Treasury £11,187', be reduced by £1 to a total of £11,186. This is intended as a formal protest against the government catering for business of an insurance character, but certainly not against their right—which all governments enjoy without legislation—to insure their own employees or their own property. The Gunn government, however, have opened a public insurance office and are catering for outside business. I am not discussing the merits or demerits of that action—whether it should be done or not—but I point out that a bill specifically for that purpose was introduced into parliament last year and rejected. That being the case, while the government have full right to do their own insurance, they had no parliamentary authority to seek outside business.

This is raising the critical issue, which has been discussed at federal and state levels subsequently, which is the issue of tacking, and what had occurred here is that the government had sought to establish its own state government insurance office by way of separate legislation, that had been defeated by the parliament at the time. The government then sought through the back door, through the Appropriation Bill, to put in expenditure to pay for a state government insurance office, even though the parliament had voted against it.

So the Legislative Council at that particular time moved the only power it had, which was to reduce the level of the expenditure by £1 as a symbol of protest against what the government was doing by way of tacking in the Appropriation Bill. On that particular occasion the amendments from the Legislative Council were agreed to by the House of Assembly; that is, the Assembly backed down in the face of the suggestions by the Legislative Council and agreed to the amendments.

In the seminal paper written by Jan Davis, Clerk of the Legislative Council, entitled 'The Legislative Council and Money Matters', presented to the 33rd Conference of Presiding Officers and Clerks in Brisbane 2002, Ms Davis summarises that event in the following terms:

As a result, and as part of a further political settlement between the houses to regularise their relationship, section 63 was inserted in the Constitution. A bill for appropriating revenue or other public money for any purpose other than a previously authorised purpose shall not contain any provision appropriating revenue or other public money for any purpose other than a previously authorised purpose. This provided that appropriations for a previously authorised purpose must not be included in the same bill as appropriations for a purpose not previously authorised.

Now, this was endeavouring, in legalese, to address the issue of tacking, to address the issue of, okay, if there was legal authority for expenditure on a particular function, that was one thing, and if it had been previously approved, the continuation of that was one argument, but when you are actually trying to seek approval, legislative authority and funding expenditure approval, for a completely new purpose, that is, a purpose not previously authorised by the parliament, that ought to be treated in a different fashion. Ms Davis goes on to say:

Modern practice and the more technical detail of the State finances have resulted in the Appropriation Bill and the Budget Papers not providing the intricate details required to assess whether something has been 'previously authorised' or not. All Appropriation Acts have been from Consolidated Accounts since the Budget of 1980-1981 which introduced a single Appropriation Bill for all appropriations (whether for previous purposes, new purposes, usual Government operations or major capital works).

I refer members to the most recent Appropriation Bill that we received, which was last year's—some 12 months ago. As members will know, the Appropriation Bill 2015 is a bill of some three pages. If members are not familiar with that they can have a look at it. Essentially, the working part of that is schedule 1, which just lists amounts proposed to be expended from the Consolidated Account during the financial year.

The bill then lists the departments, for example, Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure, $262 million; administered items for the Department of Planning Transport and Infrastructure, $7.9 million, and that is the aggregate nature of the detail that is provided in the Appropriation Bill. Clearly, determining what is an authorised purpose and what is not a previously authorised purpose when looking at the Appropriation Bill is impossible, given the modern nature of appropriation bills and the modern nature of finances.

Of course, members will be aware that there is a companion bill with the budget on most occasions, although not always, which is generally referred to as the budget measures legislation, which is not the Appropriation Bill, and it is not a supply bill. It is a budget measures bill, which might include money clauses in it. But it is not an appropriation bill nor is it a supply bill, which is the nature of the debate that we are having here in this legislation, that is, the Appropriation Bill and the Supply Bill. In consideration of the legislation, that quite important technical detail needs to be borne in mind.

In terms of tracing the history of the issue, the conflicts or differences of opinion between the houses on money bills, I do want to refer to the example in 1992. Again, this comes from Ms Davis' paper: 'The Legislative Council and Money Matters'. Page 3 of that refers to the circumstances of 1992, which was under the then Arnold Labor government. I refer to this particular speech from the Clerk:

So I come to the situation in 1992 with the Arnold Labor Government's passage of its Appropriation Bill, after being considered by the Estimates Committee of that House. After its passage, it was realised that the new Premier had appointed new Ministries and hence the structures of Government Departments had changed but was not reflected in the Schedule to the Appropriation Bill. Consequently, a Message was sent to the Council for the return of the legislation.

I interpose here. The Appropriation Bill, having been passed by the House of Assembly, the Labor government realised they stuffed up and they actually send a message to the Legislative Council saying, 'Whoops, we've passed the Appropriation Bill. Can you send it back to us?' Ms Davis continues:

The legislation had been set down on the Council Notice Paperfor the adjourned debate on the second reading. The Attorney-General moved that the request contained in the Message from the House of Assembly be agreed to and that the Appropriation Bill be withdrawn forthwith and returned to the House of Assembly. This was agreed to and the Order of the Day discharged.

However, the Government had not counted on the Opposition in the House of Assembly refusing to deal with the legislation again. The Treasurer moved that the third reading be rescinded in order that the Bill be referred again to a Committee of the Whole.

The Treasurer in his summation stated—

'When I last spoke to the Bill I gave the House a brief indication of the reason and necessity to bring the Bill back before the assembly. Without going through the whole debate again I will recap to refresh the memories of Members. As everyone knows, significant changes made in Ministries and administrative units have meant that the Schedule that accompanied the Bill when it was introduced and allocated funds, for example, to departments and administrative units that no longer exist. Of course, those funds have been transferred to where the program has been moved. This is a sensible and simple procedure that should not have created any great excitement. However, it appears to have done so, although it created no excitement in the Upper House.

I think the procedure we have adopted is a good procedure; it is the preferred procedure, although other procedures were suggested. I think it gives due recognition and courtesy to this House and, for those reasons, I commend the motion to the House.'

The Shadow Treasurer, Mr S.J. Baker earlier maintained—

'…this is the first time in the 152 years of this Parliament of which I am aware, that the House has been asked to change and re-submit the Appropriation Bill because of administrative bungling.'

And there is further animated debate from various members in the assembly. The end result of that in the House of Assembly was that the motion failed to pass with the required absolute majority. The then Speaker stated, and I quote:

'The House finds itself in a very unusual situation with this Bill. It is my intention to send the Bill back to the Legislative Council in its original form.'

Consequently, the Bill was retransmitted to the Upper House. In once again moving the second reading of the legislation, the Leader of the Government in the Upper House tabled several Crown Law and Solicitor-General Opinions relating to how the Legislative Council could suggest amendments to the Appropriation Bill.

I need to interpose again: this was the Labor government of the time saying the Legislative Council could suggest amendments to the Appropriation Bill to get the government out of the problems that it had created for itself through the stuff-up in the Appropriation Bill. The Labor government was urging the Legislative Council to actually amend the Appropriation Bill using the powers that exist for the parliament, and quoting both crown law and Solicitor-General opinions to support that. I continue with Ms Davis's paper:

As previously mentioned, the Constitution Act provides that Appropriation Bills should only contain appropriation of funds 'previously authorised by Parliament'. The Crown Solicitor advised—

'In my opinion, the current Appropriation Bill is not in accord with section 63 of the Constitution Act, whether or not the Schedule is replaced. This is not surprising; all Appropriation Bills since 1980 have been inconsistent with section 63 and many Acts before that date were also inconsistent with it. The effect of any failure to comply with section 63 (and, in my opinion, the only effect) is that the Council can recommend amendments to the Assembly.'

The President, in ruling on the issue, stated [in part]—

'…With the Appropriation Bill in its current form, the Legislative Council in almost all cases, will be able to suggest an amendment, because in almost all cases, it will be possible to find a new purpose in the Budget Papers.'

Ms Davis's paper concludes:

As a consequence, in Committee, a motion was agreed to—That it be a suggestion to the House of Assembly to amend the Bill by leaving out the Schedule and inserting new Schedule A.

Subsequently, the House of Assembly agreed to the suggested amendment and amended the Appropriation Bill accordingly.

I quote the 1992 example as an example of where the Labor government actually quoted crown law and the Solicitor-General in supporting the view that it was appropriate for the Legislative Council to use its powers to amend the Appropriation Bill, and that if it did not have the power to do that, there would have been a significant issue because the government had stuffed up, to use a colloquial expression, the Appropriation Bill by referring to ministers, departments and agencies that no longer existed as a result of a ministerial reshuffle.

That long history of the disputes and differences of opinion that have occurred between the House of Assembly and the Legislative Council since the 1850s, through the period of 1912, then 1925, that brief issue in 1992 and now to the subsequent day, indicates that the issue, in particular in the early years, of the powers of the Legislative Council and the powers of the House of Assembly, has been the matter of strong differences of opinion between, in many cases, the upper house and the lower house, and in most cases, between the Labor Party and the Liberal Party in South Australia.

The Liberal Party has strongly defended the role of the Legislative Council, its importance as a safeguard and as the second chamber, and its importance in terms of its protection of the community from excesses of government. The Liberal Party's long held position remains its strongly held view today, as we consider this.

As we look at the specific nature of this particular bill, I again refer members to the analysis that has been shown, and that is, what is the ill that is being sought to be fixed by the legislation before us? The reality is, as I have said before, that only 1.1 per cent of any bills, let alone money bills, over the last 20 years have either been defeated or laid aside by the Legislative Council—an average of about one a year over that whole period. Not since 1912—and there have been significant constitutional amendments since then, so for more than 100 years—has there been an issue in South Australia of a legislative council defeating an appropriation bill or a supply bill, and that is the essential nature of what we are being asked to consider in this legislation.

So it is not as if there have been recent examples of appropriation bills or supply bills being defeated. There have been, in recent years, vigorous debates about the companion bill, the Budget Measures Bill. The debate about the car park tax is probably the best example in relation to that, where the Legislative Council expressed a view in relation to the Budget Measures Bill but in no way threatened the passage of the Appropriation Bill at that particular time in that particular debate. That is essentially what is being raised in this debate because, if I refer members to the government's argument for the bill, what they say is:

…these bills will insert a new provision into the Constitution Act, if passed. They will relate to either the annual appropriation or supply bill so, if the Legislative Council fails to pass the bill within a month or rejects the bill or passes the bill with amendments to which the House of Assembly does not agree, the bills will be taken to have passed both houses of parliament and will be presented to the Governor for assent.

Essentially, it is removing that reserve power that the Legislative Council has, in circumstances that have obviously not occurred for more than 100 years, to withdraw a supply bill or defeat an appropriation bill. One can only imagine the sort of circumstances where that might occur, where a government was just so clearly and abjectly utterly corrupt that it had lost the confidence of everyone in the community, where there were marches in the streets or whatever.

It is hard to envisage the circumstances, but one would imagine it would have to be in those sorts of circumstances, given the history of the last 100 years. We have had some pretty bad governments over the 100 years, but in the end the parliament has resolved to allow them to go to their election to fight their case before the court of public opinion at that particular time rather than being forced to an election.

One cannot imagine the circumstances, nevertheless it remains a reserve power and a reserve right to a house of parliament to say that we are virtually equivalent in powers to the House of Assembly. We are an important house of review. We are a safety net and it is important that that reserve power stays. The best that the government can come up with in the second reading speeches is as follows, where the government's argument for the bill is that:

There is a risk that the Legislative Council could misuse that power and, for example, unacceptably delay the annual Appropriation Bill and, in doing so, disrupt the machinery of Government.

The government cannot even mount a case of the Legislative Council unreasonably delaying, and certainly not of it defeating, the consideration of the Appropriation Bill or indeed the Supply Bill.

So this attempt to reduce the powers of the Legislative Council, to in essence say, 'If you don't pass the bill within a month, too bad, we'll just ignore you and it will be taken to have passed both houses of parliament and can be enacted', is unacceptable completely to the Liberal Party and we believe it also would be unacceptable to the community at large, should it ever go to a referendum.

We in the Liberal Party believe that this is just a diversion. It has not been, to be honest, much of a diversion or distraction because there does not appear to have been a huge amount of media or community interest in it. We suspect that that is because, hopefully, the community is right, that there is likely to be little appetite for minor parties, Independents and the Liberal Party to make such a huge change on the basis of no evidence at all as to the need for such a major change to our constitution and to the operations of the Legislative Council.

For those reasons, I indicate that the Liberal Party will not only strongly oppose this legislation and its companion legislation, the referendum bill, but we will do so by voting against and calling to vote against at the second reading of the bill.

The Hon. J.A. DARLEY (17:31): I rise very briefly to put my opposition to this bill on the record. I will be speaking to this package of bills together, namely, the four bills seeking to reform deadlock provisions and the passage of appropriation and supply bills.

The bills seek to change the manner in which appropriation and supply bills are dealt with to ensure the passage of these bills, the rationale being that, if supply is blocked, South Australian departments and public servants may face a situation where they are not paid. I am advised the Legislative Council has not blocked supply since 1911. The manner in which these bills address this perceived problem is contemptible.

The fundamental underlying problem with these bills is that they completely ignore the whole reason why this chamber exists. The Legislative Council is a house of review. To propose that, no matter what the house of review decides, the government will simply deem the bill to pass anyway is quite simply outrageous and in some cases dangerous.

We have all seen this government ignore matters in relation to a whole range of issues. They ignore recommendations from committees; they ignore recommendations from the Coroner; they ignore recommendations from royal commissions; and, now they want to ignore the entire upper house of parliament. I know that technically the government have responded to some of the aforementioned recommendations and have indicated that they will introduce changes in support of recommendations. However, it takes so long to actually do anything that, for all intents and purposes, they might as well ignore them.

The bills also seek to reform the deadlock procedures by mirroring the commonwealth provision to be able to call for a double dissolution election. For the government to now be saying that existing deadlock provisions are not working and that they require additional ways to resolve these matters is laughable, given that the government has shown that it has not even tried to work with the existing system.

I have had personal experience where the government has treated deadlock conferences with contempt and as a joke. The purpose of deadlock conferences is for both parties to enter into discussions in good faith to try to resolve the issue. However, I have had deadlock conferences that have lasted two minutes because the government representative simply closed their books and left because they did not get their own way.

They did not try to find a compromise because I did not agree to their position. In fact, the entire Legislative Council did not agree to their position. They refused to negotiate any kind of middle ground and simply left. In childish terms, they picked up their ball and went home because they did not get what they wanted.

The current deadlock provisions are workable if they are taken seriously, and it is the government's own fault that they are not effective now. The package of bills is just a way to do away with the transparency, the scrutiny, that the upper house provides.

I know the former premier, the Hon. Mike Rann, made no secret about wanting to abolish the upper house; however, this did not gain widespread support. It is not just a case of Legislative Councils refusing to vote themselves out of a job: it is because the upper house does a very important job of reviewing the actions and intentions of the government. Whilst not suggesting the abolition of the Legislative Council, these bills undermine the role of the upper house, and I will not be supporting them.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. J.M. Gazzola.

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