Maintain the rage – on blocking supply
11“Maintain the rage!”
So said Gough Whitlam to his supporters after Malcolm Fraser, back then no friend of the left, blocked supply and effectively ended Whitlam’s remarkable reforming (if chaotic) Prime Ministership.
Whitlam didn’t just change laws, change funding arrangements for health and education. He changed the way Australians thought about ourselves and our place in the world. He changed our very culture, through his actions and leadership.
The egalitarian, caring, ambitiously forward-thinking spirit he brought to government has slowly been eroded over the intervening four decades, by Liberal and Labor governments. So slowly that most of us didn’t notice most of the time. Until now, when Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey took a sledgehammer to it.
But is the answer to this really to use against Abbott the tool that brought down Whitlam? Should we really, as quite a few people are arguing, be pushing the Senate to block supply so as to bring down the government and trigger a new election?
I suggest that doing so risks squandering the greatest opportunity we’ve had in decades to really shift the debate back to the left. We need to maintain the rage, and harness it to drive change, not use it all up in one big burst that could well blow up in our faces. Now is our best chance to reprioritise values, shift social norms, put caring for each other and our environment at the heart of our culture.
So why would blocking supply not do that?
Firstly, it’s critically important to understand the difference between blocking budget measures and blocking supply. Budget measures are contained in suites of legislation – vast omnibus bills to amend the tax laws generally called TLABs (Tax Laws Amendment Bills), as well as specific bills to set up new structures (eg the so-called Emissions Reduction Fund) or abolish old ones (eg the Clean Energy Finance Corporation). Blocking or amending these bills is annoying for the government, would stand in the way of their harsh and nasty agenda, and could trigger a new election if Mr Abbott chose to swallow the double dissolution pill. But it doesn’t cause a constitutional crisis of any kind.
On the other hand are the Appropriations Bills. These are the bills by which the government effectively withdraws cash from its bank account – Consolidated Revenue – and spends it on everything from schools to fighter jets, unemployment benefits to middle class welfare, hospitals to hand-outs for billionaire mining magnates.
Blocking the Appropriations Bills, commonly known as blocking supply, means the executive arm of government is effectively paralysed by the parliamentary arm. That is what causes a constitutional crisis.
Now, let me clarify that I’m not worried about causing a constitutional crisis, per se. On some levels, that kind of shake up is exactly what our torpid democracy needs. But it’s only useful if we can be reasonably confident of the outcome. And I am not.
Here’s the first key risk. In 1975, Governor General Sir John Kerr dismissed Whitlam, appointed Fraser caretaker Prime Minister, and dissolved both Houses of Parliament, triggering an election. There have been books written about the appropriateness and legality of that decision to use his ‘reserve powers’. He didn’t have to. And there is absolutely no guarantee that our current Governor General would follow the precedent. Indeed, given what it did to Kerr, who drank himself to an early grave, it might be surprising if General Cosgrove did so.
“Then what, hmmm?” as the grandfather in Peter and the Wolf said. What would happen if we’d set this wolf free and couldn’t capture it? What if it dragged on, as it almost inevitably would, perhaps for weeks or even months?
That’s when we’re staring down the barrel of a US-style shut down and all that goes with it. Except triggered not by a Tea Party that wears its abhorrence of government on its sleeve, but by a broad left that wants government to play a vital role but through its actions is preventing it from doing so.
Bear in mind that the primary impacts of blocking supply would be felt by some of the most vulnerable in our society. We’re not just looking at the irony of seeing public servants, nurses, teachers, firies – public servants we want to protect from Abbott’s agenda – going unpaid. We’re talking about those on disability benefits, struggling single parents, the long-term unemployed, living hand to mouth – the very people we are trying to defend from Abbott’s knife – going without for the duration.
And what would the political impact be? If this scenario plays out, frankly it’s not unlikely to backfire very badly indeed. Even if the Governor General did eventually dissolve parliament, support may have melted away, partly due to the simple annoyance factor, partly due to the patent clash of stated values and actual actions. We could win the battle but lose the war and end up with a renewed, even strengthened, Abbott government.
There’s a chance this wouldn’t happen. Of course there is. The Governor General could call a snap election, Labor could win and Bill Shorten would… um… oh. Do you really reckon he’d change things if we hadn’t changed the discourse first? Wouldn’t he continue the gradual erosion, the slow shift away from fairness and caring and sustainability toward the corporate state? Wouldn’t he still cut single parent support, send desperate refugees out of sight to lose their minds, mouth platitudes about climate change while funding coal ports?
Now is our moment to actually build change! Tony Abbott has made it easier for us by making this so explicitly about values and culture, about the kind of country we want Australia to be. Now is our chance to have that conversation, to shift the discourse, to demand the space to talk about making education more important than war planes, research and innovation more important than coal exports, people more important than the “economy” we ostensibly constructed to serve us but have now allowed to overshadow and overpower all other goals.
We’ve had years of a creeping shift to the right, aided by Labor often, but really driven by the Liberals, years when we’ve been able to pretend to ourselves that we were still the egalitarian society we believed we were, long after it had been eroded beyond recognition. The bubble has now been burst.
That gives us the opportunity to really fight back. Not just to use right wing tactics to kick out a government we oppose, but to actually do the hard yards of rebuilding a caring society, a daring society, a sharing society.
Let’s do it properly this time. Because, with climate change bearing down on us, we haven’t got another chance to stuff it up.
While I agree with your views, it’s important to note that blocking supply has no impact on Special Appropriations, which are used to to pay for welfare benefits, age pensions and lots of other things. And there would be no immediate shutdown of departmental operations as departments and agencies could access any cash reserves from prior appropriations (although retained cash is much less following Operation Sunlight).
Have you ever seen a nurse, teacher or firefighter paid by the Commonwealth?
Aviation Rescue Fire Fighting services are directly provided by the Commonwealth.
Commonwealth provides funding of around 35-40% for hospitals, but indirectly through the States and Territories.
The Commonwealth also funds between 40% (public) and 60% (private) for schools.
Even if the funding is provided indirectly, it’s easy to imagine a scenario where the States start to run short of cash for these and then services start to suffer
I didn’t know about the aviation firies, thanks for that.
With the Commonwealth purse closed, how long do you think it would take for the states to run out of cash and borrowing capacity to pay their wages bill?
You would have to dig into the balance sheets to find this out. However, all of the agencies would have business continuity plans in place to ensure critical operations could continue for as long as possible – which would mean non-critical operations would have to stop completely.
i agree the risks are great but… once this mob of lunatics sign up to things like the TTP we, as a nation, will lose our legal sovereignty to the corps and that, under a future labor or lib govt is irreversible. the scars another 2 years will leave on this country from the whipping they will give us will be impossible for the eco-rationalists in the ALP to heal. unless the ALP give categorical assurance that they will reverse every ill begotten decision abbott n rupert have made then our only option as a nation is to get this mob out and NOW
Problem is, it’s Labor who started negotiations on the TPP. They’d sign up as quick as Abbott. UNLESS we use this opportunity to shift the discourse, change the politics!
Thanks for this really good summary of the situation. I have to admit, I’m in favour of blocking supply, but I do accept your caution. It could backfire, true. However, I have to say I’m much more pessimistic than you are about this being our chance to shift the conversation to the left. This is how I see it: Liberal may have known that Abbott was a rabid attack dog who would be grossly unpopular, but they want him in power doing what he’s doing now. Why? Because he is shifting everything very hard to the right. He’s making us like the USA. Once that giant, painful, unpopular shift has happened, all reforms moving toward the left will still leave us further to the right than where they were before Abbott. Labor and Liberal alike can look good by partially undoing Abbott’s work while still leaving us worse off than if we’d never had the Abbott administration. So I believe that the Liberal party is willing to sacrifice popularity temporarily in order to forever shift our political norm to the place where America’s is. Obama is considered “left”, yet even his “Obamacare” is far to the right of our medicare, even with the $7 levy. I believe that Liberal is playing a long game here, Abbott’s the scapegoat, but the goal of changing our compass for “normal” is what they’re after. And that’s why I think blocking supply is the equivalent of storming parliament, throwing it all out, and building something new. Before they get to shift our political discourse irreversibly.
As you mentioned above, all these years since Whitlam, both parties have been slowing undoing his reforms, but it changed us permanently. That’s what I’m afraid is about to happen in the opposite direction now.
I understand the argument, I really do. I would like nothing more.
BUT, it presumes that we have time, that much of the destruction that is about to be wrought by an unpredictable Senate, can be reversed.
The situation we face reminds me of the first episode of Yes Prime Minister, where Jim Hacker is being walked through the ‘salami tactics, slice-by-slice’ that would be used to avoid him pressing the nuclear button. “You wouldn’t really press the button would you?” the conversation ends.
Your argument Tim, begs the question: when would we trigger the block of supply?
We have a government that lied it’s way into power, is attempting to leverage a ‘budget emergency’ to extract evidence free idealogical private school-boy payback against their ‘enemies’.
What are the worse set of circumstances that would trigger a block of supply?
when is an emergency–the attack on our very democracy and society–enough of an emergency to act like its an emergency? when is a ‘disruption’ to much of a ‘disruption’ and we should stand aside n let the country fall into the hands of the neo-corp maniacs?