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House of Representatives                                Ch 13                                                 p 469

Impact of the ‘supply’ provisions

XE “ Senate :supply, power of refusal or deferral” The power of the Senate to reject appropriation and supply bills—that is, bills which are required by the Government to carry on its day-to-day business—is a power which remains as a potential threat to the tenure of a Government despite its retention of majority support in the House, and it may be seen to be in conflict with the concept of responsible government.

The rejection of bills other than appropriation and supply bills would seem to present no insuperable hurdle to constitutional democratic government. Certainly it may hinder a Government’s legislative program. However, if such hindrance is considered unreasonable or improper this will be reflected in public opinion which will, in turn, eventually influence Senate action on the legislation. This process may take some time to work out; meanwhile the Government has the task of convincing the people of the correctness of its policies.

On the other hand a rejection of supply by the Senate resulting in the fall of a Government strikes at the root of the concept of representative government. The House of Representatives was designed and has always been recognised as the House of government—the people’s House. Its method of election is broadly on the ‘one vote one value’ system. In theory, each vote has equal weight—in effect each enfranchised member of the community has an equal say in electing the party he or she favours to govern. Voters presumably believe that they are electing a Government to serve for a normal term and the possibility of a shorter period of government procured by the intervention of the Senate is contrary to such expectation.

One of the features of the Westminster system of government is the existence of a clear line of representation from the people through the Parliament to the Executive Government. This in turn results in a clear line of responsibility in reverse order from the Executive to the Parliament to the people. Once this clear line of responsibility is interfered with (as with the intervention of the Senate which is not an equitably representative body in the sense that the House is) the powerful concept of representative and responsible government is weakened. Since 1975 proposals have been made for constitutional change to limit the powers of the Senate in this area. ¹

See , for example, Report of the Advisory Committee on Executive Government , Constitutional Commission, Canberra, June 1987 (especially pp. 20-8); Republic Advisory Committee, An Australian republic—the options. v. 1, pp. 114-6, (PP 168 of 1993).