PRIME MINISTER'S PRESS CONFERENCE,
PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA
8 APRIL 1974
Opening statement by the Prime Minister.
The people of Australia should be very clear about how,
why and by whom their country has been suddenly plunged into a grave
and unprecedented Constitutional crisis. Beyond all the manoeuvring
and mud-slinging of the last week, one basic fact lies behind this
crisis: a group of Senators elected in 1967 and 1970 proposes to
deny the Australian Government, elected for three years in 1972, the
right to govern and the power to govern.
Money is the sinews of Government. The taxpayers' control
over their money through their elected representatives is the foundation
of parliamentary democracy. Under our Westminster system, this control
is firmly lodged in the Lower House the people's House.
It is precisely for this reason that, in Australia, whichever
party has the majority in the House of Representatives forms the
Government of Australia,
It is precisely for this reason that the Australian
Constitution sets rigorous limits upon the powers of the Senate to
amend money bills.
Now, a group of Senators is proposing to reject Bills
approved by the people's House which would enable the elected
Government to carry out its program and carry on the business of
Government. This has never before happened in Australia. It is a
step fraught with the very gravest implications for democratic
Government in Australia. It strikes at the roots of the Australian
democratic system. It is fraught with the gravest implications for
the Senate itself.
It is precisely because of these grave implications that
responsible political leaders of all Australian parties have hitherto
rejected such a proposition out of hand.
The situation whereby one party controls the House of
Representatives the Government and another party controls the
Senate is by no means unusual in Australia. What is absolutely new
is that an Opposition should attempt to use an outdated majority in
the Senate to deny the elected Government the money it needs to carry
out its program. Not until the election of a Labor Government, after 23 years
of coalition rule, has such a course been threatened. Why?
Not until the present leadership of the coalition arrayed
against the elected government has any elected Australian Government
been held up to continuing ransom by this threat of denying it the
money it must have to govern. Why? / 2
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They have already done this 4 times. They threatened it
in April a year ago. They threatened it in October. Again in November
they threatened to deny all Australian schools the vastly increased
sums of money the Australian Government is making available. And now
again they are threatening to reject Bills needed to pay Australian
Public Servants, needed to provide pre-school education child care,
to assist the States with health programs, to help child migrant
education, to assist the States with the cost of home care services,
to give relief in connection with the recent national disasters, to
promote apprenticeship training, to give assistance for isolated
children, needed to give emergency help to the apple and pear industry.
The Government was elected to carry out a program. The
Liberals, the Country Party, the have combined and conspired
in the Senate to deny it the money to carry it out.
There are two basic questions the people are entitled to
have answered. Why has responsible leadership of all Australian
parties always hitherto rejected this course? And why is the present
Opposition leadership prepared even to contemplate so unprecedented and
perilous a course?
The reason why a responsible Senate must, at all times,
exercise the utmost restraint but above all exercise restraint on
legislation dealing with the Taxpayers' money has been splendidly put
by Sir Robert Menzies. He was writing in 1968 about what would happen
if the Senate were to stand on technical legality but use mere numbers
to reject measures approved by the House of Representatives.
Sir Robert Menzies said:
" This would create an impossible situation and
would make popular government unworkable"....
" It would be a falsification of democracy if on
any matter of government policy approved by the
House of Representatives, possibly by a large
majority, the Senate representing the States
and not the people, could reverse the decision....
otherisTe a Senate Opposition whose party had just
been completely defeated at a general election
would be in command of the Government of the nation.
This would be absurd, as a denial of popular
democracy."
That was Sir Robert Menzies' principle in 1968. He states exactly
what is now happening in Canberra. There could be no clearer statement
on the principle now at stake. There could be no clearer evidence
of the decline in the standards and principles of Sir Robert Menzies'
successors. What a falling off was there, my countrymen. Why then
have his successors turned their backs on the principles of their
former leader, their founder? Why are they proposing this
falsification of democracy?
Let me put the events of last week in their proper perspective.
An election for half the Senate is due to replace that half of the
Senate elected in 1967.
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Of course among those Senators up for election are those who
have been involved in a course of unparalleled obstruction of legislation
the people elected us to implement. They have prevented us introducing
universal health insurance. They have prevented us enacting industrial
legislation designed to reduce industrial disputes. They have held up
our legislation on restrictive trade practices and monopolies and
consumer protection crucial in our fight against inflation. They have
stalled in order to sabotage our plans to increase the effectiveness
of the Australian Industry Development Corporation. Last week they
rejected the Petroleum and Minerals Authority Bill our basic
instrument for ensuring the effective development of our energy and
mineral resources and to maximise the ownership and control of those
resources by Australians. They have even rejected our proposal for
a Federal Superior Court, a proposition first advanced by no less an
authority than the Chief Justice, Sir Garfield Barwick. Now this is
not particularly a Labor measure. A Bill to set up a Superior Court
was introduced in 1968 by a former Liberal Attorney-General, now
Mr Justice Bowen. In his second reading speech, he said:
" Since 1961, a very considerable amount of work has
been done, first by Sir Garfield Barwick as
Attorney-General, then by the present Minister for
Immigration ( Mr Snedden) when he was Attorney-General
I mention this to illustrate the pettiness, the meanness,
the mindlessness, the bloddy mindedness of it all. They rejected Bills
to enable us to put to the people referendum proposals to enhance
Australia's democratic processes that is, if they had had their
way they would not even allow the people of Australia to have the
chance of passing an opinion on these proposals.
The Senate elections due next month would allow the people
to pass their judgement on this record of obstruction. Yet the
complexities and complications of Senate elections are such that no
party, neither the Government nor the Opposition, can be reasonably
assured of gaining a majority in the Senate. It was therefore my duty
to consider all means, consistent with propriety and the national
interest to reduce the instability built into this situation.
Last * Tuesday I announced the appointment of Mr Gair, who had
been last elected to the Senate in November 1970, as our Ambassador
to Ireland. The effect of Mr Gair accepting this appointment was to
create an additional Senate vacancy to be elected by the people of
Queensland next month. That was its sole political effect and,
politically, its sole intention, to give the people of Queensland an
opportunity to elect 6 Senators instead of just 5; not, be it noted,
to give any person, party, or Parliament the power to decide who would
represent Queensland in the Senate, but to give the people of Queensland
the opportunity to have their say. By contrast, the Premier of
Queensland has tried to forestall that possibility to deny that
opportunity by himself nominating a replacement for Mr Gair. He has
said in effect, that the party representation in the Senate should
reflect what the people of Queensland thought in 1970, not what they may
think or decide themselves in 1974.
There is one remarkable aspect of this matter. For all the
bombast of the past week, no-one in the Opposition has had the temerity
to state that the new Ambassador to Ireland is unfit to hold the post.
/ 4
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So what is the objection? Not surely, that a serving
Member of Parliament was appointed to a diplomatic post or an office
of profit under the Crown. I have here a list which shows countless
such appointments by our predecessors.
Is the objection that the Ambassador is not of my political
persuasion? Was I wrong therefore to confirm Mr Gordon Freeth, a
defeated Liberal Minister, or Dame Annabelle Rankin, a former Queensland
Liberal Senator, in their posts in Tokyo and Wellington when I became
Prime Minister? If someone will say plainly that the Ambassador is unfit
for the post, I imagine Mr Gair will take his recourse at law.
In the meantime, I can only conjecture that the Opposition believes
that a man who was fit enough to maintain them in power for a generation,
a man who was fit enough to exercise decisive influence on both the
home and foreign policies of their administration, is somehow unfit to
represent this country in Ireland.'
So we come to this; Senators who have indulged in deliberate
obstruction of the elected Government, its program, its mandate, now
propose the ultimate obstruction refusal of the money needed to carry
on the people's business. When the Liberals discussed such a course
last October, the President of the Senate himself, the distinguished
Sir Magnus Cormack A Liberal warned his colleagues that they would
be committing suicide. What he meant, what he well understood, was
that the people of Australia would never forget or forgive so blatant
and fundamental a denial of democracy, a falsification of democracy,
as Sir Robert Menzies puts it; and that sooner or later the people
themselves would choose to destroy an institution which had proved
itself so irresponsible, so potent an instrument for the destruction
of Australian democracy. I think Sir Magnus Cormack is correct in
his judgement. If he is, then Senators are proposing to sign the
death warrant of the Senate. However that may be, they must not be
allowed to sign the death warrant of Australian democracy. This is
what Liberal members of integrity like Mr Killen and Mr Hamer are
concerned about that the control of the people's money must rest in
the people's House, that the people's House should be answerable to the
people about the spending of their money, and that their money should
not be at the disposal of the pressure groups and the monied interests,
notably foreign monied interests, to whom these Senators and their
leaders, their parties are so acutely responsive and, indeed, indebted.
Mark these words:
" They have refused to recognise the umpire's decision.
They have used their Senate majority to slow down the
machinery of Government. They have done violence to
our legislative program. What we ask for is a fair
chance to carry out our policy in the sound Australian
phrase, a fair go."
Again, these are not my words; they are the words of
Sir Robert Menzies, at the double dissolution in 1951.