PREIM ERAINSTER PRESS STATEMENT NO. 576
October 1975
PRIME MINISTER'S STATEMENT ON A. B. C. TELEVISION
Recall these words:
" The basic principle which I adhere to strongly
is that a Government that continues to have a
majority in the House of Representatives has
a right to expect that it will be able to
govern."
Fine words.. fine pririciple.. The basic principle
of our Australian parliamentary democracy. That man of
principle is the present Leader of the Opposition, Mr
Fraser. He said those words just a few days after he
replaced MLr Snedzen. as Leader of the Opposition. He has
asserted that. principle again and again. He knows the
course of honour, of decency, of democracy. Yet today
he has made statements which can only mean that he is willing
to overturn his principles and overturn the basis of ' our
system. He has said that he intends to use the accidental
numbers he thinks he controls in the Senate to delay
passing the Budget until the morney runs out.
In other words he intends to produce chaos in order to
prevent the Government being able to govern., This is
not just what Sir Robert Menzies has described as a
falsification of democracy, not just the pursuit of what
Sir Robert Menzies described as " the purely opportunist demands
of those who find constitutional convention irksome"
it is constitutional revolution.
The House of Representatives the people's
House alone determines who shall govern Australia.
Only seventeen months ago, the people for the second time
in less than eighteen months, elected the Australian
Labor Party to govern for a further three years.
I state again the basic rule of our parliamentary
system: Governments are made and unmade in the House of
Representatives in the people's House. The Senate cannot,
does not, and must never determine who the Government shall be.
2.
That principle has been upheld since
federation. ' t has never been broken or challenged
except during this Government's life. It has been
scrupulously observed on at least twenty occasions
since federation when the Opposition had the numbers
in the Senate to reject Supply.
our majority in the House of Representatives
has never been threatened. The House of Representatives
has passed the Budget. Bud~ gets and all money bills must
originate in the House of Representatives, The Senate
cannot even amend them but it can delay them. And
this is what Mr Fraser proposes. And how will he do
Q this? By using the numbers in a stacked Senate which
is not even the same Senate which the people elected
only seventeen months ago.
It is in the words of Mr Killen, the Liberal
0 Member for Moreton in Queensland " a tainted Senate".
In May 1974 the people of Australia elected a Senate
in which the Government had twenty-nine Senators
and the Liberal and Country Party also had twenty-nine
Senators, there were two Independents. The Labor Partythe
Government received 200,000 votes in the elections
for the Senate over all our opponents combined.
But because two State Premiers flouted another great
constitutional convention the Government now has only
twenty-seven Senators. ./ 3
3.
It is this unrepresentative Senate, this tainted
Senate, which Mr Fraser intends tco use as a weapon to strike
down the democratically elected Government of Australia
to render it incapable of carrying out the program which
it was elected to carry out.
A week ago it was generally thought that Mr Fraser
would stick to his principles. Last weekend the Liberal
Party Council the faceless men off the Liberal Party met
in Canberra and apparently gave Mr Fraser his ridingr
instructions. I make it clear that the Government will not yield
to pressure. We will not yield to blackmail. We will ' not
be panicked. Wie will not turn overT the Government of this
country to vested interests, pressure groups and newspaper
proprietors whose tactics would destroy the standards and
traditions of parliamrentary government.
The business of Government will go on.
Mr Fraser has no credible answers -to the great
problems that Australia shares with all other comparable
countries. As the elected Government we will continue our
fight against the effects of world-wide recession and
unemployment. For that reason our Budget must be given a
chance to work. There must be no disruption to the process
of economic recovery.
Let there be no mistake about the gravity of
Mr Fraser's intention. Parliamentary democracy is a
complex and fragile thing around the world it is under
challenge. And'now it is being challenged in Australia
by the very man who professes to be a man of principle.