. I. ME MINISTER'S SPEECH AT PUBLIC MEETING, PORT AUGUSTA
2 NOVEMBER 1975
Mr Wallis, ladies and gentlemen. I was asked about
six months ago to come to Port Augusta today because it's
the Diamond Jubilee at the Diocese of Willochra. And this
was a somewhat unexpected invitation, so novel in fact, that
I penned it in six months ago in my diary. And in the*
meantime-some other events have occurred, so I thought that
yesterday I would travel to Port Augusta via Alice Springs
and Whyalla. And I'm happy to have an audience of Labor
supporters in this electorate of Grey just before I go in
about twenty minutes time to the other celebration.
The last time I was here was in April and I was
passing through on the way to Tarcoola to inaugurate the
biggest railway project in Australia since the transcontinental
was started in Port Augusta at the outbreak of the First World
War. The biggest railway project in Australia for over
* sixty years. And shortly after that, you'll remember, that
we tried to put through the South Australian Parliament the
agreement to hand over the financial and management responsibility
to South Australia's non-metropolitan railways to the Australian
Government. And the Legislative Council of South Australia
* blocked it. And you had an election in South Australia.
And there were two big issues in that election. One was the
excellence of this financial deal that the Dunstan Government
had made with my Government to hand over the non-metropolitan
railways to the Australian Government which would mean an
immense financial advantage to the State Government; and
also an immense improvement in railway services, in South
Australia and through South-Australia, frorai all the other States
and up to the NorthernTerritory. That was the first issue.
And the other issue was the obstruction by an Upper House against
the policies of an elected government. And that's the thing
which is happening in the Australian Parliament now.
And I'm satisfied that we are going to win this issue
in the Australian Parliament throughout Australia, the same way
as Don Dunstan won on this issue last July in South Australia.
The simple fact is that governments, whether they're
the Federal Government or the* State Governments are made or
unmade in the Lower House. If a Party or Parties have a
majority in the Lower House, the House of Representatives or the
House of Assembly, then that's the Government. You can't be
the Government of Australia or South Australia or of any of the
States, unless you have a majority in the Lower House. And
* twice now, in December 1972 and in May last year, the Australian
Labor Party secured a comfortable majority in the House of
Representatives. And on each occasion, in December 1972 and
again in May 1974, the election was about who was-* to be the
Government of Australia for the next three years. Before half
that time-was up, in April last year, the Senate threatened to
block Supply, to say: " Well, look we won't give the Government
the authority to spend the taxes which are being collected.
We'll bring the business of Government to a standstill." / 2
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Now, at that time I said., " Right, we'll have a double dissolution;
there are six Bills which the Senate has held up, which it's
rejected twice, and we can settle the issue of Medibank, we
can settle the issue of equal electorates, electorates of the
same number of electors, we can do that now." And we had a
double dissolution, and we won. We got an overall majority,
a comfortable majority, in the whole * Parliament. And when on
a third occasion the Senate voted against the Medibank Bills
and a third time the Senate voted against the Electoral Bill;
and the third time the Senate voted against the Petroleum and
Minerals Authority Bill, which was designed to give-Australians
the opportunity to develop their own natural resources; when
a third time all those things happened, we had a Joint Sitting.
And at that Joint Sitting we comfortably passed all those
Bills. And never since has the Government been beaten in
any division, and there's scores of divisions which have taken
place in the House of Representatives.
We are clearly entitled to see out our three year
term. We were elected as the Government, and in the House
of Representatives where governments are made or unmade, we
still have a comfortable majority. And the proposition which
is being put by the Liberals and the Country Party is, that
because we haven't got a majority in the Senate, they can
blackmail us, hold us up, hijack us, whenever they wish. But
they haven't got a majority in the Senate either.
Now Governments are never made in the Senate; they
never have been; you can't have a Prime Minister in the Senate;
you can't have a Treasurer in the Senate and the Constitution
says that the Senate can't initiate Money Bills; the Senate
can't amend Money Bills and all. that the Senate can do is to
make a request to the House of Representati. ves to amend the
Money Bills. And the House of Representati~ ves may, if it sees
fit, accept the request or it can reject the request. That's
the sum total of the Senate's powers as laid out in the
Constitution. Let's go back to what happened in May last year, when
there was an election for both Houses. The Labor candidates
for the Senate got 165,000 votes more than the candidates of
all the other Parties represented in the Senate. But because
it's a complicated electoral system and so on, we ended up with
29 out of 60 Senators; and the Liberals and the Country Party
ended up with 29 out of 60 Senators; we got more votes but
they got as many members; but they didn't-get a majority, we
didn't get a majority. And in the Senate if the votes are
equal on any issue then the vote is lost. If there is a motion
for a Bill comes before the Senate and there are as many
people voting against it as for it, then it's lost. It's rejected.
Now after the election an Independent from Tasmania
joined the Liberal Party. And on our side, Senator Murphy
was appointed to the High Court fair enough that there should
be a Labor Attorney-General on the High Court, for the last ten
years there has been a Liberal Attorney-General, Barwick
himself,' it's fair enough that there should be an Attorney-
General from each side on the High Court. And then later
Senator Milliner died, the Labor Senator from Queensland.
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And the New South Wales Government -a Liberal Premier and
the Queensland Government a Country Party Premier appointed
replacements for Murphy and Milliner, who opposed the Labor
Party. The one from Queensland is the worse case Field,
Pat the Rat but still, still the Liberals and the Country
Party haven't got a majority in the Senate.. They have 30, one
of the Independents joined them, they've got 30. That is, even
if they thought they were entitled to-be the government, they
couldn't get the things through the Senate without the support
of the people who don't belong to their Party. And they have
no chance of getting a majority for any proposition they put
up in the House of Representatives.
So you have this situation, that at the moment the
Senate is not the Senate that the people elected in May last
year. There are two Senators who were appointed by anti-
Labor State Governments until there is an election for the
Senate and they belong, they are opponents of the Labor Party.
It's a stacked Senate. It is a tainted Senate. And on the
* basis of this Senate different to what it wa's when there was
last an election in May last year; and different because a
Liberal Premier and a Country rParty Premier. have done the wrong
thing; on this Budget the Liberals and the Country Party
relying on a stacked pack of cards, a tainted Senate, take
* it on themselves to say: we won't allow the Australian
Government to have the authority to spend the taxes which
everybody still has to pay.
Now it has never happened before in Australia's
history. There have been many occasions, particularly since
there was proportional elections for the Senate introduced
in 1949, when the Government hasn't had a majority in the
Senate. There were many occasions when Holt, and Menzies before
him and Gorton after him, didn't have a majority in the Senate.
But nevertheless t-he Senate always passed the Government's
Money Bills. The Senate can't initiate them; it can't
amend them; it can only make a request to amend them and the
House-of Representatives can accept or reject that request.
But never on all the occasions when a Government has not had
a majority in the Senate, has the Senate ever presumed to
reject the Budget. On 139 occasions Money Bills have been
put by the Government to the Senate when the Senate didn't
have a majority of Government Senators. And on every occasion
the Senate has passed those Bills.
Now I want to point out that on this occasion, the
Sienate hasn't yet rejected the Bill; it hasn't voted on it.
What has been passed is a motion to defer. debate; to stall;
* the Senate has gone on strike. Liberals and Country Party
Senators have gone on strike. And on this motion the voting
was 29 to 28, that is, there was one majority. If Senator
Milliner had still been there he would have been voting with
the 28; it would be 29 all. And in those circumstances the
motion to defer debate on the Budget Bills would have been
rejected. There is not a majority against the Budget in the
Senate. And all that Mr Fraser is doing, is keeping his
Senators sufficiently in line to vote for a deferment. Some
of them have said, Senator Bessel of Tasmania said on Four
Corners last weekend that in a vote on the Budget itselft he .4
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would not vote against the Budget. And he also said, Senator
Bessell on Four Corners last weekend that there were many other
Senators of the same mind. So once there is a vote on the
Budget Bills in the Senate, the Budget Bills will be passed.
And the motion which has been carried, just because Senator
Milliner is dead; the motion was carried as Senator Steele
Hall said " over a dead man's corpse". They say " If there is
going to be an election, we'll pass the Budget". That is,
there is nothing wrong with the Budget according to the Liberal
and. Country Parties.
True enough, Mr Fraser made a few criticisms of the
Budget after it was introduced, a week after it was introduced.
And his criticisms, of course, were shown to be very damaging
to his cause. And one of the things that the Liberals proposed
was that if they got into Government they would go back to the
old system of income taxation where there was Federal income
tax and State income tax as well. And this is the proposal
which would benefit maybe the people of Victoria and in
New South Wales it would be equal fifty-fifty, it would make
no difference but in the four smaller States everybody would
have to pay higher income tax. That's what used to be the
case in Australia before uniform income tax was introduced by
a Labor Government in 1942. It was the case still in Canada,
if you're in the smaller Canadian provinces you pay ' higher
State income tax, provincial income tax, than you do if you're
in the big one, the prosperous one like Ontario and British
Columbia. All the other provinces pay a higher tax. And this
is what Mr Fraser was proposing in his alternate Budget. He
realised that it was very unpopular in the four smaller States,
including yours. So he now says that his Budget proposals are
inoperative. You remember that great phase of President Nixon's
Press Secreatry came out, President Nixon was caught out in
giving a reply which wasn't accurate in Australia if anybody
does that he's sacked but in the United States they said: The
answer was " inoperative". And Mr Fraser at a press conference
on Wednesday week used the same phase: my Budget proposals
are " inoperative*. So there is nothing wrong with the Budget; it is.
just a hijack operation. They say they want an election now.
Now of course, they didn't say in May last year, at the last
election that if they lost they wouldn't accept the verdict; they
didn't say then that they would use any numbers they got in
the Senate to prevent the Government governing for the full three
years for which it was elected. Arnd, of course, back in that
was Billy Snedden was in charge of it that time it's getting
very uncomfortable for me, you know; I'm in the process of
demolishing the fifth Liberal leader: Holt, Gorton, McMahon,
Snedden, Fraser; they're all lasting less time as time goes on.
Watch for the next fascinating instalment, ladies and gentlemen.
But last April., April last year, when I yielded to
this blackmail we had an election which meant that we were
without a national Parliament for three months. The two Houses
were dissolved on the 10th of April. and we had the earliest
election we could; we had the quickest count we could; and
then we assembled the Parliament as quickly as possible. And
we couldn't bring it together until the 9th of July, one day
short of three months after Parliament had been dissolved.
I don't believe that at this time in our battle against inflation
and unemployment, we can afford to have the Australian
Parliament suspended for another three months. We must get
on with the Budget; we must get on with the economic recovery;
we must get people back to work, particularly the school
leavers in the next month or two months. And the Liberals
and the Country Party are deliberately holding the country
to ransom; their strike is designed to promote unemployment
and dissatisfaction. Now we must make it plain to the Australian people who
are the guilty men. Because Mr Fraser when he took over from
Mr Snedden and when he realised that Mr Snedden had been
destroyed by taking the advice of the Country Party Leaders
and the newspaper proprietors, he said, very properly, that he
believed strongly that if a government had been elected it was
entitled to govern for its three year term. And he made an
exception; he said: " unless there are reprehensible.
circumstances." And as the pressure has grown on him from
the Country Party Leaders, as the pressure built from the
newspaper proprietors, he forgot his principles, he was
casting round for some reprehensible circumstance. And he's
never been able to find any at all. Every weekend he gets
more and more desperate in his abuse of me. And the Country
Party Leaders too. -But I've had no associations with CIA
money in Australia, as Anthony has. My wife hasn't received
any $ 16,000 necklaces for launching ships overseas, as
Sinclair's wife did. I haven't got, or my family hasn't got,
superph. 6sphate subsidies as Fraser's has. No income tax troubles
in my family. That is, they've been able to get nothing on me.
And they're getting more and more desperate, these men who
are subsidised by the CIA or overseas ship builders, or the
superphosphate people. They're getting more and more desperate
in their personal abuse of me and the whole of the Labor
Government. They've got nothing on us; there are no
reprehensible circ-, unstances at all. The only reprehensible and
extraordinary circumstance is the fact that for the first time
in 75 years a Senate is stalling on the votes on Money Bills.
They haven't voted against them; they know that they wouldn't
all line up at the barrier to reject the Budget. No Federal
Budget has ever been rejected in the 75 years that we've had
a Federal Parliament. And no Upper House in the world nowthe
House of Lords or Canadian Senate or any of these countries
which still have Upper Houses would ever reject a Budget.
It wouldn't happen anywhere else in the world. We've been
made the laughing stock of all our neighbours and in all the
longer settled. democracies around the world by these
shenanigans of the Liberals.
What is at stake is this: are we ever to have in
Australia, the opportunity of changing a government at the
ballot box and being sure that that government will have the
chance to carry out the policies upon which it was elected?
Because if you accept the situation that the Senate, by rejecting
a Money Bill or even just by stalling a Money Bill can produce
an election for the House of Representatives, then you can have
this situation arising twice a year. Because every October
the Budget is brought up to authorise the expenditure of taxes
and loan funds for the whole of the financial year, from the
1st of July past until the 30th of June f~ llowing. / 6