Michael Moore’s insistence that teachers be given a 10 per cent Budget-funded pay rise may have severe implications for the ACT that transcend the question of education funding.
Mr Moore says he is adamant that the Budget line containing money for teachers’ salaries be increased. Exactly how adamant he has not spelt out in exact detail, but bringing down the Government is not an unlikely possibility, even if it would be reckless and opportunist.
The trouble with Mr Moore’s stand is that it is all or nothing. Under the Self-Government Act a non-Minister may not introduce legislation that would have the effect of increasing government spending, but the precise meaning of that section is open to several legal opinions and how it can be enforced is also a matter of conjecture. None the less, it is very likely that one-line amendments to Budgets will be ruled out of order by the Speaker and if that ruling is challenged it is very likely that the Labor Party would support the Government. Labor would not want to be hindered by the possibility of one-line amendments to Budgets when it attains government. They make the place ungovernable, especially when minority governments are the norm.
Faced with a defeat on a one-line amendment, Mr Moore has to work out what to do next. Does he go back to his teacher constituents lamely and say, I did my ineffectual best? Or does he take the next step? That step is to vote against the whole Budget. In that case, Labor and the Greens would leap aboard and the Government’s Budget would be defeated. Kate Carnell would have to resign and, presumably, Labor’s Andrew Whitecross would be elected Chief Minister.
It may be that Mr Moore intends to use that possibility only as a threat to Mrs Carnell to make her cave in. But she rightly says she cannot and will not. If she gives the teachers a 10 per cent budgeted pay rise, every other government worker will form an orderly (or even disorderly) queue for a similar rise and the Government’s whole austerity program, such as it is, becomes unravelled.
There are some lessons here. The Self-Government Act, which is essentially the ACT’s Constitution, rightly puts budgetary matters firmly in the hand of the Executive. Other members cannot appropriate money. Their role is legislative which may run to some incidental expenditure, but it is not executive. If the MLAs want more money spent on X or Y, they either have to persuade the Government to do it, or elect a new Chief Minister who will. Spending, the Budget and government are inexorably linked. They stand and fall together. This is of utmost importance in a legislature whose electoral system gives independents the balance of power. Those independents can make or break governments, but they cannot pick through Budgets adding little bits for favourite groups. Once you go down that path, no government can function responsibly.
Mr Moore is now playing with fire. He can argue and attempt to persuade, but he cannot expect for force one-line Budget changes. If he does not like the whole Budget, for whatever one-line reason, he can vote against it. That will mean: throwing his hat in with Labor; reneging on his pre-election promises not to defeat Budgets or vote against a government mid-term; and being responsible for over-turning the clear preference of the people of Canberra in 1995 for three years of Liberal government, not Labor government. He should not do that very lightly. It will drive voters into the camp of major parties in the search for stable government and deprive the ACT legislature of the very important function by independents of legislative review and innovation.