Independent MLA Michael Moore wants to have his cake and eat it too. He said this week that he would accept a Cabinet position in a new ACT Government provided the major parties would relax the normal Westminster conventions on Cabinet solidarity.
He said he would pledge to vote for the Government’s Budget and vote against any no-confidence motion in the Government if he were a Cabinet Minister, but he would reserve the right to vote against Cabinet decisions on the floor of the Assembly.
Mr Moore’s plan is imaginative and has no instant legal impediment, but it is rife with practical difficulties.
The central difficulty is that an “”independent” Cabinet Minister would quickly take the honour and glory of popular decisions without wearing the opprobrium of unpopular decisions. Such a minister would be able to disown decisions long after the event if they went sour.
The trouble with this is that so often in modern government decisions are interlocked. More money in one place means less money elsewhere. Often packages of reform are put together as a balancing act, not only as a cynical exercise in keeping as many competing pressure groups as possible content, but also as a genuine effort to strike a balance in society between different groups. For example, police powers and civil liberties in dealing with the criminal law; employers and employees in employment law; those whose income comes from capital, labour or the state in dealing with tax law.
A minister picking and choosing which part of which package he or she agreed with and which were to items reserved for breaches of Cabinet solidarity would soon build up mistrust among his or her colleagues.
Acrimony among coalition parties where Cabinet solidarity applies is common enough. In Mr Moore’s model it would poison personal relationships in a way to make government virtually unworkable.
Come election time, voters may well be able to judge the “”independent” minister’s performance as a minister, but would asked to absolve the minister for responsibility for general government decisions the minister had dissociated himself from.
Even if Mr Moore could convince an incoming Chief Minister that such a proposal might work, there is another, perhaps more profound, difficulty.
At present the ACT has a nascent system of checks and balances that has grown from traditional Westminster separation of powers and the Hare-Clark system of voting. It has meant that, almost invariably, we will have minority governments. To have a system yielding majority governments when there is no second chamber (in which a government typically does not have a majority) to create a balance and review of legislation is dangerous. The failures of Queensland and Northern Territory governments and the Kennett Government to respect oversight and checks by independent bodies and forces such as auditors-general and freedom of information are good examples.
In the ACT with its single chamber, the cross-benches perform a critical role in checking the excesses of executive power. If cross-benchers were to join government in the method suggested by Mr Moore, this would be lost. An “”independent” minister would surely not be so independent as to be able to vote no confidence in a fellow minister.
It is odd that this proposal has come from Mr Moore on two counts. As a witness to the Alliance Government which was rife with acrimony and disowning of Cabinet decisions by constituent members he should know better. As an MLA whose record as an independent on checking executive power has been fairly good he should not forsake that role. Or has that become too hard. Are we now seeing a case of if you can’t lick ’em join ’em?