Chief Minister Kate Carnell is determined to have her town council. Last week she said the Government would depart from the standard Westminster way of dealing with the Budget. Instead, Government would issue a draft budget for consultation in January. Members of the Legislative Assembly would be able to comment on the draft through Assembly committees. Committees generally shadow the various portfolios. The Government would then consider anything brought up in the consultation process which could be included in the final Budget Appropriation Bill.
Mrs Carnell said she wanted a more bipartisan approach, for Members to exercise responsibility on behalf of the people who voted for them and to create ownership by all Members.
Presumably the Budget would be passed unanimously. The upshot would be that any Members of the Opposition or crossbench who later criticised spending priorities or indeed any element of government activity involving money would be rebuffed with the assertion you joined in the Budget.
The trouble with this proposal is that it does not permit the clear distinction between candidates standing at the next election. Budgets are one of the key vehicles of policy and political philosophy. With Mrs Carnell’s ring-around-the-roses Budget (we all fall into line), it will be difficult to see where MLAs stand. It will be more difficult to see where political parties stand. In a government by consensus model, the sharp contest of ideas and policy disappears and with them goes voter choice. In its place differences of personality become more important. Show and glitz become substitutes for policy debate. That may be fine in town councils where people in local communities have a thorough knowledge of candidates for office. It larger polities, like the ACT with 300,000 people and 50 or 60 candidates, most voters cannot know the candidates and have to rely on party badging or policy stands by independents.
Mrs Carnell need not fear a debate on policy and economic management. Her Government has done reasonably well with the difficulties caused by the contraction of federal funding and federal employment in Canberra.
The Government has gone as far as it needs with Budget consultation. It invites submissions from community groups and considers them. The idea of bringing in the cross-bench and Opposition MLAs is at best a naive pursuit of consensus and at worse a crude attempt to neutralise criticism.
The town-council model works better in smaller places. But the town council needs something else, whether small or large. It needs some overriding authority if it abuses its power. This happens with state governments having an overriding authority. They can dismiss councils. The reason this overriding authority is needed is precisely because town councils are too intimate and do not have a developed sense of separation of powers. The separation of powers works as a form of check and balances against abuse of power. An Opposition in a legislature is a form of accountability. It helps prevent abuse of power.
One arm of power — the executive — is separated from the others — the judicial and the legislative — so they can check each other. The key roles of the executive are to administer the law (with judicial review) and to allocate money to the tasks of gov
ernment (with legislative review int he form of appropriation, estimates committees, the audit process and Question Time. So the Budget is a core executive function and it requires external review, analysis and accounting by the legislature. If the legislature is suborned into the Budget process a critical check is lost. The loss is that much worse in the ACT with its single-House Parliament. In the absence of an active over-riding authority (more active that the Federal Government), the separation of powers helps prevent abuse of power. This new proposal of Mrs Carnell’s erodes the separation of powers; it erodes accountability on the floor of the Assembly and must be rejected.
To pursue consensus exercise of power is to reject opposition and accountability. In the case of the ACT, it would invite closer scrutiny by the Federal Government which in the circumstance of a cosy consensus in the Assembly would be welcomed. It would not be good for local democracy.