Budget blues: Hockey's option to break deadlock
Budget blues: Hockey's option to break deadlock
First on 7: Treasurer Joe Hockey is threatening to break the deadlock over his budget by bundling key spending measures into one bill.
If the Senate then failed to pass his plan, the Government would be given a trigger for an early election.
There is no doubt Prime Minister Tony Abbott and his Treasurer have dug themselves into quite a hole with the budget – now they are trying to dig their way out.
The Senate has already blocked several key measures but Mr Hockey has given the first hint of how he could bypass that blockade.
He said: "We will seek to appropriate the money so we can get on with building the infrastructure that Australia needs."
What ‘appropriating the money’ means is getting it instead from the Budget Supply bills: that is a high stakes play and the last time the Senate blocked Supply was in 1975, bringing down the Whitlam Government.
Mr Hockey's office emphasised that his preference was to get the existing bills through but confirmed the option of using Supply was being investigated.
Opposition leader Bill Shorten warned: “I'm extremely concerned that Joe Hockey will use every dodgy trick in the book to force his unfair budget on Australians who don't want it."
Mr Hockey is meeting with key Senate crossbenchers and hoping to break the blockade ut the signals are not good.
Crossbench Senator Nick Xenophon said: “I don't think the government quite gets the level of community anger and backlash."
And Clive Palmer, whose Senators hold the balance of power, is proving increasingly unpredictable.
He failed to turn up to a Senate committee hearing today to hear his complaints about the Australian Electoral Commission.
ANALYSIS by Political Editor Mark Riley
The situation is quite different to the Whitlam era constitutional crisis but the result could be the same, an early election.
The main supply bills that allow Government to function are already through the parliament but others that cover payments to the states, among other things, will not reach the Senate until November.
If they are blocked it will be the first time any Supply bill would have been blocked in 39 years and then the government would have the perfect trigger for an early election.
It would be a big gamble.
