The high court will decide this week on the fate of the postal survey. The challenge against the survey led by Australian Marriage Equality, is mainly to do with gov not being able to spend public money without parliamentary approval. Notably the senate has already rejected the previous plebiscite twice. The gov has instead circumnavigated the parliament to adopt this postal survey., going outside of the parliamentary democracy.
Key to this point the gov is saying the finance minister has authorisation without parliamentary approval to advance money if he "is satisfied that there is an urgent need for expenditure" and "the expenditure was unforeseen". Quite a big ask that that would pass any pub test, let alone the high court.
Few Australians would see expenditure on the postal survey as fitting these categories. How can this be unforeseen when the government had a long-standing policy of holding a plebiscite on same-sex marriage? And what about this survey is urgent, except for the fact that it is necessary because of the government's own political imperatives?Related to this is a little Twitter video I posted a while back. It seems the gov may well have outmaneuvered itself into the proverbial corner on this one. You see they could have left the $160 million for the original plebiscite allocated in the budget forward estimates, especially given their constant statement of the plebiscite being gov policy. If they had of done that they'd have had that $160 million now to apply to the postal survey I'd guess and as the budget would have gone before parliament and that part passed.
The government's submission is that these are not matters for the courts. It argues that the "urgency of any matter is ordinarily a matter for evaluative judgment" and "that judgment is plainly reposed in the Finance Minister". Similarly, it says that whether expenditure is unforeseen is a matter for the "subjective foresight of the Finance Minister".
If these arguments are accepted, they will have major implications for Australian democracy. Governments would be free to spend taxpayers' money according to their own political priorities in areas never intended by Parliament. This would undermine recent decisions of the court by providing a backdoor means of avoiding explicit parliamentary authorisation of government expenditure. The Age
But they didn't.
Earlier in the year in senate estimates Janet Rice asked how can a plebiscite be gov policy without funding? Video below. Now they're in the extremely awkward position of trying to justify a $122 million spend without parliamentary approval. Oh dear....
That's just one of the areas of the challenge. There are others contained in the article.
How can a plebiscite be govt policy if they don’t intend to fund it? An #estimates question on behalf of Abbott and Abetz's "deplorables"... pic.twitter.com/lKfmP6kF3l— Janet Rice (@janet_rice) February 28, 2017
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