Let us take it as read that the Government has to get its budget in order, not because it is good for the Government, but because it is good for the country.

The level of public outlays is too large and the revenue base, as large as it is, is still too low to cover all expenditure. If we don’t fix it, as everyone knows, Australia will have a diminished future. All this is agreed by everyone (see W. Swan for confirmation).

So the Government brought down a budget that was designed to limit public spending and allow some fiscal repair. Since everyone might have gone about it in a different way, let us again state for the record that the one particular way chosen by the Treasurer is different from the one each of us might have chosen ourselves. But that is mere detail. It is the Government and it was elected to find a way to get these things right.

But we are blessed with the Senate from Hell. A series of people of such comprehensive economic ignorance matched with a bizarrely wilful malevolence will allow nothing through. And it will ruin us, let there be no doubt about that. Not fixing the budget will leave just about everyone less well off. The economy will shrink and take us down with it.

Since we are in the mood for constitutional amendments, let’s at least do something useful. What we need is a constitutional amendment that will prevent the Senate from rejecting money bills. Here is the story from the UK:

The Parliament Act 1911 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It is constitutionally important and partly governs the relationship between the House of Commons and the House of Lords which make up the Houses of Parliament. This Act must be construed as one with the Parliament Act 1949. The two Acts may be cited together as the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949.[1]

Following the rejection of the 1909 budget, the House of Commons sought to establish its formal dominance over the House of Lords, who had broken convention in opposing the Bill. The budget was eventually passed by the Lords after the Commons’ democratic mandate was confirmed by holding elections in January 1910. The following Parliament Act, which looked to prevent a recurrence of the budget problems, was also widely opposed in the Lords and cross-party discussion failed, particularly because of the proposed Act’s applicability to passing an Irish home rule bill. After a second general election in December, the Act was passed with the support of the monarch, George V, who threatened to create sufficient Liberal peers to overcome the present Conservative majority.

The Act effectively removed the right of the Lords to veto money bills completely, and replaced a right of veto over other public bills with a maximum delay of two years.

The Senate is our House of Lords, although the name could not be more inappropriate given many of the present incumbents. Its ability to interfere with the proper management of the country is unacceptable. It should become, like the Canadian Senate, a house of review and advice, but the government should be run from the House of Reps.

This is the constitutional amendment we need. The Senate represents little more than egocentric grandstanding. Let us keep the Senate, by all means, but let us restrict the damage it can do to good governance and sound management of the economy.

The Australian Democrats once held the balance in the Senate for many years based on its promise not to block supply. This should now become an obligation imposed on the Senate by the Constitution.