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Comment by tragomaskhalos | Hacker News Reader

Crucial to this piece is "blocking of supply"; unfortunately there is no explanation of what this actually means.

It is analogous to a “government shutdown” in the US - the Senate refuses to pass appropriation bills, which will cause the government to run out of money to operate.

While in the US either the House or Senate can do that, in Australia effectively only the Senate can - each “Administration” (we say “government”) gets its power from a majority vote of the House, so if the House votes against the budget, the government must resign. If the Senate does the same, it isn’t forced to.

Another difference relates to the consequences - the monarch’s representative (the Governor-General) can use that as grounds to sack the Prime Minister, appoint a new one, and force a new election, as controversially happened in this case. In the US system there is no constitutional way to have an early election, plus sacking the President is a lot harder (needs an impeachment trial)

It's not really the case that only the Senate can - it's just that the consequences for the House doing so are unambiguous and well-known, whereas in the case of the Senate convention was that it would not do so, so the consequences were unknown.

The traditional way for a lower house to register a lack of confidence in the government is in fact to amend the appropriation bills to appropriate one additional dollar from the treasury. A government that no longer controls the treasury must resign or call an election.

I'd argue that sacking our executive head-of-state is a lot harder, as the only known process for doing so rhymes with begicide. /s

That, or use the Australia Act 1986

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_and_supply

Confidence = voting for the government in confidence motions (or votes which are not explicit confidence votes but considered to be "matters of confidence"). Supply = voting for the budget (because if the government can't pass a budget, then it is considered to not have the confidence of the house, and has to be replaced).

Hardly .. the letters make clear that Kerr was serious about dismissing Whitlam well before supply was blocked:

> After decades of speculation, the letters show once and for all that the Queen and Prince Charles, now Australia’s King, knew as early as September 1975 that Kerr was considering dismissing the government, two months before he did so. This timing was damning.

> They knew a dismissal was being considered by Kerr in the absence of any crisis in government, since the Opposition had not yet made its decision to withhold supply in the Senate.

Thank goodness Australia had serious cutting edge journalists covering The Dismissal [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4jfR2u_9Kk

If the supply is only voted on once a year then seeing a problem arising months in advance shouldn't be surprising. The government and opposition weren't going to change over night.

Supply == The Australian Government's budget.

Unlike the United States,

By law, and by basic common sense, there MUST be a bill passed that contains the budget for the coming year. Otherwise no money is made available to public servants.

Any government must be able to secure support for this bill once a year.

Otherwise the entire civil service will not be paid.

What the Queen established was the precedent that, instead of having a government shutdown over supply like the United States, you instead just have an election right away.

Frankly, compared to the US approach, it's much more practical.

It's different than that - calling an election has always been the Queen/Governor General's only real power in this situation, that bit is not new. What's a big deal now is that Kerr and the Queen were going to do it because it COULD happen, not because it WAS happening.

Minority governments, with confidence and supply agreements from minor parties (or not) are not uncommon in the world, but they're obviously not as stable ... but in an English (and commonwealth) parliamentary democracy it takes a loss of confidence (a majority vote of no-confidence in the parliament), or loss of supply (the inability to fund government) for the head of state to force an election

Well, having a shutdown is just... inane. Should the government ever get wedged into a spot where there's no budget and no Parliament, the Crown has a duty to enact the most conservative (i.e. identical to the previous) budget as feasible and hold an election ASAP. The issue has never actually arisen in those terms here in Canada, but it's generally understood that is the constitutional procedure. If the government is not functional, then prevent society from collapsing in the meantime, and get a new government elected ASAP. Really, that's the essence of the reserve powers of the Crown.

Maybe not in those terms.

But the Queen and GC have dissolved (or prorogated) the Canadian Parliament as recent as 2008.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%932009_Canadian_par...

Two things are generally required for a Westminster-system government to have mandate to govern: supply and confidence.

Supply relates to the access to money, specifically through approval of the government budget. If a government has supply, it has an agreement with enough members of the house that it will retain approval to spend money on its policies. If a government loses supply, it loses the support of the house to spend any state money.

Similarly, confidence relates to support that the government represents the will of the people. Just as with supply, a government must secure a vote from enough members that they will support the government’s actions (they have confidence in the government). When they talk about a “vote of no confidence” it specifically means voting to remove support of the government in this way.

Further info can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_and_supply

In Australia, legislation needs to pass through both lower and upper houses. In this situation, the opposition party was able to block crucial legislation from passing through both houses and into law. If legislation is repeatedly blocked, it may lead to a double dissolution [1] of both houses where all parliamentarians require reelection.

[1] https://www.moadoph.gov.au/blog/double-dissolution-what-is-i...

Legislation only applies to citizens. Liz was in a different club the supplies of which has veto over the plebs

supply of funds. The government needs to bring an appropriations bill to explain how all of the tax revenue will be spent. This bill then needs to pass the House of Representatives and the senate. At the time, the liberal government controlled the senate and refused to pass the appropriations bill, hence blocking the supply of funds to government programs.

Subsequent to this, there is an agreement that appropriations bills are split in 2. One bill is to continue funding from last years budget (on the basis that it was approved, and passed both houses, and therefore those things need to continue to be funded), and appropriations bill #2 which is all of the new initiatives. This way, government will continue to function, but the government and opposition can still debate and argue over changes.

"Supply" means the periodic bill to pay the governments debts. i.e. public servant salaries and defence force etc.

If you cannot pay those then the government is effectively not a government.

"Supply and confidence" is an expression used to refer to the arrangement between the party of government and a weaker party, that refers to the fact the weaker party will vote with the government on budgets and confidence motions. It doesn't imply a coalition, and the weaker party can't expect ministerial posts.

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