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June 13, 2007
Convention does not have the force of law, but is assumed to have the force of practice, otherwise known as custom or tradition, and carry weight accordingly. This is the wrong way to view it, convention is in reality the sovereign's whim. Today's Senate sitting had an example with the first bill reading.
Andrew Bartlett said [pdf] after the first reading of the co-bundled Tax Amendments for Income Tax and Budget Measures:
I want to speak briefly to the part of the motion asking that the bills be taken together, and I believe I can. I make the point that the Democrats had requested that these bills not be taken together, that they be dealt with separately. They both deal with substantial and significant taxation matters.
Certainly we do not wish to delay passage of them, but, given that they deal with substantial and significant matters each in their own right, we believe they each merit individual examination through the second reading stage. I want to record that as our preference.
I am not going to go on at length about it but I think it is preferable that convention applies: if a senator does not want them to be taken together, that it not happen unless there are compelling circumstances. I do not think any exist in this case.
Bartlett's appeal to convention was ignored. Abetz did the second reading of the two bills together, and Labor quite happily spoke on the bills 'cognate'.
Convention is subordinate to the sovereign, and is not guided by custom or history. We have to look at it as we would individuals expressing their liberty through self-interest. Convention is maintained only so long as it is in the self-interest of the sovereign to act within that convention.
Consequently we cannot look at past conventions as a single body of connected events that have the same force of history. They become unitary events, unconnected, except for the sovereign's self-interest in acting that way.
x-posted and prompted by the discussion of the convention of no confidence votes on Husi.
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