Vieira, Jeremie clash over Govt’s participation in Budget debate role

Akash Sama­roo

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira has crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment’s lim­it­ed par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Sen­ate’s 2027 Bud­get de­bate, warn­ing that its par­lia­men­tary ma­jor­i­ty does not re­move its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to jus­ti­fy how it in­tends to spend bil­lions of dol­lars in pub­lic funds.

The Ap­pro­pri­a­tion Bill was passed in the Sen­ate last night.

Vieira’s re­marks drew an an­gry re­sponse from At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, who re­ject­ed any sug­ges­tion that Gov­ern­ment mem­bers had ne­glect­ed their du­ties, point­ing to five days of scruti­ny of the Bud­get in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives’ Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee.

Speak­ing at 9.05 pm, Vieira not­ed that the Sen­ate had been sit­ting since 10 am and that every Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor and five In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors, in­clud­ing him­self, had con­tributed to the de­bate.

At that point, on­ly three Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tors had spo­ken: Plan­ning Min­is­ter Dr Kennedy Swarats­ingh, who pi­lot­ed the Ap­pro­pri­a­tion Bill, and Sen­a­tors Anil Roberts and David Nakhid.

Je­re­mie sub­se­quent­ly rose briefly to re­spond to Vieira, bring­ing the num­ber of Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tors who spoke to four out of 15.

Among those who did not con­tribute were Civ­il Avi­a­tion and Trans­port Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our, Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing Min­is­ter Pro­fes­sor Prakash Per­sad and Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence Min­is­ter Do­minic Smith.

Vieira said he would have ex­pect­ed Gov­ern­ment mem­bers to wel­come the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­plain and de­fend their Bud­get choic­es.

Vieira ar­gued that the pur­pose of a Bud­get de­bate was not sim­ply to se­cure pas­sage of the Ap­pro­pri­a­tion Bill, but to sub­ject the Gov­ern­ment’s fi­nan­cial and pol­i­cy de­ci­sions to par­lia­men­tary scruti­ny.

“This scruti­ny is not an in­con­ve­nience to be en­dured. It is an es­sen­tial fea­ture of re­spon­si­ble gov­ern­ment,” he said.

“In­deed, one might have ex­pect­ed Gov­ern­ment mem­bers to be the most en­thu­si­as­tic par­tic­i­pants in this de­bate. Af­ter all, this is the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­gramme. These are their pri­or­i­ties.”

Vieira said he was not sug­gest­ing that every Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tor had to speak, but ques­tioned whether min­is­ters and their col­leagues were ad­e­quate­ly re­spond­ing to con­cerns raised dur­ing the de­bate.

“Where are the ex­pla­na­tions? Where are the jus­ti­fi­ca­tions? Where’s the se­ri­ous en­gage­ment with the con­cerns which have been raised by the Op­po­si­tion bench and the In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors?” he asked.

“Par­lia­men­tary ac­count­abil­i­ty is not mea­sured by the num­ber of speech­es de­liv­ered or the hours con­sumed. It is mea­sured by the will­ing­ness to con­front dif­fi­cult ques­tions and to pro­vide mean­ing­ful an­swers.”

Je­re­mie, how­ev­er, took of­fence at the crit­i­cism, say­ing he and oth­er sen­a­tors who hold min­is­te­r­i­al of­fice had al­ready par­tic­i­pat­ed in lengthy pro­ceed­ings on the Bud­get in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

“We sat in com­mit­tee stage in the oth­er place for five days,” he said, re­fer­ring to the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee’s min­istry-by-min­istry ex­am­i­na­tion of al­lo­ca­tions.

He al­so point­ed to the Bud­get de­bate in the Low­er House and said he had left Par­lia­ment on Sat­ur­day evening af­ter the Bill was passed in com­mit­tee there.

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al not­ed that the mon­ey bill would not un­der­go a com­mit­tee stage in the Sen­ate.

“For the sen­a­tor to sit on his der­riere over there to­day, for the first time, and to ac­cuse those of us on this side of sloth, I re­ject,” Je­re­mie said.

He ob­ject­ed to any sug­ges­tion that he or his col­leagues had failed to ful­fil their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.