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Comment by sturadnidge | Hacker News Reader

How many of said countries require more than a simple majority to pass a budget though? To my knowledge the US is quite the exception in that it requires a _special_ majority for such things.

A simple majority could be challenging if the government is formed via coalition, but if you have any examples where 1) a single party formed government and 2) a simple majority was the only requirement to pass a budget and 3) a budget failed to pass… then enlighten me by all means!

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Here in Australia the (single party) government of the day was dismissed in 1975 after failing to secure a supply bill. The government was dismissed by the Governor General, the Crown's representative in Australia, and the event sparked a bit of a ruckus. Google: The Whitlam Dismissal.

There's lots of instances of our government requesting dissolution of the Houses following failure to secure votes, but in most cases they're for things other than operating expense bills, taken as proxies indicating the government does not have the confidence of the House to continue to act. Since failure to secure a bill is grounds for dissolving Parliament, it's not likely to be used for political grandstanding here.

Always good to come across fellow Australians in here!

I’d probably argue for an exception on that one, given the Whitlam government didn’t have a senate majority… but at the very least, I feel like a single case in the last 50 years is pretty supportive of my argument. The US government is on the verge of shutdown so often these days that I wonder how many people are desensitised to the situation!

How does failing to pass budget affect debt repayments? Could they simply end up defaulting sometime in future? That is not great outlook for a "reserve currency".

I mean it happened earlier this year in Tasmania, and it was absolutely for grandstanding purposes, given they'd had an election less than a year before.

Really - I totally missed that! Will have a read about it, but could you elaborate on the ‘grandstanding’ aspect?

EDIT: wow, what a mess!

I only considered the Federal level, it's nice to get some input about state level shenanigans.

(And despite the grandstanding, they still agreed to pass supply bills to allow the public service to operate!)

Isn’t the super majority for getting over filibusters in the Senate? The catch is that it’s a Senate rule and the Senate sets is own rules via simple majority.

There’s nothing really stopping a government with simple majority control across all branches from doing away with the filibuster and ramming the budget through except internal party politics.

> a Senate rule and the Senate sets is own rules via simple majority.

Right, each house of the US legislature starts the session with a >50% vote to re-adopt a slowly mutating package of rules that it used last time and has carried forward for decades, defining how work is scheduled, what committees exist, how seniority is calculated, who gets the nice office with the window, etc.

This leads to the "nuclear option" of a special >50% vote to remove the underlying rule which imposes the larger vote-margin for certain situations.

The Australian Government can be dissolved if any bill fails to pass on second introduction, with some caveats. In most cases the executive (formed by the holder of the lower house majority) didn't also hold a simple majority in the Senate, or had defections or independent/minor party objections over the bill.

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

Single party forming government is already questionable democracy.

Edit: At least there is required more than simple majority for some things - as there needs to be compromise (consensus in society). But we see now the flaw that ruling party does not care about compromises.

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