Alan @10, I tend to agree but a number of senior Australian and British lawyers seem to think that would lead to dictatorship.

The Callaghan government, admittedly a minority government, somehow survived for three years despite being defeated a record 34 times.

In cases where the Constitution codifies what constitutes a “no confidence” vote, its usually done in a way to make it somewhat difficult for the legislature to actually remove the government, at least that is the case with the French and German constitutions.

Wikipedia also has a helpful list of the governments, in all countries, that were defeated in votes of no confidence:

So really there are three “levels”:

(a) defeat on an “important” bill – open to various interpretations – it may be that cross-bench (or floor-crossing Govt) MPs genuinely disliked the proposed law on its merits but don’t want to turf out the PM

(b) a motion saying “This House lacks confidence in the PM” or “The PM’s salary be reduced by one dollar” or variation thereof – hard to interpret as anything other than “In the name of God, go!”

and

(c) refusal to pass a budget bill.

Tunisia has done better by giving explicit no-confidence votes direct legal force, I’d say.

Legally, what counts (in Westminster-derived monarchical constitutions like the UK, Australia and Canada) is refusal of supply. A motion by the Lower House presaging an eventual blocking of the budget is like a leadership spill by the caucus of the majority party. It gives the Crown/ viceroy a heads-up that the incumbent will probably not be able to get the next budget passed, in which case the Crown/ viceroy may choose to act right away – or alternatively, to place the chief minister on probation.

PS: I think Curtin vice Menzies in 1941 was also a motion to reduce the PM’s salary by one pound.

I could not disagree more. A vote of no confidence does not need to be backed by refusing supply.

If it were the government would be responsible to the parliament only during brief periods when money bills were being debated. Moreover it would make governments responsible to the senate or legislative council, not the lower house.The vast majority of government resignations in Australia have not been tied to refusal of supply and supply has never, to my knowledge, been refused by a lower house in Australia.

I accept there have been cases like the Gair government resigning on passage of an amendment to a money bill. I think the amendment reduced the premier’s salary by 1 pound.

In 1998, the Queensland Parliament (where an independent had the balance of power) voted no confidence in the Attorney-General over an ethics allegation. However, the Premier toughed it out and refused to sack the AG, and the Parliament (or, more accurately, the Independent) wasn’t prepared to force the issue by voting out the entire govt. In our system, though, a NoCoVote in an individual Minister (or even in the whole Cabinet) has no legal force on its own, and is ignored by the Governor if it doesn’t foreshadow the blocking of supply. Other systems slice the goose differently and give NoCoVotes immediate, direct, self-executing legal effect. I tend to think the best balance is to do that for votes against the entire Cabinet but leave votes against individual Ministers a political matter.

(As for picking off individual portfolio-holders, this seems – ironically – more pronounced in the US system than in Westminster and other parliamentary systems. The departure of Donald Rumsfeld, for a recent example, was attributable to him losing the confidence of the Senate more than to him losing the confidence of the President. At the same time, there were not the numbers in the Senate to deny re-confirmation to other Bush Cabinet-level officials, let alone to try to impeach the President).