Page 3386 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 13 October 1993
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Some people have said, "If you do not like the decisions we make as the Government, if you do not like the decisions we make as members of parliament, wait until the next election and throw us out". Let us have a look at whether this is an intelligent suggestion or one that lacks credibility. Let us imagine that a government is approved of by the majority of people on the majority of issues. However, there is one issue close to the hearts of people that the government says it is going to introduce. No amount of writing letters, lobbying members of parliament, holding public rallies or anything else will change the opinion of the government. Is it intelligent to say, "Throw us out at the next election"? Would it not be far more valid and relevant to say on that one issue, "We shall have the right to approve or reject"? Never just say no. Some may think the people will approve or reject a particular issue; but, when it comes down not to an opinion poll but to a referendum such as the one on self-government, you may find a different situation. People's opinions, I have found, are not their convictions. When you come to a referendum where they know that on a specific issue or issues their vote can and will make a difference, this changes.
Have we seen countries around the world introduce this principle? Most of us know that over some 140 years people in Switzerland have developed this principle. Is that a good thing or a bad thing for Switzerland? They have inflation at negligible rates, unemployment at 4 or 5 per cent, low interest rates. I think most of us would agree that they are doing well economically. However, Switzerland is not Australia, nor is Italy, nor is America, where half the States have various forms of the voice of the electorate principle. But when we look at these examples around the world we find that, once the principle has been introduced into the law, the citizens have never removed it. Not in one single instance, at local government, state government or federal government level, has this principle ever been rejected by the people. Indeed, it is not being rejected around the world; it is being increasingly supported.
Some years ago in Australia we had a constitutional commission, which took submissions from people on dozens of issues relating to what constitutional changes would benefit Australia and Australians. Of those dozens of issues, there was one issue alone that encompassed the majority of the submissions, and that was the right of citizens to have a binding say at referendum. Indeed, every time this debate has proceeded anywhere in the world, the same arguments have been brought up, usually by members of parliament. I respect their right to bring these things up, because they understand well the political process; but these concerns, these questions, these arguments, have never been shown to bear fruit. Nevertheless, we will have the same debate in the ACT that has been going on for 140 years, and it should be the same debate. When the law is introduced and the citizens of Canberra have the right, on those issues that they feel have a significant effect on their lives, to have a say, we too will realise that the arguments, while valid in discussion, have no validity in practice.
Who in Australia has supported this principle of the people having a valid say? I must admit that the Labor Party has done so more than anybody else, and indeed it was a left-wing principle. With the founding of the Labor Party in the 1890s, they had citizens initiative and referenda not as a policy of their party but as one of the very reasons for its existence, a major goal of the party. It was there
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