Page 4740 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 7 December 1994
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I am not necessarily going to argue that. It is a nonsense case to bring up. The letter continues:
The rule against abdication of power does not prevent a parliament from delegating to some other person or body of people the power to make laws or regulations - provided the parliament retains actual control over the law making function - through disallowance or the power to amend or repeal such laws.
That is in the Electors Initiative and Referendum Bill specifically. Although the Bill requires the Chief Minister to gazette the resulting legislation after referendum, as members will know if they have read it, the EIR Bill allows the Assembly to amend legislation introduced by the people. That is the end of that argument. That was the main argument that was used by the committee to suggest that it would not really look at the Electors Initiative and Referendum Bill, though the terms of reference required that it do so. The terms of reference include:
... be appointed to inquire into and report on:
(i) the Community Referendum Bill 1994 and
(ii) the Electors Initiative and Referendum Bill 1994.
The committee was not supposed to recommend, as the first recommendation in the report does, that the committee proceed no further with the EIR Bill 1994 and concentrate on the Community Referendum Bill. That is not fair; that is biased.
Then we go to the disadvantages that the report lists. The committee had already said that it felt disadvantaged because there was nobody that presented any real arguments against, or that opposed, citizens-initiated referendums. Heavens above! There was not anybody. They did their best to get some disadvantages; and, boy, what a lot of poor arguments they were. Why on earth did they not use the book written by Professor de Q. Walker, Dean of the Law Faculty at Queensland University, where he listed some decent arguments against this. Under the disadvantages listed it says:
by allowing an issue to be determined by having it put to referendum, governments can delay or avoid making controversial and politically sensitive decisions ...
What nonsense! It says:
CIR is a threat to political institutions because it bypasses the safeguards and limits built into the legislative procedure.
It does not mention what safeguards or what limits. It says:
the referendum oversimplifies issues by reducing complex considerations to a yes/no vote ...
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