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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (4 December) . . Page.. 4637 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

a piece of legislation such as this legislation of Mr Humphries's something to ensure the protection of minorities. That will be an interesting challenge if this legislation is defeated, as I hope it will be. There is no doubt that, if we can find a way to assess community opinion in such a positive way and still protect the rights of minorities, we should attempt to do that.

How do we protect the rights of minorities in our system at the moment? We allow minorities to contest decisions against a reasonable set of standards. They contest decisions usually through the courts, but through the range of tribunals, courts and boards of review that we have. That is the method we use to do it. Would those courts still be available? The answer is yes. But what would be the view of the courts where they have a clear set of rules, as in the Discrimination Act, for example? The courts have been shown to maintain individual and personal rights under those circumstances. So, I think that is clear.

There is a danger, however, with that notion of majoritarianism. A certain authority, of course, goes with a referendum result that has been carried, and I use that myself. We put Hare-Clark to a referendum, and then we entrenched it. People are talking about changes to our way of governance. I think, at the National Capital Futures Conference, Mr Humphries started talking about the direct election of the Chief Minister. My immediate response was, "Gary, that is inconsistent with the result that we have already had on a referendum". In other words, I appeal immediately to a two-thirds majority view that says in that case that proportional representation is decided and that a direct election of the Chief Minister simply undermines proportional representation because it is a 50 per cent view - with 50 per cent winners and 50 per cent losers and without compromises.

It is interesting that somebody like me is dragged immediately to appeal to the importance of a majority view as expressed in a referendum. I think it is reasonable for us to say that such a process needs to be dealt with with great care. So, the first and most important thing in dealing with citizen-initiated referenda is that we ensure that our democracy is protected and that we ensure that the difficult part of our democracy is protected; that is, the ability for people to contest majority decisions in so far as they affect them individually. So, the first thing I deal with is contestability.

A series of other issues have been raised in the debate. In Mr Humphries's introduction speech, he went through the arguments that were put the first time we debated this and he put the contra-arguments. So, it is only appropriate that I point to the weaknesses in his contra-arguments. He referred to Ms Follett saying that the Bill would "put more power in the hands of pressure groups, extremists and power elites and reduce the influence of the average citizen on the legislative process". Mr Humphries said:

On the contrary, I believe that community-initiated referenda ... would empower average citizens by giving them direct access to the legislative process that they currently do not have.

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