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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (4 December) . . Page.. 4642 ..

MR OSBORNE (continuing):

As I said, Mr Speaker, it has been something that I have changed my mind on three or four times today. I have given a few extra grey hairs to Mr Moore a couple of times today. I have removed a couple of grey hairs from Mr Humphries, given them back to Mr Humphries and taken them from Mr Moore, and it has been quite fun. But, as I said, Mr Speaker, this is a piece of legislation which is very important, one which requires a great deal of thought and one which, perhaps, with some improvement, could be achievable. I will be cautiously voting against it.

MR WHITECROSS (6.57): Mr Osborne should reflect on the fact that you can take the grey hairs away, but you cannot give them back.

Mr Osborne: I would not know.

MR WHITECROSS: You would not know. Mr Speaker, Labor is not supporting these two Bills. The Community Referendum Bill seeks to fundamentally reshape the form and substance of democracy in the Australian Capital Territory. Representative democracy is a process of representation founded upon the philosophy that one person equals one vote. Each citizen has a fundamental right to vote for another to represent their views and interests in a forum such as this Legislative Assembly. By casting a vote for a particular representative, citizens define the parameters and the issues of importance to them and charge their chosen representative to act on their behalf.

Labor is not suggesting that the system of representative democracy results in unitary individual views. Of course, that is not the case. People form views and opinions on a wide range of issues, and no single representative can fully reflect the views of all those that voted for them. Nevertheless, the system of representative democracy provides individuals with the ability to elect and pay representatives to spend the time to work through complex issues and concerns with regard to the best interests of the community - interests which the community self-defines through Assembly elections and the like.

In this context, it is the role and duty of government and all other elected representatives to seek to encourage citizen participation within the parliamentary process, as it currently operates, rather than to promote the circumvention of the parliament through citizen-initiated referenda. Advocates of the citizen-initiated referenda concept attack their opponents by saying that any opposition to the concept shows contempt for the ability of citizens to make decisions. Arguments of this nature are simply nonsense. They are highly misleading. The ability of citizens to cast a meaningful vote is, of course, borne out in the Territory every three years at elections.

The real issue that does require scrutiny is how citizen-initiated referenda will affect our current system of government. It is Labor's view that citizen-initiated referenda will further undermine representative democracy, devolving a substantial degree of political power to sectional interest groups. In order to ensure the 1,000 signatures on the lodgment form required to establish a sponsoring committee under the Bill and then to educate and inform the public about the holding of the referendum and then the issues

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