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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (4 December) . . Page.. 4647 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

then we should try to fix it - not set up ways to circumvent it. We have often raised in the Assembly concerns about how decisions are made by the Executive without the full involvement of the rest of the members and about the lack of community consultation offered by this Government. Changes to the way that the Government and the Assembly operate could significantly improve negative public perceptions about politicians and, hopefully, reduce the feeling in the community that the issues of most concern to them are not being adequately addressed.

Mr Speaker, we believe that it would be preferable for the Assembly to act in a more inclusive and participatory manner, rather than for the community to have to rely on CIR to get their views heard. Citizen-initiated referendums oversimplify complex issues to a yes/no vote by the public, who may not have the expertise or information on which to consider all aspects of the issue. Obviously, at the moment, a good example would be Wik. Can members not see how easy it would be to get thousands of signatures? We would have John Laws, Mr Howard and all sorts of people saying, "People are sick of Wik. Let us fix it up. Oh, what a good idea!". So, you would just need enough signatures and you would have a yes or a no to the 10-point plan. I can just see it.

Issues of public policy are, by nature, invariably complex. It would be a betrayal of the community who elected us to put in place a CIR system that is unable to cope with this complexity. As members here would know, the translation of an idea into a piece of legislation entails much consideration of the details required to put that idea into practical effect. Conversely, trying to understand the implications of other people's Bills can also be very difficult. Expecting the community to undertake this task without the necessary background and experience, and perhaps having to do this on a number of issues on the so-called "community consultation day", is just asking for bad laws to be made. Even though an Assembly is not bound to pass a piece of legislation that has been put through a referendum, the political pressure on it to do so would be enormous.

As members are aware, we do often resolve complex issues through amendment and round table processes, which often take some time. The whole idea of having just one community consultation day is abhorrent to the Greens. Democracy does not begin and end on election day. Community consultation should be happening on every day, not just once every three years. We would not want any government to think that CIR abrogates its responsibility to undertake full public consultation on issues as they arise.

Another problem with CIR is that the initiation of referendums is likely to be undertaken by groups that already have sufficient resources to mount a major campaign to get signatures and to promote their cause. An argument that has been put forward in support of CIR is that well-resourced lobby groups already have too much say over decisions in parliaments compared with the general public. CIR is unlikely to change this. These groups will just use CIR where necessary to get what they want. Minority groups and those parts of the community who are not well organised would still be discriminated against. Other types of community consultation processes are necessary to ensure that the loudest voices do not drown out the soft ones. It is very concerning that this legislation does not contain restrictions on advertising.

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