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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 9 Hansard (21 August) . . Page.. 3014 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

maybe five years in some cases. We expect that that party will exercise judgment based on the sort of mandate they obtained from the electorate at the election preceding their term of office.

The notion of representative democracy is undergoing severe strain at the present time. The idea that we can assign a government the authority to make decisions throughout its life on very diverse, increasingly complex issues, when there has been perhaps no reference at all to the electorate about the way of dealing with such issues, is an increasingly difficult notion to sustain.

I believe that in 50 years time the idea that governments, if they have majorities in particular, will be elected to govern for the duration of their life without reference to the electorate, without any check on their power, without any reference to the community's views on issues, will be seen as antiquated and as quaint a notion as the idea that only men with property should be entitled to vote in elections.

Those notions will have been superseded by developments in the democratic experience. In a place like the ACT, where we have an articulate community, where we have people with a high level of education, with high disposable income, with close access to what governments do, at both the federal and ACT levels, with strong views about many issues, people will be in a position of demanding greater rights about the way in which they will be consulted on major issues. The idea that governments will be able to tick off decisions or cross out decisions without reference to the people will be considered unacceptable at a point in the future.

I want to have a reference to the community at this time by inviting the community to take part in the decision-making on this important issue. This is an issue of enormous importance to this community. We have not chosen an issue on a tangent or an issue of marginal relevance to this community to put to a referendum. We have chosen an issue of fundamental importance to the ACT community.

There are three issues which I think will govern the coming election campaign. They are health, education and crime. The issue of a heroin trial and an injecting place goes to at least two of those three issues-namely, health and crime.

Mr Moore: All three actually.

MR HUMPHRIES: Perhaps even to all three. These are issues that will be at the very core of public policy in the ACT in the coming years. Yet people in this place are prepared to get up and say, "We know what is best for you, the electorate, on those issues. Put us into government and we will make the right decisions for you on those questions. We do not really care what you think about those issues individually, discretely. We know what is best for you. Let us make the decision. You just trust us. Put us in government and we will make the right decisions."

I think this community has heard enough debate about these issues in the last five, six, seven, eight years to be able to form a view of their own about this. Expecting that if you vote for one party you will get one view and that if you vote for another party you will get another view is a simplistic and inadequate approach to the complexity of this issue.

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