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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 9 Hansard (23 August) . . Page.. 3277 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

Our democratic system of government, as members are very much aware, relies not just on the freely elected Assembly and citizen input at elections every three years. Mr Moore, in the article "Undermining Democracy", expressed my views well in relation to this matter. He wrote:

A free press, an independent broadcaster and an active citizenry help to ensure that people are aware when the government does take questionable initiatives, perhaps trampling on their interests. And the institutions of representative government, the courts and other less formal tribunals and channels of appeal help to make it possible for people to have their complaints heard.

Mr Moore went on to say:

Allowing citizen-initiated referenda would directly undermine these institutions of democratic contestability.

One of my predecessors as Leader of the Opposition, Rosemary Follett, made some telling points in her 1995 speech against a similar proposal. She pointed to experience with community or citizen-initiated referendums in the USA and New Zealand. I think it is fair to say that the history of CIRs in those countries reveals that some of the experiences have not had happy or enduring results.

In one noteworthy referendum in New Zealand there was significant community support for a particular initiative-I do not have the detail of it-which was completely ignored by the government after the referendum. What would happen in that circumstance under this bill? Clause 31 of the bill only requires the Chief Minister to present a proposed law approved by a referendum to the Assembly. There is no obligation to pass the bill. There is nothing to prevent amendment of the law. We all know that many bills that have been presented to the Assembly simply sit on the notice paper, with no action being taken. That would most likely be the fate of proposed law approved by a referendum with which the government of the day, if it has the numbers, disagrees.

Apart from the direct cost of conducting the referendum that I have referred to before, there would be the costs of providing the public service to the interest groups to prepare the proposed law, the Chief Minister preparing an analysis of the costs and benefits of the law-these are all issues raised in the legislation-the Auditor-General reporting on that analysis, preparing before and against cases and distributing those cases to every household in the ACT, and the unquantifiable cost of imposing the will of the majority on the minority, with consequent dissension in the community.

The question that must be asked is: why would we go to that expense when our current system is so open to the community? Community groups have no difficulty in contacting members, putting their viewpoints across and influencing decisions made by members. Because members are so exposed to the community, they are able to place particular decisions in a broader context and take account of the most recent developments in an issue and vote accordingly.

A referendum question, with its written for and against cases, is necessarily frozen at a particular moment in time. In that case the holding of a referendum on a proposed law may effectively block worthwhile initiatives by an ACT government that may be based on later and better evidence. There could always be a demand by opponents to any new

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