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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 9 Hansard (23 August) . . Page.. 3279 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

The citizen-initiated referendum allows ordinary people to trigger plebiscites. Whatever its dangers in other respects, it appears to recommend itself on democratic grounds. But this is a grave mistake. CIR is inherently anti-democratic.

Democracy, we are told, means the rule of the people: the "cracy" of the "demos". But at the heart of democracy there lurks an ambiguity. For there are two saliently different ways in which we may understand the word "people" and so two contrasting ways in which we may interpret the will of the people. This is fundamental to what we are discussing today.

The first way of understanding the people is to take the word to refer en bloc to the people as a collective. This approach casts the people as an agent distinct from ordinary individuals-as a group, in other words. It suggests that the people, this group, has its own wisdom and wishes and that it is capable, almost like a board of directors, of giving a mandate to government. Construed as a collective agent, the people become as inscrutable and as unpredictable a master as a royal despot ever was.

The second possibility of understanding the word "people" in this context is to refer not to anything as abstract and unified as a collective agent but to those ordinary individuals taken severally, taken individually, or in small groups, who make this collectivity. People in this sense remain individuals and as individuals in their groups and independence. They often diverge from one another in their traditions, the allegiances they endorse and their interests and tastes.

Does democracy require the rule of the collective people, taken as a singular abstract entity, or does it require the control of government by ordinary individuals? That is the fundamental question we are dealing with today.

The rule of the collective people, however we mystify its unity, would come down in practice to the rule of the majority. And the rule of the majority, taken to its limit, is quite likely to involve majoritarian tyranny. I referred to this concept in the debate on a particular referendum earlier in the week.

Individuals who belong to minority ethnic or religious groups, individuals who espouse minority causes and individuals with minority tastes are liable to find themselves dominated by a collective will-the majoritarianism we are talking about. They may find that on certain issues they get no hearing and have no influence. From their point of view, they might as well be subject to the will of a royal ruler.

Democracy is not a decent ideal if it can mean something as objectionable as majoritarian tyranny. So we conclude that what democracy must mean is the control of government by ordinary individuals, and those ordinary individuals being able to rely on the government to protect and to nurture them.

What is required for a democracy where ordinary individuals control government? What is ideally required, in a word, is that every public decision, even those decisions which originate in the collective will, should be individually contestable. People should be able, in their individual and group affiliations, to contest any pattern of decision-making that does not treat them as equals with others. That is the fundamental we are dealing with: equality.

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