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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 9 Hansard (23 August) . . Page.. 3292 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

of representative democracy failing. So I think the underlying premise put forward by the Chief Minister is wrong in that respect.

Moving more directly to the issue of CIR, what is striking about this piece of legislation is that it comes from a government and from a party wholly committed to the notion of representation of minorities through the Hare-Clark electoral system. The whole rationale underlying this territory's endorsement of the Hare-Clark electoral system was that it allowed minorities within our community to achieve representation in the legislature. That is why we have people like Mr Rugendyke, Ms Tucker, Mr Kaine and Mr Osborne sitting here. Whilst we often vehemently disagree with their point of view, they represent an element of the Canberra constituency that would not be represented if we had a different electoral system which favoured larger major parties.

I think all members in this place recognise that in a single chamber legislature there are certain advantages in ensuring that the power of the majority is not so overwhelming that the voice of minorities should be silenced. But CIR runs directly counter to that philosophy, which I thought all members endorsed, because CIR does not respect the right of minorities. CIR does not safeguard their interests and, indeed, has the capacity to steamroll over their concerns and issues. That, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, I think is the most overwhelming and important argument from my perspective as to why this bill should be defeated today. The CIR bill proposed by this government runs contrary to everything they profess to believe in in relation to the representation of minorities in the legislature.

Democracy is a complex thing, and the urban governance of a city like Canberra is, I would have to say, increasingly complex as each year passes. As Ms Tucker said, public policy is complex, and good decision-making is not about black and white, yes or no answers. The inability of mechanisms such as CIR to allow for compromise, discussion and consensus building is something which I think undermines the whole purpose of why this place was established and why we sought to ensure that as broad a range of voices as possible was allowed to participate in the Assembly.

The other comment that the Chief Minister made was about the inhibitions which led to the establishment of participatory democracy in the Middle Ages, leading on to the more modern forms of democracy which we saw emerge during the Industrial Revolution and into the modern era. He argued that those inhibitions about the capacity of people to gather together in one place to make decisions were no longer relevant. It may be that with the introduction of certain mechanisms through information technology decision-making may be devolved in a variety of ways to individual citizens, but that still does not overcome the complex nature of many of the issues we as a society have to address. It still does not overcome the consensus building that needs to take place to achieve the best possible public policy outcome. Unless we have forums that allow for that debate to take place in an engaged, informed way, then notions of just direct decision-making, yes or no answers, will continue to remain at the fringes.

I do not rule out entirely the scope for direct decision-making or direct involvement of people in decision-making through mass mechanisms such as proposed by this bill, but we have to be very cautious about how we structure that mechanism, first of all, to protect the rights of minorities, and, secondly, to ensure that we simply do not get yes or no answers being put forward.

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