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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 9 Hansard (23 August) . . Page.. 3294 ..

MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Chief Minister, you were heard in silence and I insist on that for Mr Berry.

Mr Humphries: I was assisting him.

MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: I think Mr Berry can acquit himself well.

MR BERRY: I think Reagan may have been the Governor of California or something at the time. The end result was that there were less funds for community services in California and they were cut back, and the minorities were affected most by that decision. That has always stuck in my mind. I know there have been other citizen-initiated referendums in the US which have turned up results that some of us might agree with. There was one in Oregon in more recent times in relation to euthanasia, and pro-euthanasia succeeded. We might have our favourite issues here that we think could win in a citizen-initiated referendum. I probably have one, but I would not sell out on the principle merely to achieve a result by citizen-initiated referendum which would lead to an unsound political future for the territory as a result.

The system we have now involves political parties. People will always criticise one political party or another. It is up to us to demonstrate that we have a particular political philosophy that is more palpable to the community than the other side.

My colleague Mr Corbell made the point, I think, that, as far as the ordinary person is concerned out there in the community, there has been an amalgamation of the political philosophies of the major groupings within body politics. Well, that is true. Why is it so? I think that happens largely because of single member constituencies throughout the country. Because many of them have only very small margins between being in parliament and out of parliament, that tends to generate favouritism towards mainstream politics. That again ignores minorities, which is troubling to me.

I am sure I did not hear everybody speak but I heard most of them, and I suspect that there are many more reasons that could be raised in this place against the proposition that has been put forward by Mr Humphries. When it comes down to it, superficially, if you go to somebody out there and ask the simple question: "Would you like to have more say?", most people out there would say yes. But when you explain the internals of it, as has been done today in some very well thought out instructive contributions, I think most people would think again about this sort of an approach.

I think this has a bit to do with the electoral cycle more than the substance of the issue. I acknowledge that Mr Humphries has remained committed to it throughout his period in this place, but I still think the only attraction that it has is the superficial attraction of giving people more say, which, in the end, it might for the strong but it will not for the weak.

One other matter that Mr Humphries raised was the issue of One Nation. He blamed the system for the emergence of One Nation. I do not have any difficulty with the emergence. I do not like One Nation's policies or philosophies. I do not like the things they say about other people. There is not much about One Nation that I like, but I do not have any difficulty about its emergence because it heightened the debate and I think it strengthened the feeling of the community on these issues.

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