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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 9 Hansard (23 August) . . Page.. 3297 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

"Did you vote to ban communism?", I thought she would say yes. But she said, "No, we are a democratic country. That's something they do in the Soviet Union."

There have been other constitutional issues where the good sense of the Australian people has shown through. There was the referendum in 1967 to give Aborigines the vote and to have them included in the census. That was passed by about 95 per cent. Back in 1998 the ACT was the only state, I think, to vote for four-year terms for federal parliament. It voted no on the other issues, along with every other state and territory. There were four questions then. Again, that was a case of people actually thinking.

The ACT people are no different. They do not think of politics every day of their lives. If you go out there today and ask, "When is the next ACT election?", maybe one person out of 10 might tell you, "Some time in October." The rest would instantly say, "I wouldn't have a clue." If you re-ask them the question a few times they might get close to it. It is not concerning them. They are not thinking about it. There are many people out there who think that people in this parliament have pension schemes like the federal parliament. In fact, most people probably do. I am forever correcting people on that one issue. That does not mean that they are not capable or are not interested in politics. When it comes to a crunch, when they have to put their minds towards a political issue, they will use their innate commonsense, their innate decency, the innate qualities that they have gained from being part of this great democracy which has evolved over many years here in Australia.

I think people are saying that CIRs are populist; that you are appealing to people's base instincts; that any minority group can hijack it if they can get the not inconsiderable number of signatures required. Those people are very wrong. They do a disservice to the ability of citizens in this territory and throughout Australia to think carefully about major issues and vote accordingly, an ability which I think has been shown time and time again. All those questions in previous referendums have been yes or no questions. They can't be any other way. I think that little historical recitation I gave is good evidence to show that people are more than capable of thinking very carefully about those types of questions, including the people of the ACT. I, for one, have no fear that the people of the ACT would not make sensible decisions in terms of any citizen-initiated referenda questions that came up.

As other speakers in favour of this bill have indicated, it takes a hell of a lot of people, over 10,000 voters, to get a question to a stage where you could give it a run, and getting that number is very hard. That in itself is a check to any ratbag suggestion getting a run. There are other checks, of course, in the system.

Kerrie Tucker from the Greens talks about the Greens believing in participative democracy. Well, what on earth do you think this is if it is not participative democracy? I think by not voting for this we are disempowering people. I think Mr Humphries and a few others are quite right to talk about new parties like One Nation arising because people do feel disempowered. They feel frustrated. They feel disenfranchised to an extent. This is one way of engaging people in our democracy, of giving the ordinary citizen another way of having a say rather than just electing members to an Assembly every three years.

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