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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 11 Hansard (22 October) . . Page.. 3899 ..
MS TUCKER (continuing):
current parliament. For example, the government recently opposed a bill Bob Brown put up relating to allowing pensioners, public servants and people with dual citizenship to run for parliament even though it was in their own policy.
The argument that the Senate is not democratic deserves a response because it is a fundamental question that Australians will have to address if there is a referendum. The major parties will, no doubt, push the line that it is not, even though it does not stand up to scrutiny and is inconsistent with the evidence. Of course, there is no perfect mode of democracy and in some ways it is an evolving process. One very brief definition of democracy I have read describes it as responsive rule. A fuller definition I have read is, "The necessary correspondence between acts of governance and the equally weighted felt interests of citizens with respect to those acts."
It took representatives from 128 national parliaments, meeting in Cairo in 1997, 27 lengthy paragraphs to produce a universal declaration on democracy. One of the three principles set out reads:
Democracy is founded on the right of everyone to take part in the management of public affairs; it therefore requires the existence of representative institutions at all levels and, in particular, a Parliament in which all components of society are represented and which has the requisite powers and means to express the will of the people by legislating and overseeing government action.
Let's look at Australia in that context. John Howard was elected in 1996. The coalition won less than 50 per cent of the vote, but won 65 per cent of the seats in the House of Representatives. The coalition were re-elected in 1998. Their share of the primary vote was under 40 per cent, but they still kept 55 per cent of the seats. The two-party preferred system delivered a similar result last election.
The increasing number of voters who are turning away from major parties are marginalised by this system and it is not democratic. On the other hand, the Senate, through proportional representation, is democratic. As Harry Evans points out:
...proportional representation can be evaluated in terms of its effect of depriving governments of control of proportionally-elected houses, and thereby providing a legislative safeguard. From bitter past experience, we know that governments with the total power conferred by complete control of the legislature tend to become arrogant, overbearing and corrupt, and that an upper house not under government control can provide an antidote to this disorder.
Dr John Uhr of the ANU commented:
The Australian situation is saved to a considerable extent by the existence of the Senate and its system of proportional representation which allocates seats more strictly on the basis of the relative strength of voter support. The basic issue is voter alienation and it is time for the major parties to stop complaining about it and do something about it. It is not the voters but the parliaments that are the problem, mainly because they are too slow to use their legislative power to open up parliamentary representation to those minority groups whose views they do not want to hear. It is obvious that if we are to enhance our democratic system we need to not muzzle the Senate but introduce proportional representation in the House of Representatives...
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