Page 1534 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 7 May 2008
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Dr Foskey: The government spends some money.
MR MULCAHY: Dr Foskey says that the government gives them the money, so you go on a spending approach.
Dr Foskey: No, the government spends the money.
MR SPEAKER: Dr Foskey, order!
MR MULCAHY: My concern is the basis on which they would allocate these priorities. It has scope for being open to abuse. Mr Smyth, probably in understated terms, spoke of the experience that his government had. The fact that it has not served us since probably tells us a little bit about how this process, or variations of this process, are ultimately found to work. It is probably lumped in with the citizen-initiated referenda which the poor Swiss have been struggling with. It is probably the biggest impediment to their national political system and one that I hope will never see the light of day again in Canberra as a concept.
Far from being democratic, one of the criticisms of the system—and I know Dr Foskey rejects the criticisms that Mr Smyth cited—and one of the criticisms that I have also read on the same site, where it operates, is that meetings are, according to one report, usually only attended by militants of the workers party or the like. By the sound of it—and I have not seen the system up close, like Dr Foskey has—it was introduced by the Marxists and is still used by them to dominate other sections and interests in the community. I know it could be argued that anyone is free to attend these meetings, but I suspect that many people simply will not be bothered with the process. They are too busy, do not have the time or are put off by the behaviour or attitude of hardline militants.
I had a little discussion with Dr Foskey. I recall that, in the Whitlam era, there was a thing called the Australian assistance plan. Mr Speaker, you might remember that. It used to operate in various parts of Australia where groups of people would come together and dish out money. I was then advising a Liberal senator and decided to go to one of these meetings. Without exaggeration, people were clutching their hearts at the thought of a conservative-leaning political activist turning up at these meetings, which were open to anybody in the community.
Mr Barr: Were you in the Labor Party then?
MR MULCAHY: No, I was in the Liberal Party at that time. It caused great panic. Indeed, at the next meeting, dozens and dozens of students and unions were wheeled out, for fear that there was about to be a takeover of this group by Liberal-aligned people. This group doled out money, gave themselves cars and did all sorts of wonderful things. It was not unlike the model that Dr Foskey is talking about. It troubled me that that sort of thing happened. Of course, that went out the door after the change of government, although I think the Howard government experimented with something similar, which was equally disastrous.
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