NOT MUCH can be usefully added to the abortion debate. The stir over the funding of a clinic in Canberra is a case in point. Several times in the past 20 years an abortion clinic has been proposed. Each time the letter writers and commentators on each side round up the usual arguments.
Politicians generally hate the abortion debate. Politically, it is like the gun issue. People are prepared to change their vote on that issue alone. Take away my gun and you lose my vote. Legalise/prohibit abortion you lose my vote.
Last week, Professor Geoffrey Walker, of Queensland University, suggested a way to take such issues “”out of the hands of extremists”. He repeated his call for citizens’ veto and citizens’ initiative.
Basically, concerned citizens who claim huge public support for the right to bear arms, for free/prohibited abortion, for banning nudity in films and fluoride in water etc etc can marshal the signatures of, say, 3 per cent of the population and force a referendum. The referendums would apply to veto laws passed by the legislature just before they are enacted; to initiate new laws; and/or to veto existing law. In the federal context they could be for constitutional change.
Walker’s proposals have a certain charm, especially in the ACT. Citizens’ initiative is usually branded as the product of disturbed looney far-right minds. However, Walker points out that the left had long flirted with the idea in the Australia. It was on Labor’s platform for decades until the 1960s.
The charm of citizens’ initiative is that, far from presenting the looney right with a sword, it requires them to put up or shut up. It does the same for the looney left, of course.
Dennis Stevenson’s decayed ideas of withdrawing fluoride from the water and allowing the populace to arm themselves to their fluoride-free teeth could be put to the test.
Of course, citizens’ initiative would take some settling in. These days you can shove virtually any bit of paper calling for virtually anything in front of people on shop counters and they will sign it. It will only take one or two useless referendums for people to become more careful.
I’d reject out of hand criticism that citizens would not be capable of drafting legislation or that the results would be uncertain or unforeseen. There are plenty of ACT citizens who could make a better job of it than the present lot. The Federal Parliament, for example, has passed an average of 3583 pages of legislation a year in the past 10 years; that is hardly conducive to certainty, consistency, simplicity or comprehension.
Citizens’ initiative will also get the extremists of the politicians’ back. Politicians can tell them to go jump without fear of some targeted marginal seat or mail campaign. Go get your signatures, will be the reply. Citizens’ initiative would be a far more effective oil for the noisy-door minorities than the political pandering that goes on now.
But how much will it cost? Perhaps in the long run less than allowing government to continue as it is with expensive bureaucratic intrusions into every area of our lives. Besides, there is no need to have the expensive polling-booth method. If we can pay our phone bills over the phone with Mastercard, surely we can vote that way, pressing digits and listening to the animated Dalek voice that confirms what we have done.
An important concomitant issue is that for the thing to be genuinely democratic, levels of government have to have responsibilities that properly match the extent of spread of community concern. Thus I do not want the people of Queensland to have any say in ACT gun laws, or ACT education (no creationism, thank you), but I accept that they have a legitimate concern in airline safety and defence throughout Australia.
Public opinion is presented as fickle because of the reportage of many concurrent opinion polls. The longer term trend on many single issues, however, suggests it does not slide back and forward quickly but changes in one direction slowly as people weigh up both sides _ just as politicians supposedly do in parliamentary debate. Citizens’ initiative may be politics for the amateurs, but look where the professionals have got us.