The ACT might be the mouse that roared in the Great Australian Centenary Constitutional Debate _ but it will only be by accidental political circumstance.
During the week we saw the stock headline New Coalition Split Looms in the same way that New Labor Split Looms was used as a stock headline in the 1960s.
This week it was citizens’ initiated referendums. National Party leader Tim Fischer and Liberal leader Alexander Downer are against them and said so bluntly in public. Liberal defence spokesman Peter Reith is in favour and has been saying so for six years. Former Queensland National Party Leader, Russell Cooper, is also in favour and so is ACT Liberal Opposition Leader, Kate Carnell.
On Thursday, a seminar and National Press Club lunch were held on the issue. Broadly, the idea is that a threshold number of signatures (between 2 and 5 per cent) calling for a law are collected. They are verified by sample. A detailed law giving effect to the proposal is drafted and a binding referendum after a minimum of four months is held on it, usually in conjunction with the next election.
Much coverage has been given to why the idea will not work, why it has not worked overseas, why it plays into the hands of red-necks and extremists and so on.
Carnell gave a detailed version of her Bill which will be presented in the ACT Legislative Assembly next month and as it has the support of the Independents, it will most likely pass.
The very compelling point against the critics is this: If the system is mad, awful, unworkable and so on, then the people will simply collect the signatures and have a referendum to get rid of it. This has happened in places where CIR runs, but oddly enough, large majorities voted in favour. Once in, nowhere has the system been abolished.
The following points were made at the seminar:
1. Snap opinion polling often showed opinion was fickle, especially as new issues arose, but after an issue is debate for a period and both sides or an argument are aired public judgment is stable and responsible.
2. If people are too stupid to decide one issue at a referendum, they must be too stupid to vote at a general election embracing many issues, so an attack on CIR is an attack on democracy itself.
3. It is in use in several European countries and 26 US states, having first been introduced in Switzerland since 1860, and none has used CIR to repeal CIR, which is open to them.
4. With CIT Governments can withstand pressure groups by telling them to put their case directly. No party can make binding promises in secret to pressure or business groups before an election because it could be overturned.
5. There were several examples of big-bucks campaigns by tobacco and gun lobbies failing.
Obviously, people in power, including lobbyists and the big media companies do not like it. People do not like power being taken away.
The reason it might make the ACT the mouse that constitutionally roared is that if people see a good idea in one state or territory, then tend to demand it in others. And this is not an idea like set-belts, it is a fundamental constitutional step in the long line since the Norman Conquest: from king to barons to Parliament to people.
It can change the national destiny as it did in civil-war-ridden Switzerland last century and in corrupt Italy this century.
It is not just for fluoride in the water or castration of rapists. In Australia, the two most divisive issues since World War II could have been dealt with by it: participation in Vietnam and the blocking of Supply. Vietnam festered from about 1968 to 1972 because no politician had the courage to put it to the people and the people could not initiate a referendum themselves. The Supply issue remains deadlocked and a timebomb because politicians will not make the initiative. The people could and would.
In this respect, CIR is more important than the republic.
In the ACT, euthanasia and in-fill would be likely candidates.
Incidentally, on capital punishment, the US record is: CIR reintroduction 2; CIR repeal 1; reintroduction by government 29. In Europe, as likely in Australia, it is a non-issue.
It is not a replacement but a complement to representative government, which would continue much as now, expect that politicians would know they could be over-ruled by the people and their conduct would change accordingly.
It may well be that its introduction in the ACT would be the result of the unique circumstance of having a minority government in a single-House Parliament.
Elsewhere in Australia, the coalition of Opposition and minor parties can at best veto or obstruct. In the ACT they can initiate and construct, even if, as the Government suggests, on CIR they are doing it just to draw attention to themselves.
In matters that might reduce the power of Executive government, governments will fight against them: Hare-Clark voting, good freedom of information laws, CIR, fixed-term elections and so on. So they are very hard to get through.
When they happen, people like them, and they stay.
In the ACT the Government is opposed, but resigned to the fact it might happen.
The Chief Minister, Rosemary Follett, said the Liberals were divided on the issue.
“”Mrs Carnell is casting around for an issue when she is faced with a Government in the ACT getting on with the job. . . . It is no substitute for real and continuing consultation which has been the hallmark of Labor in Government. We have consulted on all major issues.”
Where there had been CIR it had “”not added one jot to democracy it is a gimmick”.
Clearly, we are in for a serious debate on it. Good.