Independent Michael Moore and Labor’s Annette Ellis did exactly the opposite of Mark Antony at Caesar’s funeral.Last week they formed a majority on a committee that moved to defer citizens’ initiated referendums until the next Assembly, where the numbers might be different.
Antony said he came to bury Caesar not praise him; and promptly praised him and immortalised his name. Moore and Ellis said they came to praise CIR; and promptly buried it.
A sensible government with nothing to fear would have welcomed CIR (where upon the gathering of the signatures of 5 per cent of the electorate a referendum has to be put at the next election).
CIR could have a been used as a put-up-or-shut weapon. It could have defined the difference between whingeing NIMBYs and worthwhile community groups. It could have defined the difference between selfish business cowboys and responsible industry groups. It could have been used to empty the too-hard basket of issues like abortion and euthanasia.
Instead, we have a government that idolises its idea of “”widespread community consultation” while knocking back the ultimate community consultation: the ballot box.
Instead we have an independent who likes to have a monopoly on the “”too-hard-basket” issues.
They say they will revisit CIR next Assembly. But I suspect (wrongly I hope) that it will be another “”professional politicians know best” conspiracy to kill the idea.
CIR would have saved both this Government, the Alliance Government and the Assembly in general a lot of anguish over some issues of major community concern.
The Alliance might have been saved the long battles with community groups over schools and hospital closures. The Assembly would have been saved the ridicule of fluoride when the looney right captured the MLAs in a way they could not have captured the community as a whole. More recently, this Government could have been saved the embarrassment of having its planning policy unravel before its eyes as the community groups slowly proved their cases.
Last week, for example, Tuggeranong Homestead became the second or three major in-fill sites shown to be poorly chosen. Yes, the Planning Appeals Board ruled, the surrounds of the place where Charles Bean wrote the Anzac story has heritage value.
And the flow-on from the in-fill policy has been a rates hiatus caused by soaring unimproved capital values in areas ripe for redevelopment which also happen to be inner areas where pensioners want to remain living.
In short, this government of “”wide community consultation” has listened to the wrong people. It perhaps explains why in a territory that has two of the safest Labor seats federally the local Labor Government could muster only 36 per cent in the latest Datacol poll.
Some of the issues that caused that could have been dealt with far less painfully by CIR if the Government itself could not accurately gauge community feeling. Or the Government could have dismissed minority pressure more effectively by challenging them to put their cases to the people.
The myth is that CIR is a tool of manipulation by the looney right, the looney left and big-buck pressure groups. The myth is that people in the community do not have the skill to draft sensible laws or the knowledge of policy implications.
Wrong. The far right, looney left and big-bucks pressure groups can capture a legislature far more easily than an electorate.
As for drafting, there are numerous examples of defective federal and local legislation initiated by politicians and professional drafters: land tax, Australia Card, unfair dismissal and so on.
As for policy, the rates flow-on effect shows the Government did not think through its planning policy, and in a town like Canberra community groups tend to get armed with ideas, facts and projections that are often as good as or better than the government’s.
Far from dismissing CIR because it erodes their power, Government MLAs should realise that CIR could occasionally save them from their own folly and thus increase their chances of staying in power.
The committee’s report came down on US election day and as it happened California also voted on two citizen’s initiated referendums. The results were used by Moore to show what a horrible thing CIR can be.
Californians voted to make it illegal to supply education and all but emergency health care to illegal immigrants (mainly Hispanics) and they voted against an Australian-style medical-insurance system.
Of course, this does not show how awful citizens’ initiated referendums are, but how awful Californians are. Californian legislator have passed some fairly grim laws, like gassing murders and giving life sentences to third-time felons. But no-one suggests that ACT politicians are about to embark on the same course.
For every poor example there are good ones.
Moore and Ellis strongest argument against CIR for the ACT was that under present governmental arrangements it could only be advisory. This is because the Federal Self-Government Act vests legislative power in the ACT in the Legislative Assembly and the Assembly cannot be bound by a referendum. Moore argued that to have an advisory scheme would bring discredit on the whole idea.
Moore said he wanted to get it right by having enforceable referendums.
In a way, this begs the question. (I am using the phrase, probably for the last time, in its true sense — an argument that depends on its own conclusion as a premise. For example, democracy is good because rule by the people is best. The phrase is cast before political language destroys who will use to mean “”gives rise to the question. That was a long digression, I have wanted to get that off my chest since John Hewson started to misuse the phrase in 1991. Now back to Michael Moore begging the question.)
The gist of Moore’s argument is that we need enforceable referendums because we cannot trust politicians to always do the decent thing so we cannot have CIR in with the present ACT set-up. But the very reason CIR proponents want CIR is that politicians cannot always be trusted to do the decent thing.
The logic of Moore’s argument is that the Federal Parliament will have to change the Self-Government Act before the ACT can have a form of CIR. As both parties federally are opposed to CIR, it is an effective way of burying it.
It was ironic that the CIR deferral came in the same week that the Referendum Machinery Bill was passed which sets up the electoral machinery for Assembly- (read government-) initiated referendums.
So it is all right for a majority of the 17 MLAs to send something to the people to vote on, but somehow an issue that 5 per cent of the electorate decide should go to a referendum is not.
Now, in the history of ACT Self-Government who would you back to put sensible, workable, thought-out propositions to the people? _ The lot that gave us turn-on, turn-off fluoride, erratic rates, land tax that hit invalid relatives and took three years to give us big bins. Or concerned people convincing five per cent of the population to sign a petition (that’s about 50 signatures a day for six months; no mean feat).
Yes; let elected governments govern, but let’s check them with the possibility that they might occasionally get over-ruled or forced to do something they might otherwise not do.