The failure of federal and state politicians to deliver the gun control laws that the vast majority of the population so palpably want is another example of what Sir Ninian Stephen called the democratic deficit.
Sir Ninian, who is chair of the Constitutional Centenary Foundation used the term to describe Australia’s treaty-ratification process and the way the Executive negotiates and signs whatever treaties it wants irrespective of parliamentary or popular will.
The gun-law “”democratic deficit” is slightly different. It is not a tussle between the parliament and the executive but one between the people and the parliament. Parliaments in all states and territories and federally (with the exception of the ACT) have refused to enact the people’s will. How can they be forced to do so? People feel powerless in the face of guns. This is a democracy and when a majority of people want something which is of obvious benefit to the whole community they should be able to get it.
After Queen Street, Hoddle Street and Strathfield it was obvious that the great majority of people wanted greater gun control. Rightly or wrongly (and I think rightly), they saw this as a way of stopping at least some future gun deaths.
At present, there are about 550 a year. Eighty per cent are suicides, about 50 are murders or manslaughter and the rest are self-defence or accidental. Port Arthur alone will dramatically change the averages. In the US it is about 25,000 deaths, 16,000 or which are murder or manslaughter. America has about 10 times Australia’s population and about 300 times the murder/manslaughter rate. So it has about 30 times our gun-related murder/manslaughter rate per head. Laws that make possession easier mean more households with guns and more gun deaths.
After Queen Street and Hoddle Street people called for tighter control, but not much happened. A little happened after Strathfield. But the politicians, mindful of the fate of the Unsworth Government in 1988 feared that the undirected wrath of 50 to 80 per cent was preferable to the highly directed wrath of a few per cent of gun-owners. In a democracy the significance of the group of people who do not want tighter gun control is that they are willing to change their vote on this issue alone. The armchair socialists, the small l liberals, the average decent suburbanite, the Christian cheek-turner and the atheist humanist all might want tighter gun controls, but not one would move a vote from Kim to John or John to Kim on that issue. But it is very likely that there are at least 100,000 owners of guns who do not want either themselves or their guns on a register will swap their vote on this issue alone. Those votes (comprising nearly 1 per cent of the electorate) would be enough to change the 1990 or 1993 election result … though not enough to change 1996. They could have changed the 1995 Queensland result (which was changed anyway in 1996). They are fairly well organised and targeted because they are on magazine and product mailing lists.
So this is the democratic deficit. Eighty per cent say no guns; 19 per cent don’t care and 1 per cent say aye to guns. I think the ayes have it. At least that is the record to date, and Port Arthur is not guaranteed to change it, though I hope I am wrong.
One answer would be to have citizens’ initiated referendums, so that after the gathering of a set number of signatures a referendum to change the Constitution, enact a law or veto a law would be put to the people. The myth is that citizens’ initiated referendums are things promoted by the lunatic right and would only favour proposals from the lunatic. The democratic deficit over the gun law shows this is not the case. The US and European experience shows successful and unsuccessful initiatives from both left and right. Unfortunately, we cannot have citizens’ initiated referendums without laws passed by the politicians who have most to lose from them. Notice how the ACT Liberals now in Government have quietly ignored their pre-election promises.
The referendums would not be a substitute for good representative government, but be a fail-safe for isolated things like gun laws. The mere possibility of a citizens’ initiated referendum would usually be enough to cajole the politicians to enacting a better law.
The majority of people are neither stupid nor capricious. Experience since Strathfield, however, shows that the politicians they elect can be. There should be a way that the majority of the people can peacefully take the law into their own hands if the politicians will not do the job for them … as they are supposed to do.