Prime Minister Paul Keating and Opposition Leader Alexander Downer were described as elitist yesterday by best-selling author Bryce Courtenay and others for dismissing the idea of citizens’ initiative referendums.
Mr Courtenay, author of (ital) The Power of One (end ital) and (ital) April Fool’s Day (end ital), said there was disenchantment with the political system in Australia because four or five people in Cabinet made all the decisions.
Of course people were apathetic and did not have an opinion. “”There is no opinion to have,” he said. Politics had disappeared into “”smaller and smaller concentric circles about smaller and smaller things”.
Even MPs had no power because if they said their constituents had brought them a proposal, “”the man with the long nose and balding hair and the man with the curly will say, tell them to get stuffed”.
He was speaking at a seminar on citizens’ initiated referendums at Parliament House. Under CIR, if a prescribed percentage of people sign a petition for a law or to repeal a law a binding referendum must be held on it.
He said the opponents of CIR were elitist because they assumed people are stupid.
“”The cynicism has to stop,” he said. “”People are not going to make stupid decisions because they are not stupid; people are not going to make irresponsible decisions because they are not irresponsible.”
The idea has come under attack from Mr Keating, Mr Downer, Foreign Minister Gareth Evans, National Party leader Tim Fischer and several media commentators as impractical, prone to be taken over by right- and left-wing extremists and red necks, as stifling long-term government decision making processes; as under-mining representative government; and as being government by rich groups who can mount expensive campaigns.
The seminar was instigated by Liberal Defence spokesman Peter Reith who told the National Press Club at a lunch in conjunction with the seminar that he expected 15 or so “”highly original questions” that he was at odds with his leader, but “”I support my leader”. He said it was a discussion about ideas and he had been supporting this for six years.
There was “”an intellectual corruption” in political life in Australia of not pursuing new ideas.
ACT Liberal Opposition Leader, Kate Carnell, told the seminar that a Bill she was to introduce next month was almost complete. She expected it to pass with the help of independents.
She said it was not hypothetical but a workable way to empower ordinary electors that would be a first for Australia.
“”Like communities all around the world, we believe the people of Canberra want a new era of public participation in decision-making, as distinct from the present system of government by pressure group, from which all but those “in the know’ are excluded,” she said.
Five per cent (or about 10,000 signatures) would trigger a referendum which would usually be at the next election. The proposed law would have to be public for at least four months before the referendum.
Democrat leader Cheryl Kernot said, the political parties were coming under increasing influence of unelected lobby groups. It was paternalistic, elitist view that the only citizen participation was a one-shot vote every three or four years.
Other speakers at the seminar and the Press Club were: Professor Geoffrey Walker; authors Tom Keneally and Morris West; Independent MP Ted Mack; Clerk of the Senate Harry Evans and state and territory MPs.
In response to the critics and in favour of CIR they made the following points among many:
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.
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.
It is in use in several European countries and 26 US states, having first been introduced in Switzerland since 1860, and in no place where it has been introduced have the people called for its recall even though under CIT people have the power to end it.
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.
There were several examples of big-bucks campaigns by tobacco and gun lobbies failing.
CIT would complement representative government, not replace it.
Representatives often did not look at the detail of law and were often in no better position than ordinary people to make decisions, witness various governmental decision-making confusions and failures over media ownership, uranium mining, unemployment and so on.
Senator Kernot said CIT “”is the micro-economic reform of our constitutional system”.
Mr Courtenay likened the constitutional system to his 18-year-old Porshe: quite sound but in need of an overhaul in some parts.