Use of Sir Humphrey’s Fourth Argument Against Changing Anything at All (it will cost too much) was inevitable.
Thus the opponents of citizens’ initiative condemned the idea when it was floated last week. It would cost $1 million per referendum, they said.
However, it is just as easy to see citizens’ initiative as an investment through which citizens will stop governments doing foolish and expensive things.
There are several kinds. All require a certain percentage of voters’ signatures which force a binding referendum on the legislature. Some are limited to vetoing existing laws. Others allow referendums to propose laws, provided they do not require more than a certain level of spending or are limited to major constitutional matters. And others allow open slather.
The practicalities of citizens’ initiative are often used to cloud principle. But the practicalities are not difficult, especially in a polity of only 175,000 voters rich in the ways of information technology. If Woolworths can maintain a share register of 300,000 verifying signatures, addresses, bank account numbers and a huge volume of transactions, it should not be beyond the wit of the ACT Government service to do a similar thing. Sampling techniques can quickly verify any significant fraud.
These are minor matters. It is principle that counts. Australia’s dual political heritage (the British and the American) pulls us in opposite directions.
Our British tradition gives sovereignty to Parliament. Ironically, Whitlam and Keating are in this tradition. It says all power and sovereignty lie in the majority of the House of Commons. The Commons determines all, including who can vote and whether there will be an election. It is not subject to other fountains of sovereignty (such as the people through a written Constitution). The Commons, for example, postponed the election during World War II, so there was no election for seven years.
Our American tradition (we borrowed heavily from the US Constitution), on the other hand, gives sovereignty to the people. The people consent to be governed by approving a Constitution, and more importantly are the guardians of change to that Constitution.
The British tradition suggests that the people are unruly dim-wits, not to be trusted and who do not know their place. They were only given the vote because the Commons extracted enough power from the divinely chosen King to give it to them. There is not inherent right to vote in the British system. The American tradition, however, puts the people at the beginning, middle and end of Government (of, by and for the people) and has a system of divided sovereignty with checks and balances.
Citizens’ initiative fits the American tradition. People are not dim-wits. Governments are not always right. However, it is accepted that representative government is the best way of dealing with most things most of the time.
Citizens’ initiative does not want to usurp representative government. It is just a supplement. It is not designed to be government by referendum. Governments deal with a thousand issues a day. Citizens’ initiative might have a half a dozen issues every three years if that. Moreover, a typical citizens’ initiative referendum is not designed to deal with a whole issue to finality as a Yes-No position.
If the people vote Yes, then the law they approve is enacted, but if they vote No, the issue is left for the legislature to deal with. It is not left in a vacuum.
Citizens’ initiative is for isolated situations to overturn laws that might be repugnant to the majority: say, permitting euthanasia, legalising marijuana and extinguishing native title; or to enact laws where governments are paralysed for fear of upsetting significant minorities: say, refusing to pass laws that would permit euthanasia and marijuana or validate mining leases against native-title claims.
It is not about administration: closing hospitals or schools.
But it is about sovereignty and power. It can check excesses and cut through paralysis and therefore improve representative government, but it can never be a substitute for it. Its proponents do not claim that; only its frightened detractors do.
Its very presence can affect government; its hovering threat making governments behave more sensibly lest the people show them up. We no longer hand over total power to government once every three years. We hold a bit back in case it misbehaves _ very important in the single-House ACT parliament.