Page 4751 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 7 December 1994
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when there is almost unanimous agreement. Mandatory-sentencing laws, redundant regulatory systems, spending limits, spending mandates, term limits, balanced-budget amendments, supermajority budgeting, requirements that every new levy get the approval of voters - the purpose of all these measures is to replace city council members, legislators, and judges with a Newtonian machine immune to any significant control or judgment by elected representatives. This not only turns democracy into some fun-house contortion of the ideal but makes it nearly impossible to govern at all.
That final sentence would raise in all of us this question about Mr Stevenson's stance against self-government: Is his combination stance against self-government and citizens-initiated referendum actually motivated by this sort of result? The two seem to come together in the way that this article was written.
To put the matter back into perspective, Madam Speaker, I thought it appropriate today that I take this opportunity to say that there is a No case. Even though we present in our report a No case and a Yes case in a very even-handed way, I do not think that it carries the sort of weight that the approach taken by this writer, a Californian, in this magazine carries. That approach was reiterated by the psychiatrists I met in Washington who recommended that I read this article by an ordinary Californian who believed that citizens-initiated referendum, while it promised a great deal, turned out to be just the opposite.
Madam Speaker, I would like then to return to the local headline: "MLAs Do Hatchet Job on Good Idea". Our report is a very sensible report. It suggests taking into account the issues that are raised by articles such as this Californian one to see what we can extrapolate from the experience in California; and, having done that, to take a great deal of care to make sure that we exclude the issues that may have that impact on good governance of the ACT, and not to wind up with a monster that ties our hands and leaves us in a situation where social justice is a thing of the past. It appears that in California the whole notion of social justice is one that is rapidly disappearing.
Madam Speaker, that expresses my reservations and concerns, which we must take care of. There are differences. We have compulsory voting; they do not. Even in relation to compulsory voting, a warning bell sounds. We know that in certain parts of Australia - certainly in South Australia - the Liberal Party has a policy whereby they wish to do away with compulsory voting. What impact would that have when we extrapolate this information? What would be the impact of the combination of those matters on our government schools and on our sense of social justice for our welfare system? These are the issues that need to be dealt with appropriately. I believe that the best way to deal with them appropriately is to ensure that, early in the next Assembly, a committee is formed to take into account the issues that are raised by Peter Schrag and to balance those against the very good and very strong arguments in favour of citizens-initiated referenda that have been put again and again in this house by Mrs Carnell, Mr Stevenson and others. There are two sides to the coin. Today, I have taken the opportunity to try to present the flip side, probably for the first time.
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