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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (4 December) . . Page.. 4646 ..

MR WHITECROSS (continuing):

During the last Territory election, Labor tried to expand the ability of citizens to have impact on the debate. We promised at the last election that, in government, we would require Ministers to table responses to petitions made to the Assembly. Unfortunately, Mr Speaker, that is a proposal which has been taken up by the Government in a very lukewarm way. I think there are very few examples of the Government actually formally responding to petitions in the Assembly.

Mr Speaker, what members in this place should be focusing their minds on is making the representative democratic system that we have here in the ACT work. We ought not to be going down this adventurous path, which has more to do with the politics of division and which will hand power over to narrow sectional interest groups.

MR SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired.

MS TUCKER (7.12): The Greens will not be supporting this Bill either, for the same reasons that we did not support the Bill when it was first presented to the Assembly in 1995. We have not seen since then any changes to the circumstances that led to our previous rejection of the Bill. The issue of community-initiated referendums has been around for some time, fuelled, I believe, by a growing feeling in the community of alienation towards our political institutions. Many people feel a sense of helplessness, frustration and powerlessness regarding the decisions being taken by politicians supposedly on the community's behalf. They believe that politicians have become a law unto themselves and beholden to various vested interests. The idea that people should be able to vote directly on issues of concern to them, rather than leaving it to politicians, therefore has some appeal. But it is a very simplistic response, which ignores the complexity of public policy-making.

The fact that CIR has been promoted primarily by a range of right-wing groups and individuals - including Fred Nile, who proposed CIR three years ago in the New South Wales Parliament - confirms to us that there is some doubtful reasoning behind CIR. Let me say that the Greens are totally committed to allowing citizens to participate fully in the political process. Participatory democracy is one of the four so-called pillars of Green politics. The charter of the Greens, on which our party is based, states that the Greens want to "increase opportunities for public participation in political, social and economic decision-making".

We can see a possible role for community-initiated referendums as part of a broader process of facilitating more community participation in politics; but we certainly do not see CIR as a substitute. We are, therefore, very hesitant to support such a Bill as this before the necessary checks and balances are in place that would prevent these referendums from distorting the comprehensive consideration of important policy issues or from targeting particular minority groups or interests. We also believe that greater effort needs to be put into improving the existing political process so that the public does feel more empowered to participate.

The Greens' view on CIR is that we support the extension of mechanisms for community participation in Assembly decision-making - possibly including the use of CIR - but these mechanisms have to be implemented very carefully, to ensure that the disadvantages of CIR are fully overcome. If the community feels that representative government is failing,

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