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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 9 Hansard (23 August) . . Page.. 3298 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

I think there is some strength in the argument that there are a lot of vocal minority groups. They get the support of the media. They perhaps have an influence on elected members far greater than the number of people they really represent. Whilst they have their place in a democratic system, why shouldn't we have other mechanisms for the population as a whole to participate?

Yes, LAPACs are one way, but, again, you do not get a huge number of people going to LAPACs. You do not get a huge number of people going to a lot of meetings on political issues unless they are about something that seizes the local population.

There are issues that crop up from time to time which have a direct bearing on a large number of people and they will go to a meeting, but how often does that happen? Even when that occurs, after they have a greater knowledge of what is being proposed, or whatever, the meetings tend to have less and less people attending.

A topical issue at present is the prison. I heard Don Allan on radio indicating that there were hundreds of people at one meeting, and then it got down to very few after a while because people were more informed and perhaps felt more comfortable or whatever.

This method, CIR, I think is an excellent way of including more people in our democratic process. It is not going to happen very often. I would suspect it would happen very rarely, but it does give citizens of the ACT another avenue to have their democratic say. I think it is somewhat arrogant of members who are opposing this not to give them that opportunity. I don't think it is something that can be abused or misused. I don't think we see any great evidence of that occurring in other places.

In the United States, albeit meaning them no disrespect, people possibly take more extreme views on certain things than is generally the case in Australia. I don't think we have seen too much evidence, even on what has been said today, of that being the case with their citizen-initiated referenda. I don't think there is much evidence to indicate that there have been absolute injustices perpetrated in other places which have citizen-initiated referendum as a result of it.

Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, in closing, I urge members to support this legislation. I hardly think anything I have said has influenced anyone to change their vote. As Mr Humphries has indicated, I think the numbers are probably once again against us. It may well be a case of fifth time lucky next time around if we bring it back as a party. I think this is an important issue, and I think members are really missing out on giving our citizens a proper additional right of say in our system by not voting for this.

Question put:

That this bill be agreed to in principle.

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