Albert's reasoning (see his posting) makes a lot of sense. Why do half a
job when there's a prospect of doing the whole job? I know the Australian
Democrats have a policy favouring PR and another policy (buried in the fine
print but not pressed by their parliamentary wing) favouring
citizen-initiated referenda. I believe a move towards PR will generally
strengthen the voice of the people but it's still representative democray
which means government OF the people BY the politicians FOR their power
brokers and ultimately their corporate sponsors. To be more democratic it
needs to be backed up by a great many more opportunities for binding
referenda on key issues (e.g. sale of public assets, regressive tax packages
etc) instead of spurious "mandate" claims. To save cost it might even be
possible to run referenda using a statistical smapling procedure, with a
fullscale refereendum if the sampling doesn't lead to a result at least,
say, 60% either way.
In parliamentary terms there are probably limited opportunities for raising
the PR question, though if the corporate business parties in NSW move
further on the Upper House that's a golden opportunity to make a fight of
it. However, there are many opportunities to push referenda even without
constitutional amendment -- e.g. a challenge to Howard to put items like his
tax package (aimed against the lower-income groups which have expanded
considerably in sizeas a result of LabLib policies over the past 20 years or
so) to the people or otherwise the Senate won't pass it. It seems that
politicians who shirk this kind of measure disrespect the people.
Dion Giles
Fremantle
