Following on the interesting discussion of the relative importance of PR and
CIR, I believe the only legitimate basis for any ideas on governance is the
absolute right of the people to make the major decisions affecting their own
lives. Referenda about forms of representation are important, but in the
end the only effect constitutional adjustments can have on the people is to
increase or decrease their power to participate in decisions on just who
will govern for the corporations while pretending to represent the electorate.
In referenda, however, the people can start to win a say (no more than a
say, in the absence of a great deal of the education that exercising this
degree of control will in time impart). Not just a say in who is to
misrepresent them, but a say in what is actually done. The corporations
want tax burdens shifted even further from themselves to the people -- hence
the Howard package. It won't matter a fig to the Labor Party politicians
whether or not such a package is imposed -- but it matters much more than a
fig to the people who are affected a great deal more by it than they are
affeted by whether Tweedledum has advantages over Tweedledee, or for that
matter what happens to any politcally flexible Tweedlethree. [Even within
Tweedlethree there are strong currents of opinion, reflected in public
statements, that it isn't the interests of the people that's important, it's
gaining a place on the parliamentary dance floor by following its unwritten
rules.]
Therefore demands for referenda are an essential step in shifting
decision-making power from the politicians and civil servants (and
ultimately Mr Greed who controls the politicians and civil servants) to the
people themselves. This is the direction in which democratic advances lead.
Mr Greed first tries to stop democrartic advances and then, if defeated in
this, tries to control them. The historic task is to further the democratic
process until the grabbing classes become an increasingly endangered
species, and finally an extinct species even though the human impulse to
grab from others may never die.
Dion Giles
Fremantle
