Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

They know they have the constitutional rights but they only want to use them when it suits them. I have just read out what is black and white constitutional law. It is no doubt one for the constitutional lawyers, it always is, but I would venture to say that if Senator Brown’s bill was ever tested—if it ever so much as made it to the High Court—I think it would be deemed unconstitutional. You cannot pass legislation through here that overrides the Constitution. It is tested in the High Court—just as we have at the moment with the industrial relations laws being tested by the states in the High Court. This is another matter which the other side failed to mention. You can test legislation which goes through this parliament in the High Court.

If I may be helpful to Senator Brown on this issue, if he wants to achieve his end then he would need to initiate a referendum. The whole thing is hypothetical and ridiculous, but let us just assume that he seeks to achieve his end and the only way to do it is by referendum. He would require a majority of the people to support him in this referendum. I know that that is something that Senator Brown and the Greens are not versed in—seeking a majority of the people for anything at all. He knows this only too well and that is why he would never test it. He always avoids the hard question in regard to referendums because referendums simply do not have a good record in this country at all. We know that since Federation there have been some 44 referendums and only eight have been successful. We know that the last referendum held in this country in regard to a republic failed miserably. The last time a referendum was held during a Labor government was in the bicentennial year when some four referendums were put up at the general election in 1990. They all went down in a screaming heap. So referendums do not have a good record. It is simply not in the national interest that this ever go to a referendum. The people would wonder why you would put such a lightweight issue up to a referendum anyway.

Another avenue for the Greens would be to create a state—the state of Canberra or the state of the Northern Territory. We know that many people in the Northern Territory for many years have sought to turn the Northern Territory into a state. If it were a state, they would have greater freedom to make their own state based laws. But of course we know that in the Northern Territory when they held a referendum—it was actually more like a plebiscite—in 1998 where they expected there to be a landslide of support for the Northern Territory to become a state they got a real shock. The majority of the people rejected the referendum to have the Northern Territory become a state. I would venture to say that if you tried the same thing in the ACT you would get an even more overwhelming rejection of any such proposition.

In the ACT they live a very comfortable life, some would say even a ‘Tattslotto style lifestyle’, and they would be very loath to separate themselves from mother’s milk. When they look up from their homes in Forrest or wherever and see the parliament on the hill, they feel very comfortable. They feel very comfortable that the federal government, sitting on the hill looking down on their most junior of parliaments, as a last resort, have the authority to override—let alone the prestige that they see in us all; I do not single myself out, I stress, in that. So, Senator Brown, I have attempted to bring some common sense and some reality to your bill—to try and bring it some grounding. You can see that it has no grounding at all. Whatever avenue you take, the best shot you have is a Thursday afternoon broadcast. The truth of the matter is—