Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Materiel) Share this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to rise to address the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Amendment Bill 2013. I do so, like many other speakers in this debate, particularly on this side of the chamber, with something of a background in local government, to the extent that the ACT Legislative Assembly, from which I came to this place, provides the citizens of this territory with both state-level and local-government-level services. So I am very much familiar with the arguments about the need to protect the role of local government in the Australian constitutional system. I have some sympathy for the arguments presented here for certainty for local government and for the capacity of local government to continue to receive payments from the Commonwealth, and to be seen constitutionally to continue to do so. But I am also extremely well aware, as are Senator Eggleston and other speakers in this debate, of the enormous difficulties faced by any party seeking to amend the Australian Constitution. It is a matter of deep concern that this exercise, in an attempt to amend the Australian Constitution for an arguably very worthwhile purpose, is so mired in politics and seems to be so clearly designed to fail that one has to be extremely cynical about the government's motives in bringing forward this legislation.

We are all, I am sure, very familiar with the background to the many reasons why Australians have shown a profound reluctance to amend the Constitution. Of the 44 proposals for constitutional change put to Australian electors, only eight have ever been approved, and I think seven of those have been proposed by coalition governments. The last questions to be carried were over 36 years ago, which demonstrates that the maturing of Australian democracy has not changed people's attitude towards the prima facie unlikelihood of a proposal being carried to amend their Constitution.

We have to ask in this case whether the very fundamental threshold has been reached by the proponents of change to execute this particular manoeuvre. The question remains very real: has the government actually accomplished that? The answer is doubtful. The history of these things is not encouraging. I think it was Labor Prime Minister Andrew Fisher who attempted to amend the Australia Constitution on several occasions and became increasingly frustrated at not being able to communicate his message successfully with all the voters. That is a rather familiar refrain in the contemporary age. At the three preceding referendums—in 1906, 1910 and 1911—the administrations had not even bothered to inform the people of why they should vote yes, except to have 12,000 printed black-and-white posters describing how to vote displayed prominently at polling booths. That was the extent of the Commonwealth's intervention to assist people to know what was going on with a referendum, except perhaps for comment in the free media of the day. So Prime Minister Fisher attempted, I think a little more wilfully, to put his case to the Australian people, but he also failed in his several attempts to get the Constitution amended.

We understand clearly from those early examples and from the many examples that followed—in particular, the unsuccessful attempts—that a better case needs to be made to ensure that people have the chance to understand what is at stake. But that better case does not appear to have been made in this instance. The government is attempting at a very late stage in the process to change the rules affecting the way in which referenda are conducted. We have an election coming up. It is an appropriate mechanism to put referendum questions in conjunction with an election but you need to take the care, time and expense to ensure that the issues in a referendum are clearly distinguishable in the minds of electors from the more fundamental question of who they want to govern them for the next three years. With the enormous focus preceding the election on 14 September, the chance of people focusing separately on the question of what is an appropriate referendum question and the extent to which it should be supported is diminishing all the time. And that is a matter of great regret because with every unsuccessful and possibly cynical attempt that is made to amend the Australian Constitution the more we reinforce in the Australian electors' minds the sense that Australian politicians play with these things and attempt to amend the Constitution for political reasons rather than for the betterment of the Australian community.