Reforming our Referendum Processes
The House Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee will hold a roundtable discussion on reforming our referendum processes with a number of key organisations and academics in Sydney on Wednesday 14 October. Participants include the Australian Electoral Commission, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, AusPoll, the Foundation for Young Australians, as well as Gilbert & Tobin Centre Professor George Williams.
Representing a range of interested parties, the participants will discuss the current referendum processes as outlined in the Referendum Machinery Provisions legislation, and consider options for improving how the government can engage and inform people about proposed changes to our constitution…
The current legislation sets out the processes for preparing the arguments for and against the proposed changes and limits government spending in relation to this. The purpose of the inquiry is to determine whether this legislation is sufficient in addressing voter requirements in the lead up to a referendum. As such, the inquiry will consider whether there are other ways to provide the public with the same or greater levels of explanatory information.
Mr Dreyfus said “This roundtable represents an important component of the inquiry and will enable the Committee to consider ways to improve the referendum processes”…
The list of public hearings is here.
The submissions have not yet been published.
14 October – The 26 submissions are now published on the website.
As expected, the larger submissions generally advocate the provision of Commonwealth public funding for a media campaign during a referendum, and I was surprised that the submission from the ACM also wanted the Commonwealth funding during the 1999 Republic Referendum to be seen as an ideal model for funding referendums. Some of the other submissions suggested that a neutral panel be appointed during a referendum to vet media from the Yes and No camps or even to veto messages they think might be non-factual. I wonder what the ACM would think about the possibility of having millions of dollars in federal funding available for their No Republic media campaign but then having their messages gagged mid-campaign by an impartial committee. In such a situation, the media will run with the story of the gagging, the republic 1.2 mob will have a free run, while the No Republic case will only be shown to be jumping up and down about having their media messages censored – which is a media message that wouldn’t cast too friendly a light onto them and make them look like losers without a clue. This is definitely not the time to be changing the machinery of referendums.
Some of the comments in the submissions seem to misunderstand the new social media. I also get the feeling that some of the larger submissions were written by privileged people who have no idea how isolated from the political process ordinary people are.
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