Australia--a democracy or just another ballotocracy?

• Author: Poprzeczny, Joseph
• Position: Report
• Pages: 5(26)

Try to imagine Australia if its 1890s colonial founding fathers had incorporated into the federal constitution the following clause: (1)

No Bill passed by both Houses of the Federal Parliament shall be assented to by the Governor-General until after a referendum, if a referendum shall be duly demanded before assent declared. A referendum may be demanded in respect of any Bill passed by both Houses of the Federal Parliament at any time within three calendar months after the passing thereof.

A referendum may be demanded by--

1. One-third of the total number of members of either House of the Federal Parliament: or

2. Resolution of both Houses of any two local [State] Legislatures: or

3. Twenty thousand persons entitled to vote at the election of members to serve in the National Assembly [Senate and House of Representatives].

Clearly, it would have placed a huge brake upon the growth of central or Canberra power since a third of all federal members of parliament--not simply a prime minister and/or cabinet--could have triggered a nationwide referendum on any bill enacted by a majority party in Parliament. A referendum could also have been triggered if any two state parliaments so resolved. And, last but not least, 20,000 voters could have brought on a referendum.

And if any of these triggers were activated, it would stop a bill from becoming law until the referendum was held and the Australian people made the final decision democratically.

The existence of such a clause would have prevented politicians, or more correctly the handful constituting a Cabinet, from having monopoly control of the legislative process. That control would have been shared with the states and with electors.

Of course, the Australian Constitution does not include such a clause, and Cabinet does control the legislative process in Canberra, from the drafting of bills and arranging debates on them, to the final vote that turns bills into laws which all Australians must obey. But the Constitution may well have included such a clause because the clause is not a figment of the imagination. It was in an 1891 draft constitution, and a variation was part of Labor's policy platform almost continuously from 1900 up until 1963.

Both the draft and the policy plank have effectively disappeared from history: they rarely if ever get any mention in the history books; and most Australians, including academics, teachers and even politicians, honestly believe that the system of representative democracy that we have here is the only form of democracy that exists.

The Swiss would disagree. Unlike Australians, they are constitutionally empowered to initiate referendums at every level of government--municipal, cantonal and national--and this is in addition to their right to elect representatives every five years. Put otherwise, the Swiss have not bestowed monopoly power upon their elected representatives to make laws. Unlike Australians, they, the people, are the final arbiters of what shall or shall not be the law of their land.

If, in Australia, the 1891 draft clause had made it through the convention process, or if Labor had honoured its policy plank on those occasions when it held power, Australian voters might understand the very real difference between the representative form of democracy, referred to here as a ballotocracy--rule by the few, with the many only permitted one vote over the life of any parliament--and a true democracy.

This article turns the spotlight back onto those two periods in Australia's history when the country came so close to making "the electors themselves ... masters of the situation". It discusses what happened and why, and, in so doing, casts new light on how Australia has ended up with the appearance of a democratic system of government, but one that has fallen well short of the reality.

True democracy versus ballotocracy

Both Australia and Switzerland are bicameral federations, so each has a lower and an upper legislative chamber. In both countries, bills may be initiated in either chamber. In Australia, however, once a bill has been passed by both houses, it goes to the Governor-General for royal assent, after which it becomes law. In Switzerland, a bill that has been passed by both houses lies dormant for 100 days during which time 50,000 voters can trigger a referendum by signing a petition.

Voters in both countries periodically elect representatives to parliament, but the Swiss electorate's right to call referendums means they have far more power than Australian voters. They can continuously exercise a power of veto over the legislative process through this rejective or facultative referendum process. Put another way, Swiss voters have at least double the power of voters enfranchised in polities that are without citizen-initiated referendums. Swiss voters can determine what will or will not be the law. Australian voters must accept what their politicians decide will be the law.

But Swiss voters can also initiate changes to their national constitution, although this requires a petition with 100,000 signatures gathered over a period of not more than 18 months. In ballotocracies such as Australia the politicians' monopoly power over the lawmaking process, including the power to trigger amendments to the Constitution, operates unfettered by the people, the demos.

The Swiss form of democracy has been variously described as direct democracy, true democracy, or simply democracy, since it is the people, the demos, who are the ultimate arbiters of what laws they will live under. Moreover, such direct or true democracy applies not only at the national level, but also in Switzerland's 2,740 municipalities and 26 cantons (states).

In practice, 94 per cent of all bills passed by the Swiss national parliament end up as laws without undergoing the referendum process. Of the remaining 6 per cent, about half are rejected by the people. A key reason for those 94 per cent not being challenged--that is, not having to go to referendum--is the fact that Swiss politicians feel compelled to consult voters extensively and over long periods so as to ensure that the bills they work on will not be challenged at referendum. During the long consultation periods, those who are likely to be affected are brought into the process of preparing the relevant bill. Being fully informed means there is less likelihood of a bill being challenged. Even so, 6 per cent must face the ultimate test, that is, the people.

By comparison, the Australian representative, or indirect form of, democracy constitutionally excludes the people from being the final adjudicators of bills, with one limited exception. And, interestingly, Switzerland was the inspiration for that exception, which applies to bills that seek to amend the national constitution. But the Australian version gives politicians the power to initiate all referendums to amend the constitution and limits the people's power to merely voting on the politicians' proposals, that is the power of veto, but not the power to initiate, which the Swiss have. This legislative dominance of elected representatives over voters is what most people here call democracy but it is more correctly described as ballotocracy since voters--the demos--are excluded entirely from the legislative process. Under ballotocracy the people's power is limited to only electing representatives.

Voters in 24 American states also have the right to initiate referendums. In some cases, this includes the right to initiate changes to the state constitution. The impetus for initiative and referendum (I&R) in America initially came from the predominantly rural or farmer-based Populist movement of the early 1890s and its successor, the urban-based Progressive Movement of the late 1890s to late-1910s. Most of the western American states had adopted I&R by 1918. A smaller number did not for a variety of local reasons, including ongoing resistance by politicians.

In stark contrast, no Australian state succeeded in incorporating I&R into its constitution despite several determined efforts in the early 1900s by state Labor governments.

The main reason for the failures was the opposition of virtually all conservative-oriented Australian national and state politicians who preferred a representative or limited form of democracy, something with which the Labor Party now concurs.

By the early 1920s, the impetus went out of this debate as more and more Labor politicians lost interest in transforming their states from ballotocracies into direct or true democracies.

Californian David Schmidt has described the ongoing impact of I&R, which, as will be seen below, was the major achievement of the early 20th century's Progressives, as follows: (2)

In I&R the Progressives created a perpetual reform machine that not only continues to be a vehicle for political change, but is increasing in its usefulness more than three-quarters of a century after it first gained widespread acceptance. (My italics)

Kingston's 1891 draft clause

The draft clause referred to above was the work of South Australian-born Charles Cameron Kingston (1850-1908) who included it as part of a draft constitution for Australia that was printed in February 1891 by South Australia's government printer. Kingston, a lawyer and colonial politician who was once described as "a radical democrat and a man committed to the federation of the colonies" (3), then took it to the first constitutional convention in Sydney, held in March and April 1891, where he represented South Australia.

The Sydney convention's official record shows that Switzerland was referred to about a dozen times by various delegates, as was the question of including referendums, but there was no reference to I&R, and the draft constitution that emerged contained neither the Kingston clause nor any reference to referendums. This was despite Kingston being one of the three men largely responsible for writing the convention's draft...