Citizens Initiated Referenda on the federal agenda: Make your submission to the Senate by 19 April 2013

The issue of Citizens’ Initiated Referenda (CIR) is to be considered by a Senate Committee.

CIR would be a major boost to democracy in Australia. This entails giving the people the right to make laws for the nation, by means of a privately-initiated public referendum. How it works is by a group of people gathering enough signatures on a petition (of 250,000 voters, for example) calling for a public referendum on a particular matter, and the government is then required, by law, to hold a vote on the issue. CIR has worked well for Switzerland, as well as in various other places around the world.

For too long the governing of the nation has been left in the hands of (primarily) Liberal and Labor politicians, who do not always have the best interests of the nation at heart; in fact, although there are times when they work for the good of the people, it should also be recognised that there are times when the major parties have made themselves the enemies of the people.

Observers of politics know that the major parties sometimes have their own agendas to follow, which can be against the majority wishes of the people. Despite being elected by the general populace as their representatives, there are times when politicians do not work to represent the people, but rather their own party interests, ideological interests, or other vested interests, and are quite happy to ignore the will of the people.

Unfortunately, due to the overwhelming media concentration on the Liberal and Labor parties, the majority of people view them as the only real alternatives for government, and vote for them on that basis. In fact, often people vote against one of the major parties, rather than actually voting for the other one as such. With widespread media validation, along with patterns of traditional voting behaviour, usually either the Liberal Party or the Labor Party get into government, and then, once they do, they start to act more like an elected dictatorship, rather than as elected representatives.

On some particular issues, the major parties are determined to ignore the will of the people, and act more fascist than democratic; indeed, considering some of the laws against freedom of speech that the major parties have brought into being, and which in recent times they have been looking to make worse, the anti-national and fascistic nature of the major parties has been a real concern.

Therefore, democracy cannot be left in the hands of vested-interest politicians. The reins of our democracy should be returned to the hands of the people, and Citizens’ Initiated Referenda is a major step in that direction.

The details for submitting your opinion to the Senate Finance and Public Administration Committees is as below:

Submissions should be received by 19 April 2013. The reporting date is 24 June 2013.

The Committee is seeking written submissions from interested individuals and organisations preferably in electronic form submitted online or sent by email to fpa.sen@aph.gov.au as an attached Adobe PDF or MS Word format document. The email must include full postal address and contact details. Alternatively, written submissions may be sent to:

Senate Finance and Public Administration Committees
PO Box 6100
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600

[Source]

CIR has been a platform of the Australian Protectionist Party since its inception. We encourage people to make submissions to the Senate in favour of Australia having CIR.

References and further reading:
Senate Committees: Citizen Initiated Referendum Bill 2013: Information about the Inquiry”, Parliament of Australia
CIR Australia”,
Giving more democratic rights to the people, with Citizens Initiated Referendums”, Australian Protectionist Party, 5 September 2012
Liberal Party’s referendum hypocrisy”, Australian Protectionist Party, 28 June 2011
Primary Policies”, Australian Protectionist Party [“Ensure more democracy in public affairs by establishing Citizens’ Initiated Referenda, whereby ordinary citizens can initiate a referendum on policies, thus giving government back to the people.”]

Comments

  1. Trend Prophet says

    They will never give it as they never want you to have a say on important matters like immigration.

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