Lesson From 2010: more direct democracy, not more representative democracy

If opinion polls are anything to go by, the ALP should be wiped out in the forthcoming 2011 election. But will this actually change anything, or will it simply gives us more politicians? One mob is replaced with another. Even on a Federal level, with a hung Parliament, Question Time still involves divisive politicking, rather than serious policy deliberation or consultation.

As Rousseau noted “if [people in Westminster systems] believe themselves to be free; they are seriously mistaken, for they are free only during elections of Members of Parliament, and in the time between those elections the people are in slavery … In the brief moments of their freedom, the English-speaking world use it in such a way that they deserve to lose it.”

Then there is Switzerland.

Unlike oil-rich Norway and Qatar or resource-abundant Australia, it is wealthier than we are and gives the other two countries a run for their money. Indeed, its success, despite lacking these natural endowments, is thanks to the genius of its people, who can write their own laws and overrule their own Parliament via a citizen-mandated referendum at anytime (provided the necessary numbers of signatures are met).

They don’t need to wait for their politicians to change things, whether on low tax policies which makes them as competitive as Singapore, or high-speed rail. They do it themselves.

But when I recently suggested that Australia should adopt, or at least import, large portions of the Swiss system of government to deal with our wallowing infrastructure and general voter apathy, I was scoffed at.

Detractors claim CIR, that is, citizen initiated referenda, is anathema to our Westminster tradition whilst also claiming most Australians do not possess the cognitive or critical thinking skills needed to know what is best for them, or for that matter, to cast an informed vote. Equally, I was told that CIR is a “right-wing” idea, leading to domination by “corporate interests” and contradictions (higher spending, lower taxes). I will address all these matters in turn.

The Elitist Arguments against CIR

First, the fact that CIR has no support and is alien to our history would also surprise several ALP members from the 1900s till the 1960s: CIR was in their platform for 65 years and one of the founding principles of the party itself.

It would have also been a surprise to our progressive founding fathers like Charles Kingston, who in his 1891 draft Constitution, included provisions for CIR along with the progressivist movement in the 1890s and 1920s for it to be labelled “alien” to our history.

Alfred Deakin even conceded in the 1890s Convention Debates:

… There are many like myself, who would be perfectly prepared, if we were bound to change our present constitutions altogether, to adopt the Swiss system, with its co-ordinate houses, its elective ministry, and its referendum, by which the electors themselves were made masters of the situation.

It would also come as a surprised to the “daddy” of independents, Ted Mack as well as Professor Patrick O’Brien, Prof. Leslie Zines, A.V. Dicey, Geoffrey de Q Walker and Martyn Webb, all of whom have advocated the mechanism. These academics are hardly “right-wing” nutters. It would come as a surprise to a survey of 1,000 people where 85 per cent of the population support CIR, while a mere 5 per cent opposed it.

Additionally, what binds all these supporters, both the left and right, is the belief that it makes people think, rather than the politicians to do the thinking for them.

Indeed, I believe Australians are disillusioned, not with the substance (they know what education and healthcare system they want), but rather the form and way policy is decided.

Equally, the claim that “people do not know what is best for them” does not explain why generalists like Belinda Neal, Jason Wood and Bronwyn Bishop are better placed to commissar the rest of us about which transport policy is best, or why they should dictate laws on family life, our local communities, immigration, and healthcare among other things. On this view politicians like Joe Tripodi, andFrank Sartor are also in a better decision than their electors on planning decisions - hardly a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

Obviously government has more resources than most people: yet the government is notorious for ignoring ideas that are unpalatable to them.

Under CIR, a proposition must satisfy both private and public desires. And for that matter, numerous empirical studies have shown that CIR engages people with political ideas and serves a didactic purpose in educating people on substantive political matters.

A comprehensive study of direct democracy mechanisms and outcomes published in 2001 by Joseph Zimmerman, of the State University of New York at Albany, finds that direct democracy encourages voter participation and greater interest in the government process.

It educates citizens about public problems and possible solutions, and upholds the key democratic tenet that sovereign authority lies in the unassembled electorate, who are “not apathetic, cynical or ignorant in their approach to the initiatives”. If people do not possess the cognitive skills to thinking critical, it is thanks to the status quo and CIR would play its role in ameliorating these problems.

I will have more to say about this shortly, but to quote Thomas Jefferson most people behave responsibly when responsibility is placed upon them. “Men in whom others believe come at length to believe in themselves; men on whom others depend are in the main dependable”

A Right Wing Idea?

The allegation that CIR is a “right wing” idea would, as noted, come to a surprise to the progressive movement in the 1900s. Indeed, quite the contrary, CIR is geared toward centrist, evidence-based policy - unsurprisingly, neither the Bolsheviks nor Nazis were willing to support CIR nor ever have their policies put directly to the people. CIR was never part of any of their platforms.

By contrast, the Swiss, thanks to their politicians’ fear of the people have not been to war for centuries and their system of government is the only system of government to be successfully exported, including to Australia (through s128 of the Constitution - we have the second largest amount of referenda in the world on a Federal level), Canada (British Columbia), America (24 states, often all the richest states), New Zealand (about five referendums have been held), Sweden, although Norway has also used the device.

Moreover, its binding, federalist-based referenda approach has never ended in coups or dictatorship. Even in Venezuela the people rejected Chavez’s plan to install himself as an absolute dictator.

Westminster governance, by contrast, creates either extreme apathy (most of the Western world) or spawns bloody division (Pakistan, Fiji, Grenada, PNG).

In Switzerland, however, the Germans, French and Italians remain united despite their ethnic and religious differences. I encourage everyone to read Direct Democracy in Switzerland - which shows how CIR has generated lower crime rates, strengthens freedom of the press, encourages a better education system (Le Rosey and the International Baccalaureate being first class Swiss educational inventions) and the best transport systems (in Zurich and Geneva). CIR ensures we all have a voice, not just at election time.

Detractors of the Swiss system and CIR, often point to its alleged ability to crush “human rights” as evidence of its “right-wingness”. Gay rights (Prop 8 which limited marriage to between a man and a woman) and religious minorities (Minarets) are classic examples.

But on the whole CIR has advanced gay rights and religious minorities.

In Switzerland, gay couples received the same economic rights as heterosexual couples back in 1992. Australia did this only in 2008. In Switzerland, civil unions were legalised via CIR in 2004. We have yet to do this - and probably won’t for the next 10 years. Meantime, Switzerland is keeping an eye out to see what happens in jurisdictions with gay marriage.

Thus, CIR does allow for measured and reasoned reform on one hand, but also allows for a "wait-and-see" strategy on the other hand. Was it really too much to ask to not allow gay marriage while we wait for the datasets in other countries before we overturned an institution that is old as several millennia? A more sensible option was to take step 1 and implement civil unions.

Immigration is another area where CIR has fallaciously had some bad press. In 1847 Jews - via CIR - were allowed in for the purposes of a massive immigration intake. The Swiss also instigated CIR mandated foreign aid funds during the 1990s for refugees. Some Swiss cantons, due to CIR programs, even allow voting to aliens who have lived in the canton for several years. This is hardly evidence of its “right-wingness”.

And all these surely outweigh one referendum banning minarets. And to be rather blunt about the minaret issue, there are conflicting rights here which I think are best dealt with publically (planning rights, debates over secularism, feminist rights) diffused through a referendum.

Interestingly, in Arizona, the people - via CIR - legalised medical cannabis only for the legislature to overrule it. Hmm, the people legalising medical cannabis: clearly further evidence of CIRs “right-wing-ness”. Perhaps detractors of CIR would do better to argue for abolishing Parliament and not the peoples’ right to defend their own freedoms or suggest novel policy approaches to their politicians.

Certainly, when it comes to political freedom, CIR has a better record than a bill of rights (or "rations of slavery" as I like to call it). Last time I checked in Australia it was the people via our constitution’s s128, not the Parliament, which refused to allow a ban on the Communist Party in the 1950s. By contrast, in America, a country which no referendum requirement to amend its constitution yet possesses a Bill of Rights, did nothing: their courts did nothing to prevent the American government from hunting down, persecuting and banning communists. CIR did.

Additionally, it was the people, not the courts, which determine Indigenous Australians should be included in the census and be given the right to vote.

In Switzerland it has also led to an outstanding environmental and health-care record (particularly, in the area of drug rehabilitation and old-age retirement saving pensions). Equally, it was the people, not the Parliament, who gave Zurich the best transport system in the world (the so-called Zurich model); and green policies (such as the reduction in Nuclear Power and projects geared toward more “green” energy projects). Sweden had a similar referendum on “green” matters.

Contrast this with South Africa, which has no CIR, but only a corrosive bill of rights: for all its positive rights on health, a better environment and transport, South Africa has not managed to engineer the sort of transport and educational system they still dream of having. The Swiss have.

Furthermore, let’s face it: the arguments levelled at CIR can also be levelled at representative democracy. Issues like slavery would mean the legislature would have been abolished long ago. Equally, detractors do not mention that in California, a proposition to ban gays from the public school system went down in flames and has in several US states given gays and other minorities’ free access to health services, subsidised medical services and anti-discrimination laws. The CIR record for gay rights and immigration is certainly better than any of our Federal and State Parliaments.

The California Argument

Now, of course, there are California’s fiscal woes. Comparing Australia to California is spurious. Indeed, California is screwed not because of CIR; California is screwed because it has the US system of government (and I mean that as nicely as possible).

First, Americans have a different culture to us and other places with CIR: their Calvinist, anti-tax heritage rather see everyone else suffer, just as long as they themselves were not comparatively better off. In Australia - and we see this in opinion polls - we do not mind tax increases in exchange for better infrastructure. “Tax revolts” are not as strongly engrained in our culture, even though we have just as much fetish for Ponzi property speculation as the US. We have a more caring, gentle culture more akin to the Swiss rather than the Americans.

Second, Americans have a different system of government with a strict separation of powers. This entails a bill of rights where judges veto laws which limit corporate interests, which drone out opposition and quality debate in CIR. They have a situation where the Governor blames the judges and the legislature. The legislature blames the Governor or the people. And everyone gets really divided; the system is simply too fragmented, not due to the initiative, but a very system of government that create division and a lack of cohesion. This is less likely where the executive and Parliament are fused as in Switzerland and Australia.

Thirdly, Americans have a different electoral temperament i.e. there is no compulsory voting to appeal to a “middle ground”.

Fourthly, in Sweden and Switzerland, the referenda often have three options on the table (the third often being a governmental counterproposal). Americans simply do not understand compromise or the notion of a “multiple choice” referendum.

Corporate interference

There is also the complaint corporations will fund initiatives. Indeed, a lot of corporate-sponsored CIR issues have gone down in flames and in any event, bribing a legislature of 150 people is easier than bribing 4 million people.

For example, General Growth Properties collected signatures for a referendum in Glendale, California to stop development of a competing mall next door, developed by competitor Caruso Affiliated, in addition to standard political techniques such as lobbying and filing lawsuits challenging the project’s environmental impact report. Ultimately, GGP was unsuccessful at making their case to the voters, and the competing mall was built. Recently, Iceland has discovered the virtue of a referendum (95 per cent of the population rejected harsh austerity measures imposed by them by international bankers). The people are not dumb: they can smell out corruption when they see it.

Wal-Martt too has also used initiatives to bypass planning commissions and city councils to build Wal-Mart Supercenters. Ultimately, the initiative was defeated. I doubt it would have been defeated if campaign contributions were made to the legislature.

Funding and the like could, of course, be regulated by statute - so simple institutional elements could deal with such criticisms. Assembling recent US data from the 1990s, Elizabeth Gerber of the University of California at San Diego, in her 1999 book The Populist Paradox noted, that anyone seeking to have a law enacted or repealed by direct legislation needs to mobilize an electoral majority. To do that calls for two resources (1) money to accommodate their private concerns; and (2) personnel needed to communicate a public purpose.

Economic interests find it easier to raise money, but community organizations with individual members can more easily mobilize people. This is why money is not enough.

But, having said all that, I do not think CIR in California has failed at all (even its critics concede “a mend, don’t end” strategy is best): it has provided better transport services, higher education funding and limited distortive sale taxes. Furthermore, the whole the fiscal situation in California is an oddity (e.g. British Columbia, Australian referendums on state debts, Switzerland, Sweden, Italy and New Zealand maintain fine fiscal ratios) and other US States which have balanced, or close to balanced budget.

Conclusion

Understandably, politicians’ do not want to abdicate their power. CIR, I believe, is less corrupt, more accountable, and conducive to better public debate and better policy outcomes. This is the main reason the system has not been adopted: the politicians’ like power to be in their hands. But overall, it is ridiculous to think that we should let politicians determine our tax policy, education system and transport infrastructure.