There are plans afoot when we vote for a new Federal Government later this year to also hold a referendum to enable the constitution to be changed in order to extend the Federal Parliamentary term from three to four years.

This must be rejected emphatically.

Given the outrageous rorting of democratic processes in recent decades, in particular by the Howard Government, any move to reduce the accountability of Federal politicians to the Australian electorate will only make an already bad situation worse.

A ludicrous by-product of this 'reform' is that the term of Senators will be extended from 6 years to 8 years, which is practically for life. It will be possible for a Senators such as the infamous late Mal Colston or Barnaby Joyce (in the case of Telstra privatisation) to break solmenly made promises to the electorate and not be held to account for almost another eight years.

Not only has this outrageous proposal enjoy the bipartisan support of both major parties, but even the Democrats, of whom we should be able to expect better, have given their support. The Greens are on record as being in opposition, but their voice appears to have been muted so far.

It is still not too late to stop this but we need to raise our voices now.

Thanks very much for the heads-up daggett. Glad to see some contributors can get important topics up.

I know this was a recommendation of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters in its 2005 Report on the conduct of the 2004 Federal elections, but that was all I had heard had happened. I thought it had died a natural. What's your source for it having gone further?

Interestingly, the present Chair of the JSCEM, Sophie Mirabella (nee Panopoulos) gave a commendably succinct dissenting report in respect of this proposal. Wonder where that leaves her, or the rest of them? She'll get to earn her pay in coming days if she's even half fair dinkum! She is, I understand, a barrister by profession. I hope for Australia's sake she is a good one.

This proposal was one of the four that was put up for referendum on 3 September 1988. All four proposals on that occasion were rejected with the record lowest YES votes in the history of Federal referenda. Nothing has changed in the mean time, except for the worse, in the political and electoral sphere.

Have you read this post in connection with those 1988 referenda: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=6147#88417 and the following seven posts? I know you'll appreciate their import. You know me daggett: I'm a chapter and verse man. The article generating this thread is also excellent in its own right, although my posts develop one aspect of it only - see http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6147 .

There may well be method in their referendum madness, though, but I'll explain more about that later.

The 1967 referendum was the first at which I ever voted. The proposal was bi-partisanly supported. I (along with 90% of all other voters) voted YES. I now know I was conned. NEVER AGAIN will I vote anything but NO for a bi-partisanly supported proposal! See this link about saying YES or NO: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=2136 .

Well Done!

What if they combined longer terms with term limits? Say extending parliamentary terms to four or five years but limiting the number of consecutive terms a person could serve to two or three?

Extending the length of a parliamentary term might have an upside. It might actually lengthen the short term view of the encumbant government. Right now, they spend two years trying to win the next election.

let's just vote against politicians.

The method in the proposed referendum madness.

Much has been made recently of the 2006 changes to electoral law whereby the electoral rolls will now close at 6:00 PM on the day the Governor-General's eight writs for the elections are issued, instead of seven days after issue as had been the case since 1983. A significant proportion of such commentary has been critical of these changes, together with the Proof of Identity requirements that have been introduced, with critics attempting to make out that genuinely eligible electors may be effectively disfranchised thereby. A very large proportion of the critical commentary has come from academe.

Consider carefully that any seven day period of grace, such as that previously prescribed, would have contained a Saturday and a Sunday, both non-working days with respect to AEC office hours. Thus five full working days only, plus the hours remaining between actual signing until 6:00 PM on the day of issue of the writs if they were to have been issued on a weekday, would have been available to the AEC to get all enrolments correctly, or apparently correctly, entered up in their centralized roll management system.

As it has been explained to me, the closure of the rolls at 6:00 PM on the day of issue of the writs as prescribed under the 2006 amendments to the Commonwealth Electoral Act only applies to new, that is, first time, applicants for enrolment. If there is a change required to an already existing enrolment (arising, for example, out of a move of residence) then a three-day period of grace applies. The vast bulk of roll transactions made in the week before roll closure since the introduction of the seven days of grace in 1983 have been transfers of existing enrolments, not new first time enrolments.

So, in effect, for the vast bulk of roll transactions, post-writ-issue processing time remains at at least 60% of what it has been since 1983. Newly eligible intending electors, as a class, have been victims of discrimination.

Tedious, ain't it, daggett?

4 year terms ? yes & no. A two year term would sufficient for a Labor Government to accomplish their standard mismanagment of the economy. On the other hand it usually takes 8 - 10 years of Coalition Government to undo the Labor damage. I think let's leave it at 3 years.

individual,

Sigh.

Look lets get this clear, the current government is NOT responsible for the current economic boom in its entirety.

First off we have a resource boom, with India and China buying up as much as we can. Unless John Howard was around several billion years ago laying down our mineral wealth, he cannot claim credit for that.

Secondly, with the exception of the GST and Work Choices(or lack thereof) Howard and Co have by and large been taking credit for a lot of the work done by Hawke and Keating. Remember AWA's aren't a Howard invention, they are a Keating invention.

Thirdly, our economy is affected by the global economy. While the world is having a good time we will to. Once the global economy starts to sink so will we.

Forrest Gump,

Thanks for your informative and thought-provoking posts.

Briefly for now: I have to admit that I don't know, for a fact, that a referendum question will be put. I will have to follow this up.

Perhaps a week or two ago I read a political news story which alluded to the next federal election being four years after this one, so it seemed for that, that it may still be in the pipeline.

Given that there is bipartisan major-party support for the four year term as well as, seemingly inexplicably, support from the Democrats and little said from the Greens about this, I would have thought that John Howard and Australia's political elite would have seized with both hands this golden opportunity to make themselves even less accountable to the public than they already are.

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Also, I noticed, coincidentally, that Uncle Rupert's Brisbane Courier Mail newspaper is pushing a four year term for Queensland Parliament (I hadn't realised that Queensland did not have four year terms. They do for Queensland local Government, but, evidently, mercifully, not for State Government - see http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,22178912-13360,00.html). It's ironic that one of the very newspapers which has done so much to make the three year parliamentary term as problematic as it is, by its misreporting of critical political issues and by invariably pandering to the fiscally irresponsible, and often corrupt election-year gimmickry of the likes of John Howard and Peter Costello, is advocating the four year to fix up the problems largely of its own making.

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James Purser,

Whilst I am in hot disagreement with you in on other matter (namely high immigration), I appreciate your perceptive comment: "Unless John Howard was around several billion years ago laying down our mineral wealth, he cannot claim credit for (our mineral exports boom)."

I had something to say about this at http://candobetter.org/about#coal

The method in the proposed referendum madness, continued 2.

Now we come to the provisions of the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act 1984. What purport to be amendments reflective of those made to the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 in 2006 have been made to keep the Referendum Act seemingly in line with the CEA's provisions. This latter is necessary due to the fact that referenda are, more frequently than not, conducted concurrently with general Federal elections.

The text of Section 9 of the Referendum Act, supplied to me as the current provision, states:

"9 Day for close of Rolls and voting day
(1) The day fixed for the close of the Rolls shall be 3 working days after the issue of the writ.
(2) The day fixed for taking the votes of electors at a referendum shall be not less than 33 days and not more than 58 days after the issue of the writ.
(3) In this section:
working day means any day except:
(a) a Saturday or a Sunday; or
(b) a day that is a public holiday in any State or Territory."

You will note there is no mention of any roll closure at 6:00 PM on the day of issue of the referendum writ.

There is no provision in the Referendum Act that in circumstances where it is proposed that a referendum be conducted in conjunction with a Federal election (as is proposed) the Governor-General is to issue the respective writs CONCURRENTLY. It is thus possible that the Governor-General could presently be advised to issue Federal elections writs on any given day, and three days later be advised to issue referendum writs, the upshot of which would be that the AEC would be confronted with the ludicrous prospect of conducting concurrent Federal elections and a referendum with two different sets of certified lists on the tables to mark off vote claims!

What's the betting that's exactly what was intended by the electoral amendments of 2006?

You can see where this is headed, can't you daggett?

Surely it is the responsibility of the individual to ensure that they enrol to vote as soon as they legally able to do so? Nobody needs to be disadvantaged if they do this.
We should be far more concerned that people who have not bothered to enrol on time might, under other circumstances, be able to vote. How will people with this level of (dis)interest vote? Will they be 'thinking' voters who consider the issues?
The only thing to be said for four years terms is that people would have less chances over a lifetime to make an ill-informed choice. I doubt that 4yr terms are desirable or workable.

The method in the proposed referendum madness, continued 3.

Of course, the AEC would not conduct these two electoral exercises on the same day in such ludicrous fashion. But what would it do?

It would do what it does best: the AEC would most likely MIUAUG it. (This acronym stands for MakeItUpAsYouGo, for which I must thank regular OLO contributor BOAZ_David.) This would in all probability see the AEC produce only one certified list for the conduct of both events. And that would be but common sense. However, those common certified lists would be compiled from centrally managed electronically stored rolls that had closed not to a limited extent on the day of issue of the election writs, nor in totality by three working days later, but from centrally kept rolls that had not closed in ANY respect until not less than SIX working days after the issue of the election writs!

Should there be any public holiday in just one State or Territory during what would otherwise be six working days interrupted only by a weekend, the roll close period would balloon to the extent of that number of public holidays right across the Commonwealth. This would occur as a consequence of the provisions of Section 102 of the CEA.

The long and the short of it is that the number of working days before the rolls close would be one greater than the number legislated in 1983! The total number of natural days could be greater than 6+2, according as to the number of public holidays held anywhere. And don't kid yourself that work won't be going on round the clock, during that entire period, in the AEC's centralized roll-keeping system getting lots of names into their required places.

As for discrimination against first time enrollees, forget it! Any spin doctor could sell the AEC's MIUAUG decision as the best compromise in an "unforeseen grey area" of the law. Don't you worry about that.

I have an unhealthy fixation about roll closure and centralized roll-keeping, don't I, daggett?

james purser & daggett,
"Unless John Howard was around several billion years ago laying down our mineral wealth, he cannot claim credit for (our mineral exports boom)."
Whitlam, Hawke & Keatinge were around the same time as Howard so how come things went so badly wrong during their terms ? What about Carmen Lawrence's & Wayne Goss's abbysmal record not to mention Peter Beattie's inexcuseable handling of his state's health system. Come to think of it he was the health minister for Goss when when the mess began. I am not saying that Labor could not manage the daily affairs of a country. It's just that I have yet to see it doing so.
re
Thirdly, our economy is affected by the global economy. While the world is having a good time we will to. Once the global economy starts to sink so will we.
What makes you think Labor could prevent that from happening. Any 10 year old will tell you that a global economy impacts on everyone on the globe.

I don't think Labor could prevent a global depression occuring if/when the mineral boom ends. But thats really the point isn't it.Howard and co are going around claiming that only under their economic management can the good times roll, but it's been because of external factors that states like WA have had it so good.

Howard and Co are often heard to blame the previous government for financial woes (though after 11 years you'd expect them to build that bridge). I for once would like to hear Howard thank Keating for presenting him with the foundations to build an economy that can better withstand the rigours of international finance.

The method in the proposed referendum madness, continued 4.

Communicat, you hit the nail on the head in the first two sentences of your post. This hoo-ha over the need for a period of grace after the issue of election or referendum writs is exactly that, hoo-ha.

In exposing this loophole in the interrelation of the respective Acts as they are capable of being made to operate to determine actual roll closure time at the upcoming Federal elections, I am trying to show that concern for existing or prospective electors is not what the holding of the proposed referendum (or ANY referendum) on that same day is about.

I put it to you that the days of grace are needed not by the electors, but by the AEC, and I think they are needed to hide from Parliament and people that the centralized roll keeping system it has operated is not, and never has been, capable of closing the rolls at any time at the end of any day upon which the Governor-General may have issued a writ, since its inception!

Yet such a capability has been throughout, ever since a continuous electoral roll was first adopted decades ago, the very object of employing Divisional Returning Officers and maintaining Divisional offices on a permanent basis. To this day, Divisional Returning Officers (DROs) are the statutorily appointed officers charged with maintaining the rolls, but a system incapable of fulfilling a key function for which they are responsible has been foist upon them from above. Note that neither in 1983, nor at any time since, has the provision of the CEA which establishes their statutory office been repealed. No Parliament would have dared!

But by holding a referendum, any referendum, in conjunction with the upcoming Federal elections, this body that is a demonstrable law unto itself in matters electoral, the AEC, could be enabled to show that frustrating the intention of legislation (ie. of closing the rolls at 6:00 PM on the day of issue of the writs) is as easy as taking wheat from blind chooks!

I'll park the coach and four I have just driven through the roll closure amendments of 2006, if that's OK by you daggett, and we'll explore your digression into the machinations of Prince Rupert of the Whine and his Routine Orders for the State of Queensland (the Mailed Fist of the Courier?) regarding the desirability of four year fixed terms for its Parliament.

Before we really begin it is important to realize that Joint Roll Agreements now exist between the Governor-General and all States' Governors with respect to the provision of all electoral roll information required for conducting State, and below that, Local Government, elections. (I don't know why they don't say between the Commonwealth and the States, but that's the way the agreements are written up in the Gazette notices.) If there was ever to be anything wrong with the AEC centralized roll managment system, all States and Territories would be affected (infected?) to the same extent as the Commonwealth.

The thing with four year fixed terms is that if it can be achieved across all States and the Commonwealth, this whole longstanding default in the ability of the AEC to genuinely close an electoral roll whenever a Governor, or Governor-General may direct within a day can be swept under the carpet for good! There will no longer exist any risk of the public coming to a realization that the old system which COULD effect closure within the day, and under the scrutiny of interested parties, has been replaced by a newer, far more expensive roll management system that CANNOT effect prompt closure and CANNOT be scritinized while it much more slowly does so.

Moving to the dark side, should it be that advantage is being taken of a 'mobility lag' in names being correctly re-positioned BY THEIR OWNERS following moves or changes in status, such that re-positioning is unlawfully done using such names with a view to ultimately making undetectable fraudulent vote claims at elections, then more of such names would accumulate in four years than three.

My apologies.

I have just spoken to a staffer of a Federal parliamentarian and learnt that there were no plans in the pipeline to hold a referendum for the fixed four year Parliamentary term.

This is both surprising and a relief.

As I wrote above, I recall that both the major parties stated their support for the proposal. Even the Democrats supported it, and whilst the Greens opposed it, Bob Brown did not seem to show much conviction when I listened to him talk about it on ABC Radio National's Australia Talks Back (now called just "Australia Talks").

So, I had assumed, given the seeming lack of determined opposition to the four year term proposal that Australia's political elites would have seized the opportunity with both hands and that a referendum concurrent with the next federal elections was a dead certainty.

Why they dropped it is a mystery to me.

However,as I have shown earlier, it may not be an academic question in the case of Queensland's state parliament. See Courier Mail editorial of 3 August 2006 "Keep moving ahead with reforms" http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,22178912-13360,00.htm which states: "Local authorities have four-year fixed terms, and so should the Queensland Government."

---

However, even the discussion is I will attempt to tie up this discussion having raised it.

If this democracy had sufficient checks and balances, a four year term could be defensible, and, perhaps, even preferable to the current three year term. However, those safeguards don't exist.

The main safeguard would be an independent and inquisitive newsmedia, but this does not exist in Australia. The closest we have to this is the ABC and even that has fallen far short of the mark at least for many decades now.

(tobecontinued)

(continuedformabove)

Australia's newsmedia is, by and large, sycophantic towards the Howard Government. (On occasions, the Murdoch newsmedia postures against the Howard Government over one or two less important issues, but I believe these are only ploys to re-establish credibility with their readership.) How is it that the Howard Government has survived the AWB scandal in which it allowed almost AU$300million in bribe money to be paid to the very regime that in 2003, it held was such a mortal threat to world peace that we were left with no choice but to invade even before the UN weapons inspectors had finished their work?

By any objective measure this Government was grotesquely incompetent, and if the Government was not that unbelievably incompetent then Howard and a number his ministers belong behind bars. It has to be one or the other. Whatever the truth, they are not fit to govern this country and the newsmedia has been grossly negligent in their responsibilities in not having made this clear to the Australian public.

How is it that the Government was able to introduce legislation, which was not even put to the electors in 2004, which has changed the very fabric of our society? Of course I refer to the misnamed "WorkChoices" laws. Its introduction was preceded by by an
unprecedented saturation-level $55 million worth of taxpayer-funded propaganda. This represented a new low-point in the practice of democracy in this country.

Even the federal Government, by having belatedly, in election year, changed the legislation to include safeguards left out of the original legislation, has implicitly acknowledged that claims made in the original advertising campaign were false.

If the newsmedia had objectively reported these issues, Howard would have long ago been forced from office by the weightof public opinion.

The Senate voting system is rigged. The current outright majority enjoyed would not have been possible had not party officials, away from public view, arrived at the secret unprincipled preference allocation deals. ...(tobecontinued)

(continuedformabove)... Because of this, the Government achieved an outright majority andthe limited safeguard that we once had in the Senate was removed and the Federal Government has since had open slather to do as it pleased.

Also, voters need some recourse, by which politicians who break pledges to their electors can be recalled. Obvious examples are Barnaby Joyce and a number or other National, Liberal politicians who promised to oppose privatisation of Telstra or, at least, oppose it until service in the bush were satisfactory. Even the latter promise has not been kept.

Until safeguards, which prevent such abuses are introduced into the constitution, any extension to the term of office of Federal Houses of Parliament must be strenuously opposed should this threat ever emerge in future.

---

I agree with Forrest Gump. The close-off date for enrolment is ridiculous.

Communicat wrote: "Surely it is the responsibility of the individual to ensure that they enrol to vote as soon as they legally able to do so?"

Perhaps it is the responsibility of the Government not to place any unnecessary hurdles in the way of those who do wish to enrol? Surely, life is already complex and stressful enough (largely thanks to John Howard, himself). If, as a result, some put off the chore of enrolling to vote until after the election date has been announced, is it reasonable to then deny them the right to vote?

In any case, what is the sense of introducing new restrictions on the entitlements of new voters to enrol and then to spend money on an expensive advertising campaign ostensibly to ensure that those same potential voters do not miss out as a result?

I can only assume:

1. it has been calculated that those younger voters who have not voted before are more likely to vote for the opposition than for the government, and

2. to the extent that new voters do enrol as a result of the advertising campaign, they will be influenced to vote for the government.

daggett, what's it feel like being hosed down, mate? Is the water freezing cold, or seductively warm like that feeling you can get in your pocket if you have to stand in a densely packed crowd for an extended time? "I have just spoken to a staffer of a Federal parliamentarian and learnt that there were no plans in the pipeline to hold a referendum for the fixed four year Parliamentary term." Heaven forbid, daggett, and you believed him/her?

Trust your instincts, mate. The indications are you were a lot closer to the truth in your first assessment if you heard or saw any suggestion that a referendum was proposed in any mainstream media article. Thats how they do things these days: get it on record, however obscurely and even more ideally, unofficially, in the mainstream media, then keep dead quiet about the plan until the last minute (or even three days after the last minute!) and then spring it on the unsuspecting public. Then, if by some oversight or act of insubordination there should ever get to be any public discussion questioning such lack of notice on the issue, the government can then point to the obscure early article and say "This has been publicly discussed. Where were you? Asleep or something?"

"But what about debating it in Parliament and circulating the YES and NO cases to the electors?" you may ask. What about it? They got away without producing a YES and NO case at the 1999 referenda: why could they not use that precedent in conjunction with a guillotine on the referendum Bill debate in the dying hours of this Parliament?

You haven't put my mind at ease at all, daggett. The fact remains that that JSCEM recommendation is on the books in that Report on the 2004 Federal elections. I am worried. I am very worried.

Remember, they only need to HOLD a referendum, not get it passed, to achieve the primary aim of extending the roll close period.

And who needs a pipeline for a referendum, anyway, apart from Malcolm Turnbull?