Should Queensland join all the other states and allow parliamentarians to serve four year terms before facing re-election, rather than the present three years?
In a 1991 referendum Queenslanders said "no", and that should have been the end of it for at least a generation. (After all, we are out of step with the rest of Australia in not having an upper house of parliament, but we don't seem to suffer any worse government as a result).
Nevertheless, today's politicians won't take "no" for an answer, and it looks as though we may have to vote on the issue again. The Beattie Government will soon table a report by constitutional expert Professor Colin Hughes, which recommends that the state parliamentary term should be extended to four years.
No doubt many sensible reasons will be offered to justify such a proposal. Elections are expensive to run, and we all know how unhappy governments are about spending taxpayers' money. Governments frequently have to make tough and unpopular decisions, and politicians are more likely to have stronger backbones when they feel that the electorate will have a few years to forget its anger and pain. Short parliamentary terms, so the argument goes, only promote short term thinking and encourage governments to pander unnecessarily to populism and prejudice.
These are not trifling arguments, although I suspect that our elected representatives seek longer parliamentary terms for less exalted reasons. And the support of business and other interest groups for four year parliaments probably depends less on concerns about efficiency than on the desire for a longer period of return on all the time and resources they spend in cultivating the party in power.
But whatever the reasons that may be offered in their favour, moves towards longer parliamentary terms still represent a retreat from important democratic principles. Certainly, they would have dismayed the reformers who championed the features of our parliamentary system that we now take for granted.
In 1838 William Lovett and Francis Place, two radical and self-educated English tradesmen, drew up the "People's Charter", a six point program of democratic reform, on behalf of the London Workingmen's Association.
The charter called for universal suffrage (but only for men -- even progressives have their blind spots), electoral districts containing equal numbers of voters, a secret ballot, abolition of the requirement that members of parliament had to be property owners, and payment for M.P.s to make it feasible for ordinary men to stand as candidates. Lovett and Place also advocated annual general elections, so that citizens would have much greater control over their parliamentary representatives.
The Chartists, as their supporters were called, presented a number of petitions containing millions of signatures to the House of Commons, first in 1839, and then again in 1842 and in 1848. Each was rejected. Their cause was not helped by the fact that a great many signatures on the last petition were found to be fraudulent; nor by the willingness of some Chartists to resort to violence in pursuit of their aims.
Nevertheless, although Chartism had effectively disappeared as a political movement by the end of the 1840s, the influence of its ideas was far-reaching, particularly in the Australian colonies, where dozens of Chartists were transported after riots in 1839 and 1842. The colonial legislative assemblies which were established from the 1850s onwards soon incorporated four of the six Chartist demands, and a fifth, the payment of parliamentarians, came later.
But the idea of electing parliaments every year -- or even every two years as is the case with the House of Representatives in the United States -- has always been seen as too radical. True, short-term parliaments can have their dangers. But from another perspective they can also help to foster more responsible and accountable governments.
I think that the position you take on the issue ultimately hinges on your view of the electorate. If, like Malcolm Turnbull's Republicans or the conservatives who initially resisted the Chartists' demands, you feel that most people are short-sighted, selfish and readily swayed by glitzy campaigns, you will be convinced that nothing but harm would ever come from more frequent elections. They would only encourage increasingly reckless governments and an even greater amount of populist rhetoric and pork-barrelling.
On the other hand, if you believe that most of our leaders and commentators usually misjudge the good sense and decency of the electorate, and underestimate its willingness to accept difficult but necessary decisions provided their rationale is honestly spelt out, the situation looks rather different.
To a considerable extent expectations can become self-fulfilling. Good government and far-sighted policies are more likely when everyone assumes that the electorate is intelligent and responsible. But if the electorate is treated as though it is foolish and easily manipulated, it is more likely to throw up leaders and governments to match. This is not because people are really stupid, but because such treatment encourages them to become cynical and apathetic, and to feel that scrutinising political parties and candidates is a waste of time.
Four year terms are really a vote of no confidence in the electorate, and will do nothing to reverse what appears to be a growing sense of public disillusion and mistrust in our political processes. We need more, rather than fewer elections.
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