It is a brave politician who argues for an increase in the size of parliament and more jobs for politicians. So instead I would like to argue for the restoration of our parliament as a lawyer, business women and member of the Tasmanian Constitution Society.
Our democracy is built on the Westminster system of government. At the heart of the Westminster system, is the doctrine of the separation of the powers. In plain English, that means we do not allow power to be concentrated in the hands of too few powerful people. Our judiciary, our executive government and our legislature stand as the three pillars of our democracy. The checks and balances on power that this structure provides, keeps all of us safe, providing a level of fairness and justice we all want.
Yet, things are out of balance. By shrinking our parliament we have limited the capacity of our government to do its part of the job because there are quite literally too few people. We have reduced the size (and thus capacity) of our parliament to a point at which the checks and balances we rely upon for good democracy and management, have been eroded. It is a truism, but size does matter. Numbers also matter when we are trying to run the Committee System, which is at the heart of Tasmania’s democratic processes.
So it is not a simple equation of the cost of government, or who is or is not entitled to a pay increase, or what happened twenty years ago, or who may or may not win a particular seat. By tinkering with the proportional size of parliament we have damaged the fine balance of the Westminster system of Government.
And I hear you say ‘well, she just wants to get elected so of course she wants to increase the numbers’. To that I would respond, imagine if we were awash with political talent, with robust and interesting democratic debate happening on each street corner – yes I would like to participate in that. Imagine having direct and easy access to your local MP, imagine a flourishing Tasmania in which we had 35 people batting for our interests in Canberra Imagine a parliament with the capacity and resources required to bring things back into balance. Imagine a Tasmania forging ahead with ideas and capacity, and just imagine a diverse and talented pool of backbenchers ready to come up through the ranks. It’s pretty compelling stuff isn’t it.
For the record also I note that there is no requirement that a referendum be held, but the calls for public input into this decision cannot be ignored – a public forum at least.
So, I argue that to move ahead we need to fix the foundations of our democracy first, by resolving to restore our house of assembly to 35 members, allowing a re-institution of the backbench.
Our bi-cameral model should be retained and strengthened so that we have a truly independent house of review – bringing our democracy back into balance and supporting robust Tasmanian state-hood.
