Polly Watch, Average Punter

Trusting that one day soon more average punters will say “Enough!” and demand accountability from the lying sloths in Parliament.

Subject: Many forms of Citizens Initiated Referendum

“LIKE guns, Citizen Imitated Referendums are dangerous in the wrong hands. Citizen Imitated Referendums are a favourite policy of right-wing groups around the world … “

Jon, commenting in Ralphs Bay: Peter Tucker muddies the debate

Emotive argument is not warranted Jon. The dirty power grabs of a couple of individuals in Australia is immaterial — Australia has never had CIR, so the examples you quoted have nothing to do with CIR — politics in Australia and elsewhere in the world is a dirty business — and guns can and do kill people, but what has that to do with direct democracy?

There are many forms of direct democracy e.g the Recall, CIR: binding and non-binding type. I understand New Zealand currently has the non-binding type of CIR i.e. the government is not required to act upon the outcome of the CI referendum. But only a foolish government would completely ignore the formally collected and recorded view of its citizens.

CIR requires that a massive amount of electorate signatures are collected before a referendum can ever be called, and then the referendum is put to a full vote and it has to be won — so CIR cannot be used lightly — and in the case of Australians, who are so lazy about political issues, it would be extremely difficult to collect the required number of signatures to even begin the process unless drastic measures were called for.

Perhaps if the politically correct tried to ban the common use of the name “football” because the name discriminated against other ball games that require interaction between the foot and the ball, Australians may be moved to use CIR.

Swiss voters have proved to be very responsible, voting ‘No’ in CI referendums where the issue would have benefited the voters, but would not have been good for the country.

The most beneficial aspect of CIR is that it is a safeguard, without the need to ever use it — the fact that it is there and that it may be used reminds politicians that they are not beyond the reach of the electorate should they decide to ignore the voters after the election.

I’ve listed a few of the hundreds of websites about direct democracy which will give more information, and demonstrate that localised issues mentioned by Jon, like branch stacking, has nothing to do with CIR.

Quote from David Lange
NZ Prime Minister 1984 – 1989
“Binding Citizens’ Initiated Referenda is a specific means of easing concerns about a specific threat to liberty, health or choice. Many of the arguments against binding referenda are demeaning. They assume that the people always vote for things which are popular, which carry benefits without acknowledging the costs… These arguments have been largely discredited by experience overseas.”
http://www.betterdemocracy.co.nz/endorsements.php

New Zealand has had non-binding Citizens Initiated Referendum since 1993 — the signatures of at least 10% of all eligible electors are required in order to be able to call a referendum:
http://www.justice.govt.nz/pubs/other/pamphlets/2001/citizens_referenda.html

Some examples of New Zealand referendums that have been called since 1995: http://www.elections.org.nz/voting/referendums.html#gen2

An essay about the different types of direct democracy:
http://www.basiclaw.net/Principles/Direct%20democracy.htm

An essay about direct democracy in Switzerland – 100,000 signatures are required to call an election:
http://www.swissworld.org/eng/swissworld.html?siteSect=705&sid=4055756&rubricId=15050

Italy – 500,000 signatures are required to call a referendum:
http://c2d.unige.ch/int/OverviewInstits/t-italie.html

A site with many links – direct democracy world-wide:
http://experts.about.com/e/d/di/Direct_democracy.htm