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REPRESENTATIVE
AND RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT
One of the great advantages
that Australia has always had is its Westminster System of Government under
Australia’s Constitutional Monarchy, which is both representative and
responsible.
Representative in that it is
elected by a majority of electors but once elected represented the whole
community, and responsible in that once elected, the elected Government is
responsible not only to the people but also for the day-to-day administration of
the Nation.
Over the last thirty years or
so we have seen these simple but effective principles eroded away by successive
governments until we now find these very same elected governments want to remove
the ‘protections’ and ‘freedoms’ of our traditional Westminster
principles, by advocating Australia becomes a ‘republic’.
In the 21st century
it is not difficult to believe that our government does represent us, provided
only that our interests are concurrent with some loftier international agenda.
In other words our
representative government represents international interests firstly, and then
represents us within that framework. We are all familiar with phrases such as
“the level playing field”, “in
order to comply with the treaty”, “in the
interests of free trade”, “we have
international responsibilities” and, we must be more “pluralistic”,
whatever that means.
On the concept of responsible
Government, when did you last hear of a Minister resigning for “misleading the
House”, or even for that matter, the electorate? Again, over the last thirty
years or so we have seen an even greater erosion of this concept until we have
arrived at the point where public servants, and not even senior ones at that,
can decide what their Minister, and for that matter the public, should or should
not know of any particular incident.
How many non-elected bodies do
we now have setting Government policy?
How many of our politicians
voted along party lines for the US/Australia Free Trade Agreement, whether or not it
was in the interests of Australia. How many have supported the operations of the
World Trade Organisation, which in many cases has simply meant the exporting of
Australian jobs, or even for that matter, who supported the present escapade
into Iraq?
We are, right now, certainly
at a defining point in our history. At the coming Federal election the major
questions will not be the ‘red herrings’ that
will be pulled across our paths, but rather for the elector to decide if they
want truly representative and responsible government for Australia, or for some
other internationalist cause.
I believe the answer is
obvious.
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