FROM the citizenship fiasco maybe hope will spring eternal. The whole Australian constitution needs to change but unless - like the same sex marriage path - it is driven by the people, don’t expect our pathetic major parties to lead the way. The conservative parties rarely want to address change of anything - their born-to-rule attitude hasn’t changed in decades.
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Hawke, Keating and Rudd are the only politicians in recent times to talk constitutional change but failed to act; Rudd managed to change how his party elected its parliamentary leader and that was a failure - the punters got Bill Shorten rather than Anthony Albanese because the party’s grass roots had less say than the politicians.
In order, constitutional change should start with abolition of the states and territories; revamping of the Senate and the unification of voting systems for all elections. No person should be able to stand for federal, state or local government election unless they have lived in an electorate (for which they nominate) for at least five to 10 years and held Australian citizenship for that time. Renouncing any previous citizenship once granted Australian status should be automatic. The major parties have flaunted the spirit of pre-selection in any case. Barnaby Joyce is one example, irrespective of how the High Court found in the current citizenship debacle. Joyce may have been born in Tamworth but he became a senator for Queensland from July 2005 to August 2013 after which he moved the family to Tamworth to contest the lower house seat of New England in September of that year.
The ALP has several prominent examples usually based on finding safe seats for union leaders; one was Greg Combet who was parachuted from his ACTU national secretary position into the NSW seat of Charlton. The party’s national executive over-ruled the NSW branch to kick out the sitting member, Kelly Hoare, whose family had been life-time party members; her father, Bob Brown, was the respected MP for Hunter.
The current citizenship flaws might, arguably, not have occurred if responsibility to check and verify eligibility was the sole responsibility of the Australian Electoral Commission. The decline of all things political in recent decades proves party officials cannot be given such responsibility and trust.
The column (and many readers, too, it must be noted) suggest the Senate should become an individuals’ house, not based on party lines with its state “electorates”. For example, regional communities like the Murray-Riverina and Murrumbidgee-Lachlan valleys and so on around the nation deserve such representation.
There is growing support for a return to first-past-the-post voting in both federal houses and in local government, assuming common sense prevails and state governments get the flick.
Even Andrew Bolt, News Ltd’s arch right-wing columnist, asked: “Just what is the point of the Liberal Party?” while the doyen of Canberra’s political journalists, Jack Waterford of The Canberra Times wrote, under the headline, Canberra’s crook systems: “Politicians desperately need to rebuild trust in institutions and in themselves”.
John Nightingale, writing in the respected The Saturday Paper, followed with: “It (the constitution) should be replaced with one that accords with our values, and it should have a termination date of no more than 100 years, because our descendants will not share all our values, and will need a constitution that suits their own”. Spot on!