TRANSCRIPT:
(This transcript is derived from an automated process. The video recording is authoritative.)
But I thought I might just set the scene a bit about why are we having this meeting? Because I think this referendum was the most important referendum that's ever been put to the Australian people.
We've had 45 now. And of all the different referendums we've had, I think this is the most important.
A lot of people want to sort of say, 'oh no, it's not very important. Forget about it.' And I think this has real implications for our political system, our constitution and future policy. That's why I want this forum to happen and be more discussion 'cause there's attempts right now to downgrade the results.
Just like that silly thing from ANU, there's attempts to say, well, people who voted against it didn't know what they were doing. People who voted against it are uneducated. People who voted against it well wouldn't really know what the Constitution is.
Well, many people don't read the Constitution. There's other things to read in life.
But I think most people knew what they were doing on the 14th of October. And here's Paul Kelly's comment, a journalist, look, it's not that important, this referendum. The results aren't very meaningful.
I think they're very meaningful. And that's what we're gonna discuss. And I thought a bit of background about the Australian constitution. We've got a written constitution, um, like the United States.
A lot of it's been modeled in the United States Constitution. Unlike the UK there's no written constitution in the UK and New Zealand. Uh, they don't have a written constitution like we do.
Um, our constitution, uh, when we were developing our constitution in the 1890s, was voted on directly by the Australian people. Like there was a referendum in each state. The American constitution was not voted on by the American people. Right. We had that role from the word go, which makes us a much more democratic country also. Um, our constitution was designed deliberately to be hard to change. We know it happens to countries which can change their constitution.
Every time there's a change of government, it soon becomes a pretty irrelevant, not much of a safeguard for anything. And also, what's really great about our constitution, when we come to try to change it, it's gotta go for a vote to the people in the American constitution.
It's, it's up to state parliaments to pass legislation in Germany. It's up to state parliaments to pass the legislation. There is not a vote by the people. We have a democratic vote by the people, not, it's just a majority of people.
We also protect minority areas like smaller states, so we don't get swamped by the big states like New South Wales and Victoria. So it's gotta be a majority of states and a majority of people.
And I think that's a fantastic system we've got going. And we've also, from very early on, when We started, first started running the first referendum way back in the first decade, set out some rules that there had to be advertisements about when the referendum's gonna be on, when to vote.
We then very early on started to say there's gotta be a pamphlet sent out to explain people arguments for and against what a fantastic arrangement that we've had. And we've just been seen all this in action.
So just a bit of history about our referendum. We've now had 45, only eight have been successful. So only eight referendum have been successful. Out of 45, seven of those eight have been put by non-labor governments.
Okay. And the last referendum was put by the Fraser government. There were three retirement ages of judges. We allow, uh, the votes of the territories to be included in the national vote.
Uh, and that, uh, Senate casual vacancies, if a, if a Labor Senator dies, it's gotta be replaced by a Labor senator and so on. Um, and we've had three pretty important ones expanding social services.
Um, uh, 1967 Commonwealth Government gaining powers to make laws on aboriginals. Um, and probably another one which failed was the 1999, um, referendum on the Republic again, I suppose we didn't know what we were doing.
Um, so, so that's a bit of history about our referendum tool for our discussion. And I think we're going to try and put out today and tonight, uh, that this has referendum had really important implications for all of us.
It's, and it's something we shouldn't be forgetting. And sometimes saying, oh, it's some sort of aberration. And I was interested to read in the paper this week, um, the, um, a group of people formed, uh, a group not to give up on the Yes campaign.
So it's gonna be very interesting. I'll talk about this later. All the different techniques that governments and people will use to perpetuate and deny what the referendum said. Now, uh, the referendum to me was pretty definitive in what it said.
The answer was "no". Okay. Uh, overwhelming "No". I'll give some more figures about that. Uh, later on.
