Address to Eureka Stockade Memorial Association - The Role of Opposition
Sunday, 06 December 2009
E&OE…
[Greetings omitted]
I am absolutely delighted to be here in the historic city of Ballarat. It’s a real pleasure to come back here as I’ve visited on a number of occasions, and to be present at this extremely important luncheon and I hope that this event will long continue as the people of Ballarat celebrate their history.
I wish speak to you today about the role of Opposition.
Now when I indicated to Frank that was my topic I think he assumed that I was going to spend the afternoon going into the intricacies and internal machinations of the current Federal Opposition as it was played out so very publicly this last week. But no, as intriguing as it might seem from the outside, that is certainly not my intention!
I want to talk about the role of Opposition in terms of it being a check and a balance to not only Government but also a counter weight to excessive authority in any form.
And what more colourful historical example in Australia can there be than the events of the 3rd December 1854, 155 years ago.
Gold had been discovered in this region a couple of years earlier triggering the aptly named Gold Rush, as thousands of prospectors came from around the world to make their fortune –and make it very quickly they hoped. Won by the skill of hard labour, it was an opportunity for people across societies – skilled or unskilled, educated or uneducated – to make a fortune if fate or providence or chance or luck smiled upon them.
The history of what occurred here has been well documented. Obviously there are many people in this room who have a very intimate understanding of those events.
But it can be summarised as overzealous law enforcement and tax collection and the licence hunts. History indicates that Australia’s early forms of government did not operate under the robust democratic principles that are a hallmark of our current system of government.
So there was no miner’s representation as such on the Gold Commission, there was no organisation or no one in a position of power to take on the miners’ cause. So many took up arms against what they saw as injustice and tyranny. At least 22 stockaders died. There was a battle with police and military and some of the military also died.
Had there been an effective, organised, institutionalised Opposition I would suggest the situation may well never have reached the point that it did.
The miners would have had an outlet for their grievances, people to whom they could appeal. Australia was not an autocracy by any means but we had drawn heavily on England where rule had been founded for centuries on the notion of a superior ruling class.
Of course as our colonial Parliaments evolved and as our Federal Government became a reality, the role of an established Opposition became part and parcel of what has become a robust democracy.
If your only exposure to politics is Federal Parliament’s Question Time you could be forgiven for thinking that the role of Opposition is to insult the Government and the role of Government is to torment and tease the Opposition. Yet while I certainly don’t condone all of the behaviour at Question Time, it does have and does serve a very important purpose.
Mind you it might not be well known that our table in the Parliament where the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition sit at the dispatch boxes, is exactly the same width as a table in the House of Commons, and that is precisely two sword lengths. It is meant to prevent a duel.
Today that distance is symbolic. There is invariably conflict between the Government the Opposition, the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, but the two sides are kept just far enough apart that they can’t whip out the sword for a duel!
Now Question Time is a verbal equivalent of that – a battle of ideas, a battle of policy, a battle of wit, when we’re lucky.
An Opposition must be ever vigilant.
As Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States is reported to have said, “the price of freedom is external vigilance.” And as an advocate for freedom and as one of the architects of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson was concerned that part of one’s freedoms could be lost if those in power were not kept under constant pressure and constant scrutiny to justify their actions.
The most powerful nation on earth and arguably the greatest democracy, the United States, endured not only a War of Independence but also a bitter Civil War all in the name of freedom.
If we go back to the Eureka Stockade, had there been an Opposition, ever vigilant, holding the Government to account, the outcome would have been different I’m sure.
There would have been calls for the sacking of the Police Minister, there would have been calls for an inquiry, a Royal Commission no less, or other avenues. And I think there is a very strong belief that the events of 1854 did play a role in the eventual transition to a fully fledged democratic nation in 1901.
The stockaders and their grievances captured the public mood and resulted in changes to laws. So I ask, were not the men and the women of the Eureka Stockade our very first Opposition?
Most certainly the leader, Peter Lalor, must have seen the connections and went shortly after his charging into the Victorian Legislature. What a warrior representative he must have been!
Australians should marvel at the capacity of our country to make a peaceful transition to democracy, with that notable of exception of Eureka.
There was little bloodshed, there were no civil wars, and Australia actually voted, to become a nation at the ballot box. Few other great democracies – the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan – can claim such a peaceful path to democracy.
And while democratic rule has spread around the globe, still many of millions of people struggle for freedom and democracy. I think there is a universal desire amongst all people to live with freedoms – of speech, of religion, of association, freedom from fear, freedom from want.
About 14 years ago I travelled to Burma and through a series of coincidences I met Aung San Suu Kyi who is essentially the Leader of the Opposition in Burma, but you wouldn’t know it. For since her Party won 82 percent of the votes in an election in 1990 she has spent the best part of 20 years under house arrest. The election result was ignored by the military regime, the Opposition members jailed, the Opposition effectively smashed.
But amazingly she has not lost her will to fight for freedom and democracy for the people of Burma. I believe that every international effort ought to be directed to enabling her to participate in the next round of elections in Burma to take place in 2010.
Let me turn to Zimbabwe, another country that I have visited since I have been in Parliament as an election observer for the Parliamentary elections in Zimbabwe in 2000 and again the Presidential election in 2002, and I say elections because they are elections in name only.
The Opposition was suppressed, the people were terrorised, the Opposition members were jailed, it was all conducted in a climate of fear. Yet thousands upon thousands of people still turned out to vote and people still stand as Opposition members and they all put their lives at risk.
So we in Australia should never take for granted our democracy and our right to vote, our right to elect people to represent us and represent our interests in Parliaments, in councils.
After being in Zimbabwe and watching people come out to vote under threats of violence and intimidation, and let’s face it, the same can be said for the people in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is very humbling to realise that most Australian’s don’t actually give a second thought to getting up on election day and going out to vote.
Imagine if the people of North Korea, or as it is ironically named the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, were able to vote for an alternative to Kim Jong Il, or if there were an effective opposition party in North Korea. There is no doubt that North Korea would be a much more functional state where its citizens would at least have enough to eat and survive.
And the contrast between North Korea and the vibrant democracy in South Korea could not be more stark. Fifty years ago they were at war, South Korea devastated. Today North Korea is a dysfunctional dictatorship; South Korea is a vibrant democracy, the 15th largest economy in the world, a country of high technology and one of the most advanced nations.
The comparison between what North Korea has achieved for its citizens and what South Korea has achieved for its, is profound.
I must tell you though I was delighted to meet a South Korean Member of Parliament who was visiting Canberra and noted the robustness of our Question Time, but said afterwards, that’s nothing, that’s absolutely nothing to how proceedings are conducted in South Korea. And she sent me a link to a YouTube video, and if you ever just want to type in “July South Korea National Assembly” up comes a video of the most extraordinary scenes I think you’ll ever see in a democratic parliament anywhere in the world.
It seems that all of the male parliamentarians undertake national service and in the course of that they learn martial arts. So when things get a little tense they resort to their tae kwon do kicks across the chamber – I kid you not! And the fracas that broke out over a debate on telecommunications laws no less has to be seen to believed. And I want to tell you the women didn’t hold back. There was a lot of hair pulling and scratching going on. So it doesn’t matter how sophisticated the democracy, human beings still sometimes resort to some pretty fundamental principles.
Australia’s system of Government has been tested.
During World War II a number of Parliaments around the world formed unity Governments and War Cabinets of Government and Opposition members. But here in Australia we continued with a Government Party and a fully functioning Opposition.
It has always been the view in Australia that Oppositions must hold the Government to account, to scrutinise its actions, to cast its critical eye over every aspect of Government Administration. And even during World War II, with our young men and woman fighting overseas, as allies in the war against Germany, and closer to home in the war against Japan, with bipartisan support of the troops, there was still a robust Opposition constructively supporting the marshalling and use of Australian resources for the War, but still free to criticise and oppose any use of war powers assumed by the Government for purely partisan domestic ends, as well as raise for debate any issues deemed not in the national interest, and of course admittedly within the confines or the limits of what could be debated in terms of national security.
So that is why the role of Opposition is so vital and must be preserved. It is not for the Government to say an Opposition is right or wrong, but in the end it is for public opinion.
We’re more likely to get good public policy and good policy outcomes through robust public debate by hearing all sides of an argument and educating the public on the issues.
There is a naïve view in some sectors that when Opposition and Government policy coincide the Opposition should merely wave through the legislation without changes. That would be a betrayal of the people who vote for us.
Oppositions must always ensure they put their energies and efforts into scrutinising the actions of Government and maintaining that ever present eternal vigilance, striving at all times to be constructive.
Oppositions should support legislation that it believes is in the national interest, strive to improve legislation where possible and oppose legislation when it believes it is not in the national interest, and the people will judge.
Oppositions should also offer the people an alternative. It is vital for the health of our democracy that people are offered choice in the battle of ideas.
At any point in time there are always a multitude of a battle of ideas taking place in the Parliament, through the media and out in the community.
For example we’re currently engaged in a great debate about how Australia should respond to climate change as part of the global solution to what is a global challenge.
There is a debate about whether or not the response to the global financial downturn has been appropriate for Australia.
In the Victorian Parliament there are concerns about law and order and how best to respond to violence on the streets at night.
And the reason why the contest of ideas is so important is that it is very rare to have issues that have clear solutions.
Typically in a Government response to any issue, there are many areas of agreement but some of mild disagreement and some of very strong disagreement. The hope is that by scrutinising the decisions of the Government and arguing for alternatives, Australians benefit from an overall improvement in the quality of Government.
And I think that is what the Eureka Stockade was all about.
The men were not resolving to overthrow the Government of the day. They were not striving to trigger a civil war, although one must assume that the sheer weight of numbers at the monster meetings made that a possibility. But their passion was about their grievances and wanting to be heard and for the Government to respond to their concerns.
The oath sworn by the miners of Ballart in 1854 we heard today.
“We swear by the Southern Cross, stand truly by each other and fight to defend our rights and liberties.”
That reflects one of the fundamental principles of true democracy and that is there are certain rights and freedoms that no Government can take away. Those fundamental freedoms of speech, of association, of religious belief and more. There is also the right to peacefully protest, to be treated equally before the law, the presumption of innocence and the right to vote.
Through the struggle of people of centuries, including those at Eureka Stockade, many of those rights and freedoms are now enshrined in international laws such as the Geneva Conventions.
Nations such as Australia have a responsibility to support the struggles of people throughout the world who don’t enjoy these freedoms.
We work with other democratic nations through international bodies such as the United Nations, and while I’m certainly aware of the criticisms of the slow progress in some parts of the world, we must be patient and not force our style of democracy upon others.
We must be mindful that many current democracies came through fire and war to reach that point, and we must respect the right of the people to choose their own form of Government.
So I come back to that universal human desire for freedom and for people to keep their lives free from the threat of violence. And the role that Oppositions play in peacefully curbing the potential excesses of government and preventing the loss of important rights and freedoms is absolutely essential.
Some have argued the only limit to personal freedoms should be to prevent harm to others, in other words, you should be free to virtually as you please proving it doesn’t cause harm or damage to other people with a free society.
That is a sound principle for modern developed democracy. In fact it does guide many of our laws and policies and I suspect the men who stood at the barricades of the Eureka Stockade, and the women who stood behind them, would applaud and approve such a principle.
