Mostly on change: When the High Court decided that there was an implied right of free speech in Australia, they added to the constitution. When the Commonwealth Government, the state governments, and the British Government passed the Australia Acts, they also added to the constitution. Neither however changed the Constitution.
The Australian referendum process is overly rigourous. Absolute majorities in both houses, a majority of states and a majority of electors - a triple majority - pretty difficult. Which is why we have such a high failure rate, 38 of 47 have failed.
The correct figure is 36 of 44, actually.
On the first of the majorities, I cannot see why any constitutional alteration should pass without Parliamentary approval; are there any states which allow their constitution to change without approval by the relevant legislative bodies? How productive has this been? (I understand the Californian constitution is a bit hm).
On the final of the majorities, I cannot see why any constitutional alteration should pass without Popular approval. I especially cannot see why a republican constitution should allow this. The state exists at our sufferance, to serve us. It should hardly be too much to ask for us to be consulted before our contract is changed.
On the remainder, only five referenda have failed because of the majority of states requirement. That leaves a massive 31/44 which a majority of people have refused to change. Referenda in Australia have failed not because of the number and type of majorities—they\'ve failed because the Australian people don\'t want them. You\'ll also note that most referenda that passed passed in conjunction with proposals that failed, and the numbers when this didn\'t happen were significantly different, anyway. Australians aren\'t just rejecting proposals for change, they\'re rejecting
specific
referenda, with which they don\'t agree.
Further, how many of these failures are because the same proposal (or largely the same proposal) were rejected on different occasions?
Not all change is good change. And even for the radical Swiss constitutional changers, if you compare not just numbers, but the nature of the changes, do you get a different perspective (I don\'t know where data on the Swiss referenda are, and I\'m too tired to search for it at 2 am!) How many of the Swiss constitutional changes were power grabs and Republics We Had To Have?
It can be inferred that the referendum process can stifle constitutional change.
And so too can PINs stifle the withdrawal of money from bank accounts. This doesn\'t seem to be a bad thing ... ?
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