#27
Post
by Dennis La Varenne » Fri Jun 27, 2008 10:58 am
Tuffcity and mrkbsm,
I write from my 15 years as a Secretary and submissions/research officer for the Victorian Shooting Sports Council of Victoria which did a lot of work in support of Duck hunting in Victoria and in also support of New South Wales duck hunters when asked. Victoria and NSW are the two principal duck hunting States in Australia.
The principal duck hunting organization in Australia is the Field & Game Association of Australia which does a lot of work in this area. Its membership in Queensland is and has always been small compared with the 3 States to the south – New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania.
Until very recently, Queensland used to have a system of duck hunting licences up until this episode, but they were not supported by the duck hunting public of that State let alone the general hunting public.
Most people who shot ducks there did so illegally, but in small numbers. The numbers taken were always so small and hardly a threat to the duck population, but it was hardly worth the enforcement effort. The chances of being caught were pretty much zero.
Most Queensland duck shooters did not support their own licensing system, and those that did, did so in very small numbers. That made the system itself unviable from an administrative point of view. It simply cost more to run that it was worth.
If that State had the same strength of tradition which my State of Victoria has, there is a fair bet that it would not have been abolished there. Really, there wasn’t much to abolish, because hardly anyone hunted duck legally. Most if it was done illegally and sporadically. The people did not support the civil right they had and so suffered their own consequences.
The State of New South Wales suffered a similar fate about a decade ago. That state had a similar size population as my State of Victoria. It too had a duck licensing system like Victoria’s, which was supported mainly by Victorians going there during the season. At the time of abolition, NSW had 1500 licensed duck hunters. Victoria had something like 30 000, many of whom also held NSW licenses. The NSW Minister for Conservation (a Minister is equivalent to your Department Secretaries) was quoted in newspapers at the time as saying in response to outcry about his intention to permanently close the NSW Duck Hunting Season that he would not even get out of bed for 1500 duck hunters.
My own State of Victoria always had and has a very large (for Australia) active and dedicated duck hunting population and it has been a very strong tradition in Victoria – less so in recent years for a number of reasons and because of a 10 year drought which has dried up most of the wetlands. Shooting in the first weeks of the season in Victoria was always quite heavy but nevertheless, duck numbers were never threatened by shooting because it was always kept within sustainable numbers.
However, there is the chance that because we have not had a season for the past few years because of the drought that our season may be abolished from lack of use . . . because we haven’t had one for some years, we fear that Government will just decide not to declare it . . . permanently, without actually legislating it off the books. Its declaration is an executive order from year to year, so this option is very much on the cards.
So far as the matter of recall legislation goes, unlike so many of the US States, we do not have anything like that and are not likely to. There were moves some years ago to initiate Citizen Initiated Referenda, but the politicians, realising that the people would then have the power to over-ride decisions of the Parliament, collectively stopped any Bill being presented to introduce the matter, in their own interests of course.
There is a significant difference between the Westminster system of Government and that of the US in that the Executive controls the Legislature in the Westminster system. All of our Ministers of State (Department Secretaries and Governors in the US) are elected to the Parliament as legislators, with the majority party in a Parliament forming the Government and from whose ranks are selected the Ministers who then form the Executive. There is no effective or real separation of powers such as you have in the US.
The highest Executive officer in Australia is the Governor General who represents the English Monarch, but effectively has no executive power other than to dismiss a Government in certain circumstances or refuse to sign Bills of Parliament into law under certain circumstances. Effectively, the member of our Executive who has real and effective power is our Prime Minister who can dismiss the Governor General if he wishes by writing to the English Monarch on behalf of the Government of Australia.
Interestingly, the office of Prime Minister is not mentioned in the Australian Constitution anywhere. Few Australians know that fact.
The Prime Minister is merely the leader of the majority Party in the lower house (House of Representatives). However he has the equivalent powers to your President or State Governors and is effective head of executive government in Australia simply because the majority party forms the executive and introduces and passes any Bills it requires.
In the Westminster system, the Executive introduces Bills to the Parliament and by virtue of ‘Party discipline’ makes sure that its Bills are passed by its majority of members in that Parliament. It would be like your President or Governors being both head of the Executive and at the same time, Speaker of the House, and all his Department Secretaries being members of the House.
Effectively, the Westminster system is a dictatorship of the Parliament where the people have no effective voice other than the tri- or quadrennial elections. Westminster operates on the doctrine of the supremacy of Parliament based on the hypothesis that because it is elected, it therefore reflects the will of the people.
However, no Parliament or Executive is obliged ever to consider the will of the people from time to time between elections, and there is no mechanism for the people to over-ride any law which the people find intolerable unlike you can in some of your States by means of recall.
The system of compulsory voting ensures that the voice of any particular lobby group on any issue is diluted to inconsequentiality at election times, relying on the apathy of Australian voters who face a fine if they do not vote. The biggest political consequence of this voting system is that it creates safe seats for sitting members and political parties which endure for decades.
There are no rights guaranteed to the people under our Constitution (which I have read at least three times) other than trial by jury, unlike the US Constitution (which I have read at least four times) which has a Bill of Rights forbidding the US Government to interfere in certain areas of public freedom which the people of the US reserve to themselves over and above their Government and its powers.
The Westminster system operates on the doctrine of the supremacy of the Parliament (over and often against the people) who do not have any rights other than those legislated to them by that Parliament, or civil liberties which are those freedoms which have not been revoked by legislation.
Under Westminster, because of the principle of the supremacy of Parliament, all rights and liberties are subject to change by law. It is not a system of rule by the people, for the people and of the people as Lincoln famously said of the US system in his Gettysburg address.
Ours it the complete reverse of the US system founded on the belief that the people rule themselves and have inalienable rights concerning which the Congress cannot interfere.
Our constitution, by comparison is largely about the freedom of trade between the former colonies and a shorter section on the structure of the National Government. The rights of the people do not figure.
In its developmental days prior to Australian Federation in 1901, the US Constitution was carefully considered in the formulation of our own, but the only part of it that was copied in any significant degree was the bi-cameral system of Parliament (Congress to you) with a lower legislative house and an upper house of review, and that is about it. This system roughly parallels the English Houses of Parliament and Lords as well.
In Australia, we simply do not have the access to our legislature and executive that the people of the US do by way of recall. Consequently, the ability of the Australian people to do much about legislation which allow/prohibits unpopular laws is pretty much hypothetical.
An aspect of Australian popular culture which I have found that visitors to Australia find very surprising is the absolute contempt which Australians have for politicians. They rank somewhere between used car salesmen and paedophiles.
It is rare to find any citizen who will speak complimentarily about them because the Party discipline system prevents any politician crossing the floor to vote as a matter of conscience or principle. Unlike your Congressmen who quite often ‘cross the floor’ on issues which affect their constituents, ours NEVER cross the floor on behalf of the people who elect them. They only ever vote ‘en bloc’ according to party policy.
At any rate, I hope that the foregoing helps your understanding of why it is so easy in Australia to lose many of our civil liberties.
Regards,
Dennis La Varenne
Dennis La Varénne
Have the courage to argue your beliefs with conviction, but the humility to accept that you may be wrong.
QVIS CVSTODIET IPSOS CVSTODES (Who polices the police?) - DECIMVS IVNIVS IVVENALIS (Juvenal) - Satire VI, lines 347–8
What is the difference between free enterprise capitalism and organised crime?
HOMO LVPVS HOMINIS - Man is his own predator.
It's indicitive of the actions of a government pursuing a set agenda. 
