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BRIAN COSTAR: Our system of government is always evolving, even though we in this country
have written constitutions, that doesn’t really impede in any way the evolution of
government, it sometimes requires changes to constitutions. The state constitutions
of course, are much more flexible that is they are easier changed than the federal one.
I don’t see that as an impediment to the overall evolution, I think there are a couple
of things on the agenda. The republic is an obvious one, but let’s be clear about that.
I mean a switch to a republican form of government in Australia along the lines suggested is
really an evolutionary move not a revolutionary move, it wouldn’t change the day to day
operations of the system of government at all. And that’s probably a good thing. I
think the age old tension between executive power and parliamentary accountability, that
is parliament trying to keep the executive accountable, that’s going to continue as
an issue. Of course in recent years I think the balance has gone the way of the executive
simply because of the so called war on terror, because that’s raised the whole question
of we must protect the people. I noticed recently when we had our so-called eco terrorist event
in Victoria that both sides of politics quickly jumped up and said lets have some more laws
to protect people against this, I thought that was a knee jerk reaction, an unnecessary
reaction. I think that is one thing we could do is slow down the law making process. Australian
parliaments are great generators of legislation. It’s one thing to legislate, it’s one
thing to govern well. Certainly in the area of so called counter terrorism I think it’s
probably time that in the interests of liberal democracy some of those laws get wound back,
I mean one can understand why they were introduced at the time, particularly the September 11
catastrophe, which had such a dramatic impact, and subsequent things. But I think now maybe
the time to revisit some of those and say well was that really the best way to go about
it? Do we need this anymore? Don’t the ordinary laws cover this? And so on. So I think, what
I think we’ll be looking at is a, well lets hope that this is what we’ll be looking
at, as we’re looking at an age of de-terrorism.
Well I think, a period where we lose the panic, because I think, I’m not saying the panic
wasn’t at times justified, it was, but politicians of all sides love law and order campaigns
and they get into bidding wars with each other about who can be tougher on crime and who
can be tougher on terrorism. And you can understand why that’s the case, but is it good government?
Sometimes it is and sometimes it’s not.